Peter J. Twin graduated from the
University of Liverpool with a BSc in 1960 and a PhD in 1964. At the
University of Liverpool he became a lecturer in 1964, a Senior Lecturer in 1973, a Reader in 1979, Sir James Chadwick Professor of Experimental Physics in 1987, Lyon James Professor of Physics in 1997, and a Senior Fellow and Professor Emeritus in 2001. From 1983 to 1987 he was also Head of the Nuclear Structure Facility at the Daresbury Laboratory, which is about 30 kilometres from Liverpool. For the academic year 1968–1969 he was a visiting professor at the
University of Alberta. In 1991
Daniel Kleppner judged Twin's discovery of superdeformed nuclei to be one most important discoveries in physics in the years from 1986 to 1991. Following the success of TESSA III, he collaborated with Francis Beck, director of the
Centre de recherches nucléaires (CRN) at
Strasbourg, on leading the French-British development of the more advanced gamma ray detectors of the Eurogam project. Eurogam I became operational in 1992 at Daresbury, and Eurogam II became operational in 1994 at Strasbourg. The detector arrays of Eurogam culminated in the EUROBALL detector array (which became operational in 1996). Twin was made
OBE in 1991 In 2004 he was awarded, jointly with Bent Herskind, the
European Physical Society's
Lise Meitner Prize. ==Selected publications==