News & Events

It is with deep sorrow that we inform you about the passing yesterday of Mary K Gaillard.

She was a world-leading scientist and a fiery and tireless fighter for gender and minority progress in science. She also was a human being of enormous stature, an inspiring role model.

In the words of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado,  "era, en el buen sentido de la palabra, buena".

 Mary K and collaborators contributed history landmarks to science, establishing the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and advancing our understanding of Nature.  Her major contributions to science include the prediction of the charm quark mass, the understanding of the lightness of the up, down and strange which was crucial in establishing the confinement of the strong force, the prediction of three-jet events in e+e- collisions as a key method to identify gluons, the determination of the spin of the gluon, or the first computation of Higgs decay into two photon, which was instrumental in the first observation of the Higgs particle.

She was severely  gender-discriminated during her career, but she always went ahead guided by her passion for physics and her support to others. It was remarkable that she consistently  managed to preserve a  relentless sense of humour in front of the nonsensical situations and comments she had to stand. When asked once in a public event for advice to young female physicists today on how to navigate those waters she answered: " you just need to love physics enough, for it to be a true passion for you, and keep dismissing all that and just do it,  disregard all that nonsense and go ahead with your research".

For the Invisibles community in particular, she has been an inspiring model of scientific excellence and humanity. She has been the Berkeley PI of our European networks since over a decade: the FP7 Invisibles, the Horizon 2020 InvisiblesPlus, the H2020 Elusives, the H2020 HIDDeN and the running Horizon Europe Programme ASYMMETRY. 

We will deeply miss her but she will keep inspiring and guiding us ahead.