The Infancy of Particle Accelerators Life and Work of Rolf Wideröe Compiled and Edited by Pedro Waloschek I Rolf Wideröe II The Infancy of Particle Accelerators Life and Work of Rolf Wideröe Compiled and Edited by Pedro Waloschek vieweg & DESY III First published by Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig/ Wiesbaden, 1994, under ISBN 3-528-06586-9 and as DESY-Report 94-039. March 1994, ISSN 0418-9833. In the present PDF-version the photographs were substituted with newly scanned colour versions. The same pictures can be found with higher resolution in www.waloschek.de. Title of the German original edition: ‘Als die Teilchen laufen lernten – Leben und Werk des Rolf Wideröe’ This English translation is an updated and improved version of the German original edition. Translated by Karen Waloschek, London. All rights reserved © Pedro Waloschek, 2002 Typesetting and layout by Pedro Waloschek IV Contents: List of Boxes .............................................................................. VI List of Figures............................................................................ VI Introduction by Pedro Waloschek ..................................................... 1 Wideröe on Wideröe: 1 Family, Youth and Lord Rutherford ................................. 9 2 Karlsruhe – the Ray-Transformer ................................... 17 3 Aachen – the First Operational Linac ............................. 27 4 Cyclotrons and Other Developments.............................. 39 5 Relays are Interesting Too .............................................. 48 6 Induction from Illinois .................................................... 59 7 The Hamburg-Betatron ................................................... 70 8 The Invention of the Storage Ring ................................. 81 9 Oslo – the Theory of the Synchrotron ............................ 95 10 Baden – Betatrons for BBC .......................................... 102 11 Turin – the Beta-Synchrotron ....................................... 116 12 ETH Zurich, CERN and DESY ..................................... 121 13 How Radiation Kills Cells – the Two-Components-Theory ......................... 130 14 Some Retrospectives and Dreams ................................ 143 Chronological Survey ............................................................. 151 References ................................................................................ 170 Appendix.................................................................................. 177 1 The Storage Ring Patent ............................................... 179 2 The Synchrotron Patent................................................. 183 Index ....................................................................................... 193 V List of Boxes: 1: Sir Ernest, Lord Rutherford of Nelson .................................. 14 2: Cyclotrons und Synchrocyclotrons ....................................... 42 3: About Drift-Tubes and Waveguides ...................................... 44 4: Roald Tangen, Kerst and Wideröe ........................................ 60 5: The Many Names of the Betatrons ........................................ 66 6: About Max Steenbeck ............................................................ 67 7: The War of the Patents ........................................................... 68 8: The Mysterious Death-Rays .................................................. 76 9: Betatrons in Germany ............................................................ 79 10: Vacuum in Storage Rings ...................................................... 92 11: The Experts’ Report ............................................................... 96 12: Betatrons and Industry ......................................................... 110 13: BBC-Betatrons from 1949 to 1986...................................... 114 14: The Success of the Megavolt Therapy ................................ 140 15: Wideröe’s Life at a Glance .................................................. 146 16: Wideröe’s Memberships ...................................................... 149 List of Figures: 1.1: Ragnhild and Rolf Wideröe 1992 ............................................ 8 1.2: Rolf Wideröe 18 years old ..................................................... 15 2.1: First sketch of the ray-transformer ........................................ 22 2.2: Explanation of the ray-transformer........................................ 22 3.1: Wideröe’s working area in Aachen ....................................... 28 3.2: The ray-transformer of Aachen.............................................. 31 3.3: Test set-up for the ray-transformer ........................................ 31 3.4: The linac proposed by Gustav Ising ...................................... 32 3.5: Principle of the drift-tubes following Wideröe ..................... 34 3.6: Wideröe’s first accelerator tube ............................................. 35 3.7: Wideröe in front of a model of his linac ............................... 38 4.1: Sketch of the first cyclotron of Lawrence ............................. 40 4.2: Rests of the first cyclotron of Lawrence................................ 40 4.3: Different types of resonators.................................................. 45 4.4: The iris-loaded wave guide .................................................... 45 VI 5.1: Scheme of Wideröe’s relay .................................................... 53 5.2: A photograph of Wideröe’s relay .......................................... 53 5.3: Ragnhild Wideröe in the 1930th ........................................... 56 5.4: Rolf Wideröe in the 1930th ................................................... 56 6.1: Scheme of Slepian’s betatron idea ........................................ 63 7.1: A drawing of the 15-MeV-betatron in Hamburg .................. 72 7.2: A photograph of the 15-MeV-betatron in Hamburg ............. 72 7.3: Pole pieces and field distribution in the betatron.................. 73 7.4: The vacuum chamber of the Hamburg betatron.................... 73 7.5: Wolfgang Paul and Rolf Wideröe 1992 ................................ 78 8.1: A photograph of the AdA storage ring .................................. 89 8.2: Scheme of the storage rings of O´Neill ................................. 90 10.1: Scheme of a BBC-betatron .................................................. 105 10.2: The first BBC-betatron in construction ............................... 105 10.3: Principle of the two-beam betatron ..................................... 106 10.4: Betatron used for medical purposes .................................... 106 10.5: Scheme of the stereo two-beam betatron ............................ 107 10.6: Stereo two-beam betatron for material tests ........................ 107 11.1: The ‘accelerating tube’ of the Turin-synchrotron ............... 116 11.2: Scheme of the Turin-synchrotron ........................................ 118 12.1: A view of the tunnel of the CERN-PS ................................. 125 12.2: Start of the DESY synchrotron, with Rolf Wideröe ........... 125 12.3: Rolf Wideröe and Gus Voss in the HERA-tunnel............... 129 13.1: Ionization effects of different radiations ............................. 134 13.2: Surviving cells after irradiation ........................................... 137 VII VIII Introduction by Pedro Waloschek The following autobiographical account of Rolf Wideröe’s life and work is based on manuscripts and letters written by himself, most of them especially for this report. Data from audio and video recordings with his illustrations and from my notes taken during a series of meetings between the two of us were also included. Rolf Wideröe gave me access to many of his publications and to other documents from which I have extracted further information. I have compiled, edited and, where necessary, put the texts in chronological order. These were then corrected and supplemented by Rolf Wideröe during the course of several readings. The English translation was also checked by Wideröe and we were able to add some improvements and corrections. This account there- fore stands as an authorised biography and is written in the first person. Mrs. Wideröe’s accurate memory was of great assistance. The emphasis has been on Rolf Wideröe’s life story and the first developments which led to modern particle accelerators. Techni- cal and scientific comments have been kept as comprehensive and concise as possible. For further details the reader is referred to the many publications quoted in the text and to the extensive literature available, such as the beautiful books ‘The Particle Explosion’ by Frank Close, Michael Marten and Christine Sutton [Cl87] and ‘From X-Rays to Quarks, Modern Physicists and their Discover- ies’ by Emilio Segrè [Se80], as well as the classic textbook ‘Particle Accelerators’ by Stan Livingston and John Blewett [Li62] which all contain a great deal of historical information. An important foundation for this report was provided by Wideröe’s extensive notes of a 1983 interview with the two Norwegian physicists Finn Aaserud and Jan Vaagen in Oslo. The article they wrote on him appeared in the magazine ‘Naturen’ 1 [Aa83]. Wideröe kept a record of the question and answer session as well as of several observations made by his friends Olav Aspelund and Olav Netteland who were also present (Gunnar Thoresan, the First Curator of the Technical Museum in Oslo was also at the interview). In 1991 Wideröe freely translated