UPNews:Let's start from the beginning. Where are you from / where were you born?

John Yelton: I was born in Birkenhead, England. It's right across the river Mersey from Liverpool which is on the west coast. I grew up, however, in Southern England.

UP: Where did you go to school?

JY: I went to the University of Nottingham for my undergraduate studies. I then went to the University of Oxford to get my PhD which they call at Oxford a "D.Phil". I spent three years at each school and defended my thesis "High Transverse Phenomena at the CERN ISR" (proton- proton) in 1981 at age 24. In England, we specialize early, so graduate young.

UP: So you were a good student?

JY: I was good at finding out what I needed to know for tests.

UP: What led you to major in physics?

JY: In the first year at Nottingham, I was studying both Physics and Chemistry. I found the Organic Chemistry labs to be quite troublesome though, and moved completely to Physics. Mathematics was my favourite in grammar school. I went to Colchester Royal Grammar School.

UP: What did you do after you got your PhD?

JY: I worked for four years at Stanford working as a post doc at SLAC (e+ e- annihilation). After that, I worked for two years at Oxford as a temporary faculty member. In 1987, I came to UF.

UP: What kind of physicist would you consider your self?

JY: High Energy Experimentalist.

UP: And what research do you do?

JY: I have belonged to the CLEO collaboration since 1988, looking at e+ e- annihilation in an energy regime which we no longer consider to be High Energy. I'm also a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration, which will be taking data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starting later this year. Much of my work over the last twenty years has been on the topic of charmed baryons.

UP: Charmed Baryons?

JY: A charmed baryon has a charmed quark as one of its 3 constituent parts. Recently, however, CLEO has gone down in energy below the charmed baryon threshold. I've been studying decays of various cc-bar mesons. I'm particularly excited about recently discovering the 1st Baryon decay mode of a D_s.

UP: What part of the research is this?

JY: I've concentrated on data analysis rather than building the detectors.

UP: What is involved in this work?

JY: Well there's a software infrastructure in place. It's all in C++ now. It used to be in Fortran. So there's a decent amount of coding to be done.

UP: You have discovered new particles?

JY: Yes, I discovered the Xi C 0, which is a charmed Xi with no charge. It is made of d, s, and c quarks. I've also found several excited states of that and other charmed baryons.

UP: I notice they didn't name it after you?

JY: No, unfortunately a naming system is in place for most particles.

UP: You also teach. Do you enjoy it?

JY: Yes. I've tended to teach the lower level courses. I prefer knowing more than my students! I find some of my colleagues prefer the higher level classes to the lower levels ones. Right now I'm teaching a 3000-level Mechanics class, though, and I have taught graduate levels classes in the distant past.

UP: How many classes do you teach in a semester?

JY: I always teach one every semester.

UP: You don't teach in the summers though?

JY: In the summers I have gone to Cornell where the CLEO experiments are. There are many advantages to being onsite. You get to know the people after a while. I did spend several weeks at CERN as well last year. Now CLEO is coming to an end, I am spending more time at CERN.

UP: What are your favourite colours?

JY: Purple and Orange.

UP: What is your favourite movie?

JY: Monty Python's Life of Brian.

UP: What is your favourite kind of music?

JY: I listen to British folk music of the 1970's and some classical music.