Aberdare-born Dr Lyn Evans CBE graduated from the University with a first class degree in Physics in 1966, and was awarded his PhD from Swansea in 1970. He received an Honorary Fellowship from the University in 2002.

Dr Evans returned to Swansea to give a lecture to the South Wales branch of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) about the world's most powerful man-made particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

On 10 September 2008, CERN - the European Organisation for Nuclear Research -made the first attempts to circulate proton particles around the entire 27km-circumference Collider, which has been built over 10 years at a cost of several billion pounds.

The project seeks answer to some of the deepest mysteries of the origins and workings of our universe, by searching for evidence for dark matter, extra dimensions, supersymmetry and the mechanism that gives mass to some particles but not others.

In his lecture, Dr Evans described some of the features of the machine's design as well as providing an update on the project.

Speaking prior to the lecture, Professor Graham Shore, Deputy Head of the School of Physical Sciences at Swansea University, said "The LHC experiment is widely held to be one of the most significant projects in modern science. It has justifiably attracted a great deal of international attention.

"We are delighted that one of Swansea's most distinguished alumni, Lyn Evans, is returning to the University to talk about this exciting project."

For more information about the LHC project, visit CERN's website at http://www.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam. For more information about Swansea University's Physics Department visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk/physics/.