PEOPLE

AWARDS Dirac prize goes to interdisciplinary scientist

The Dirac medal and prize this computation in the brain could be. year goes to Prof. John J Hopfield More recently, Hopfield has found of Princeton, who has made impor­ an entirely different organizing prin­ tant contributions in an ciple in olfaction and demonstrated impressively broad.spectrum of a new principle in which neural scientific subjects. His special and function can take advantage of the rare gift is his ability to cross the temporal structure of the "spiking" interdisciplinary boundary to interneural communication. discover new questions and pro­ The award, from the Abdus Salam pose answers that uncover the International Centre forTheoretical conceptual structure behind the Physics in Trieste, Italy, is intended experimental facts. "to honour and encourage high-level His early research on light emit­ research in the fields of physics and ting diodes has been recognized mathematics" and usually reflects by the award of the American the purely theoretical orientation of Physical Society's Buckley prize for the centre's mainstream research. condensed matter physics. In John J Hopfield of Princeton - ICTP Dirac medal winner. Commenting on the award, Hopfield biology he understood the need said: "I am pleased that the rather for and proposed the "proof-reading" principle in equilibrium processes. His famous model of different kind of theory which needs to be by which the replication mechanism manages neural processing demonstrated how qualita­ done in connection with biology could be to achieve accuracy far beyond that possible tively different computation in a computer and recognized by such a community of theorists."

Toshi-Aki Shibata Prizes awarded at French conference of Tokyo's Institute of Technology At the biennial conference of the French microlensing effect and searching for dark received this year's Physical Society (SFP), which was held in compact halo objects. Philipp Franz von Strasbourg at the beginning of July, awards The Joliot-Curie prize, which is given bienni­ Siebold award from were given to physicists for their work. ally to a particle physicist, was awarded to the Federal The Ricard prize for "very original work in Yannis Karyotakis from Annecy. He was a German govern­ physics" was given to Yves Déclais, director of member of the L3 experiment at CERN and is ment. This is given the Institut de Physique Nucléaire of Lyon. He now the technical coordinator of the BaBar annually to a young was head of the neutrino oscillation search experiment at SLAC, recently observing for the Japanese (aged under 50 years) who has experiment located close to the CHOOZ first time CP violation in the system of the contributed significantly to Japanese- nuclear plant, in the French Ardennes.This beauty . German cultural and social exchange. experiment eliminated the possibility that the The Gentner-Kastler prize is jointly given by Shibata has participated in various oscillation between electronic and muon the SFP and the German DPG (Deutsche experiments at CERN from 1982 as a neutrinos is the source of the atmospheric Physikalische Gesellschaft) to a physicist who member of the Mainz and Heidelberg neutrino disappearance observed by Kamioka. has made outstanding contributions in their groups, first on low-energy The Robin prize rewards a physicist for field.The prize is given to a French physicist antiproton-proton scattering at CERN's his/her whole career. It was given this time to one year and a German physicist the next. LEAR low-energy antiproton ring, and then Jacques Haissinski from Orsay, a pioneer of This year it was awarded to Konrad in deep-inelastic scattering studies using electron-positron collisions and a former Kleinknecht from Mainz. He was a member of high-energy muon beams at CERN's SPS chairman of CERN's LEP Experiments the famous CDHS neutrino experiment at synchrotron. Returning to Japan, he Committee. CERN and of the Aleph experiment at LEP He is maintained his German connections by Haissinski was also spokesman of the also one of the pioneers of kaon physics, being joining the HERMES collaboration at DESY's CELLO Experiment atDESYand head of the in particular a very active member of the NA31 HERA electron-proton collider in Hamburg. DAPNIA service at Saclay. He is currently co- and NA48 experiments at CERN which resulted He is pictured receiving the award from spokesman of the EROS Experiment, in the discovery and measurement of direct CP Federal German president Johannes Rau. investigating galactic structures through the violation in kaon decays.

CERN Courier October 2001 39 PEOPLE

MEETINGS Diamond ring project has a new leader

Gerhard Materlik has been appointed chief executive officer for the multinational DIA­ MOND synchrotron radiation ring project at the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (CERN Courier May 2000 p7). He transfers from DESY in Hamburg, where Jack Steinberger, 1988 Nobel prizewinner, addressing a group of eager listeners at the 51st he has been an associate director of the annual meeting of Nobel laureates, which was held in Lindau, . HASYLAB synchrotron radiation laboratory. Since 1995 he has been coordinating the X- The 51st Annual Meeting of Nobel ments and prospects in ; Ray Free-Electron Laser Project at DESY Laureates, the seventeenth dedicated to fundamental physics from ground and space; (CERN Courier July 2000). physics, was held in Lindau, Germany, at the extrasolar planets, and future perspectives at The building of the new DIAMOND synchro­ end of June. More than 600 students and ESO, CERN and ESA. tron, in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, young researchers, not only from Europe but Review speakers include R Battiston, P de was announced in 1998, and the French also from the US and India, came for the Bernardis, C Cesarsky, K Danzmann, J Ellis, government joined the project during the opportunity to meet 18 Nobel laureates. F Gianotti, F Halzen, G Hasinger, P Hernandez, following year. Following lectures and debating on applica­ B Leibundgut, P Madau, L Maiani, M. Mayor, tions arising from basic research, or on the role Y Mellier, M Perryman, R Plaga, G Raffelt, of physics in the life sciences, the students M Rees, B Schutz, D Southwood, CTao, Uggerhoj retires could discuss the sciences or science careers NTurok, E van den Heuvel, E van Dishoeck, with the prizewinners of their choice. M Vietri, S Vitale, A Watson and LWoltjer. Erik Uggerhoj of Aarhus, Denmark, who cele­ A large number of posters are also antici­ brated his 70th birthday in September, is The ESO-CERN-ESA Symposium on pated, with exciting recent results from the formally retiring. As the dynamic founding Astronomy, Cosmology and Fundamental communities of the three organizations, and director of the Institute for Storage Ring Physics will be held in Garching, Germany, on there will be special poster sessions in the Facilities at Aarhus, he set the institute on a 4-7 March, 2002. programme.There will also be a limited num­ clear path towards innovation and ensured This symposium is the first to be co-organized ber of contributed talks. the worldwide reputation that it now enjoys. and co-sponsored by all three organizations. It More details, registration and accommoda­ He is also a well known figure at CERN, is intended to give a broad overview of scien­ tion forms are available at "http://www.eso. having been the colourful spokesman for a tific areas of interest to the communities of org/gen-fac/meetings/symp2002" or contact possibly unprecedented number of experi­ the three organizations: current observational symposium secretaries Christina Staffer and ments, dating back to 1974. His enthusiasm cosmology, including the microwave back­ Britt Sjoeberg, European Southern for and insight into particle channelling in ground fluctuations and new constraints on Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, crystals has led to numerous fruitful develop­ the cosmological parameters; searches for 85748, Garching bei Muenchen, Germany; ments in beam handling. dark matter; high-energy astrophysics e-mail "[email protected]"; fax +49 89 (sources and backgrounds); recent develop­ 32006 480.

