PhD student, occasional busker and bartender, surprisingly adequate Kate Bush imitator.
Hello! You've found the lovingly HTML'ed homepage of me, Alex Thorne.
I was a Margaret Campbell Scott scholar at the University of Edinburgh, where I will graduate in July 2026 with an integrated master's degree (MPhys) in Theoretical Physics. While studying, I was a technical lead at Endeavour, the University's rocketry team, where Stephen Spice and I co-managed the design and manufacture of Wee Maxwell, the first student-made bipropellant engine in Scotland to fire successfully! I was also (at various times) email writer, secretary and president of the Edinburgh University Bad Film Society. One particularly eventful fortnight in 2024, my roles in both these societies required me to find some novel uses for an old shopping trolley.
I'm about to start a PhD in Mathematical Physics, also at Edinburgh, supervised by Dr. Latham Boyle and funded by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Algebra, Geometry and Quantum Fields (AGQ CDT). My research interests include the standard model of particle physics, early Universe cosmology, mathematical quasicrystals (e.g., the Penrose tiling), exceptional objects (e.g., the E8 Lie group) and quantum information theory.
I own a guitar and am not afraid to use it. At one point in my life, I held a Camden Town busking licence. I'm also a keen amateur writer, and once had a contribution accepted by the online collaborative fiction project The SCP Foundation. No, you are not getting a link to that one. I also love running and climbing; have you ever met a physicist who doesn't?