Swapan Chattopadhyay was born in Calcutta, India, and spent his early childhood years in the Himalayan hill town of Darjeeling. The Indo-China conflict over the disputed territory of Tibet led the family to relocated to the metropolitan mega-city of Calcutta in the early 1960s, where he received high school and university education. He was awarded a high school diploma in 1967 as a National Scholar, graduating from Ballygunge Government High School and was selected a National Science Talent Scholar in a nationwide competition. It was in this high school, that he was the beneficiary of the gifted mentorship of the school's physics teacher, Pramatha Nath Patra.
Chattopadhyay then joined in 1972 the Physics department of the University of Oregon. However, over time, the draw towards the University of California at Berkeley got stronger and he joined the University of California at Berkeley in 1974, as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics. After flirting for two years (1974–1976) with the inimitable Berkeley brand of theoretical particle physics, then known as the "S-matrix" and "Bootstrap" theories of "strong interactions", under tutelage of Prof. Geoffrey Chew, Chattopadhyay was attracted away by accelerator physics dealing with charged particle and light beams. After having completed his PhD, he moved to CERN as an "attaché scientifique" in the Super Proton-Antiproton Synchrotron, contributing to program of stochastic cooling of antiproton beams.[9]
After the period spent at CERN, Chattopadhyay returned to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1984, where he led and defined the accelerator physics of the Advanced Light Source (ALS)[12] and contributed to the conceptual design of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC),[18] pioneered the accelerator physics which underpinned the Berkeley-Stanford asymmetric B-factory (PEP-II) for CP-violation studies, and initiated the Berkeley FEL/Femtosecond X-ray Source and Laser-Plasma Acceleration development. He was a senior scientist, a guest professor, and the founder/director of the Center for Beam Physics at Berkeley,[19] until his move to Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in 2001 as the associate laboratory director for accelerators. At Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, he made critical advancements in microwave superconducting linear accelerators leading the way to current and future grand instruments of science such as the high precision CEBAF and its 12 GeV upgrade for precision research in hadronic physics,[20]Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA to advance neutron sciences and novel materials research, and the current superconducting version of the International Linear Collider, to name a few.
His research at the Cockcroft Institute in UK included development of sources of "ultra-cold" relativistic free electron beams to advance coherent electron diffraction techniques; production of novel coherent and ultra-short pulses of photons (e.g. x-ray FELs); novel acceleration methods; investigation of photonic crystals and metamaterial structures for charged particle acceleration; novel high energy colliders.
While working for Fermilab and Northern Illinois University he contributed to cavity searches for dark matter; investigation of ultra-light dark matter and dark energy via atom interferometry, and the creation of the Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor (MAGIS-100) experiment.[21][22]
Having contributed to the conception, design, construction, commissioning and operation of numerous accelerators for particle and nuclear physics, photon and neutron sciences around the world, with significant research accomplishments in advanced particle and photon beam physics,[23][24] and mentoring scientists around the world, in the developing nations in particular, in accelerator developments as a unifying global force among nations, Swapan Chattopadhyay is a frequently invited speaker and advisor at professional societies and government research agencies, serving on numerous editorial, advisory and review committees throughout the world.
He served as the Vice-Chair, Chair-elect, Chair and Past-Chair of the American Physical Society's Division of Physics of Beams (2007–2011). Chattopadhyay has delivered lectures throughout the world e.g. Saha Memorial Lecture,[25] Homi Bhabha Lecture, Raja Ramanna Memorial Lecture, and Cavendish Lecture among many.
