Physicist whose silicon devices helped to unlock the secrets of the earliest fractions of a second of our universe

The physicist Ian Shipsey, who has died suddenly aged 65, developed silicon devices of exquisite precision to study the debris from subatomic particle collisions and light from the edge of the universe. Using these devices, he played a major role in unlocking the secrets of the earliest fractions of a second of our universe.

Silicon devices also played a vital part in his everyday life. Rendered profoundly deaf after treatment for leukaemia in 1989, he received a cochlear implant 12 years later that allowed him to develop strategies to overcome this disability, to the extent that it often went unnoticed to interlocutors.