Jesuit physicist named rector | Press Releases

The Rev. Timothy Toohig, S.J., a physicist who is associate director of the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, has been named rector of the Fairfield Jesuit Community by the Rev. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

Father Toohig was deputy associate director for the Superconducting Supercollider Conventional Construction Division from 1989 until 1994 when Congress cut off funding for the $11 billion Supercollider, a giant atom smasher that would have attempted to recreate the conditions of the universe after the Big Bang.

He has continued his association with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory which he began in 1970, conducting research on neutrinos which is invisible matter created by the fusion processes of the sun and which scientists believe may compose 90 percent of the universe.

Following his discharge from the Army Air Force in 1947 with the rank of sergeant, Father Toohig studied physics at Boston College. After two years of graduate studies in optics at the University of Rochester where he received a master of science degree, he entered the Society of Jesus in Lenox, Mass. He earned licentiates in philosophy from Weston College and sacred theology from Woodstock College. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1965.