Touschek advanced the theoretical analysis of the stability of particle orbits and they discussed together the possibility of colliding stored electrons and positrons head-on. Touschek regarded this is an obvious idea impossible to patent but Widerøe obtained a secret patent in 1943, retrospectively recognised in 1953.

F Amman

"He was the initiator, but also the element of continuity during the ten golden years of the Laboratories (of Frascati) , the person that had a great idea and allowed it to be materialized by others; his scientific and human qualities, I believe, were decisive in maintaining the connections which have been essential in achieving success"

In February 1947, Touschek arrived in Glasgow University as a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research fellow where he worked on the development of the first electron synchrotron in Europe, a 350 MeV project then being initiated by Professor Philip Dee. He published an analysis of the synchrotron properties in 1949 as well as his PhD thesis on correlations between electrons and nuclei. He was then promoted to lecturer and worked on a range of theoretical, experimental and accelerator questions.

By the time, he moved to Rome in December 1952 to help start accelerator technology in accelerator physics, he was arguably the world leader on all aspects of circular electron accelerators.

At a seminar in Frascati on 7 March 1960, he proposed the he idea of a collider: a particle accelerator where a particle and its antiparticle circulate the same orbit in opposite direction. This concept is at the base of all present-day very high energy particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider. His prototype device the AdA (annello di accumulazione) ran successfully on 27 February 1961. His invention revolutionised the field of particle physics.