Julian James Bunn was born on a windswept day in Saltburn, Yorkshire in April 1959. After a spell in short trousers, then longer ones, he graduated in 1981 from the University of Manchester with a degree in Physics. Chancing his arm further resulted, three years later, in a Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics from the University of Sheffield. On the strength of this he was offered a Research Associate position with the Max Planck Institute for High Energy Physics in Munich, which sent him to CERN on detachment. Moving to the UA1 experiment in 1984 with a position at the Rutherford Laboratory, he arrived just in time to sit in the Control Room on calorimeter shift as the first W particles were collected. Flushed with euphoria, and a threatened return to Rutherford Lab, he joined the Aleph experiment at LEP, on a fixed term CERN contract, where he helped develop the first version of the reconstruction program. Realising that computing seemed to be a far less competetive field than particle physics, he took a job in the User Support Group of the CERN Computing and Networking Division. After trouncing argumentative users for a couple of years, he took over the running of the Digital machines in the Computer Centre, and acted as liaison between CERN and DEC. During this time he ate a lot of expensive lunches and paid for none of them. In 1994 he took over the project management of a rather complicated scientific visualisation package called PAW. Following this, he was computing coordinator between the CMS experiment, and CN Division. He then took special paid leave in Caltech, California, where he was Co-PI on the GIOD project, looking at the use of object databases and networks to solve potential LHC computing needs.
Latterly, JJB has taken up a post as Senior Scientist with Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research, and lives in Pasadena with his wife Sarah and freshly-baked Bunn, Isabella!
JJB has three lovely daughters:
Georgina and
Check out Sarah Parah's Web Page (with pointers to delicious recipes we have "created" together)!
Julian Bunn, December 1999