European board The 9th international Conference on Supersymmetry and Unification of The new chairman of the European Physical Fundamental Interactions took place recently Society's High-Energy Particle Physics Board at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, is Michel Spiro of Saclay. He will take over Dubna, near Moscow. This year is the 30th from Giora Mikenbergof theWeizmann anniversary of the discovery of supersymmetry Institute in Israel, who has presided for the (CERN Courier March pl9). past two years over the European board.

40 CERN Courier October 2001 PEOPLE

Change of director at NIKHEF, Amsterdam Maurice Goldhaber

On 22 June a sympo­ 1983 to 1988. In the celebrates 90th sium, Past and Future intervening period he Policies on Facilities was the spokesman for Nuclear and for the New Muon High-Energy Physics Collaboration at Research, held at CERN.This period NIKHEF, Amsterdam, and the results marked the retire­ obtained in muon- ment of Gervan scattering Middelkoop as experiments at CERN director of the were recalled at the laboratory and as symposium by professor of physics Ger van Middelkoop (right), with Jos Dietrich von Harrach at Amsterdam's Vrije Engelen, his successor as director of the (Mainz). Universiteit. Originally NIKHEF laboratory. The other main He's 90 years young - Maurice Goldhaber a nuclear physicist, speakers at the sym­ (centre) with birthday symposium speakers he "converted", as he put it, to particle posium were CERN research director Roger (left to right) Martin Deutsch, William physics. He has played an important role in Cashmore, on "LHC experiments: the science, Marciano, Norman Ramsey and Stuart restructuring particle and nuclear physics in the technology and the organization" and Freedman. the Netherlands and their incorporation under DESY director Albrecht Wagner, on future the NIKHEF umbrella. He has also been very linear colliders, in particularTESLA. Many As mentioned briefly in the September issue influential in CERN-Netherlands relations. friends and colleagues from the Netherlands of CERN Courier (p37), distinguished physicist Before his mandate as director of NIKHEF and abroad attended. On 1 July Ger van Maurice Goldhaber recently celebrated his (1996-2001), he served as director of Middelkoop was succeeded as director of 90th birthday. Befitting one who was the NIKHEF's former nuclear physics division from NIKHEF by Jos Engelen. director of the laboratory during the key period of 1961 of 73, Brookhaven held a major event on 26 July. Goldhaber's milestone physics contribu­ tions go back to studies of the photodisintegration of the deuteron with Chadwick in Cambridge in 1935, and they include work on dipole nuclear vibrations with Teller in 1948, on the classification of nuclear isomers and their interpretation in the shell model, and the classic 1958 experiment with Sunyar that determined the helicity of the neutrino. Later he was influential in promoting experiments to search for proton decay. Speakers at the Brookhaven Birthday Symposium included Norman Ramsey on "My many memories of Maurice"; Stuart Freedman on "Reminiscences of time and reversals"; Martin Deutsch on "Maurice in my past"; William Marciano on "Proton decay"; and The cryogenics barrel for the electromagnetic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at Maurice's brother, Gerson Goldhaber. CERN's LHC collider eases its way through the 1323 m high Faucille pass in the Jura Brookhaven director John Marburger mountains before its final descent to CERN, at the end of a journey that began 46 days announced the award of the first Brookhaven previously in the Kawasaki Heavy Industries factory in Harima, near Kobe, Japan, where the Gertude and Maurice Goldhaber module had been constructed under contract with the US Brookhaven laboratory. The barrel Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships. is 7 m high, 5.8 m wide, 7.2 m long and weighs 100 tonnes. Asked about the secret of his longevity, Goldhaber replied: "I have no time to age."

CERN Courier October 2001 41 PEOPIE

Fred Hoyle 1915-2001

Flamboyant, brilliant, controversial, non­ point of view proposed by Gamow.The name conformist, defiant, multitalented - all of has stuck ever since. these adjectives and more befitted distin­ In the 1950s Hoyle worked with William guished astrophysicist and cosmologist Fred Fowler and the Burbidges on the formation of Hoyle, who died on 20 August aged 85. heavy elements in stars- work that became After undergraduate education at classic and helped to earn the Nobel Prize for Cambridge, Hoyle's formal research career Fowler in 1983. As well as opening up the was interrupted by the Second World War. His mysteries of stellar processes, this work also Cambridge research supervisor departed for had important implications for nuclear another position, but, with his work progress­ physics. ing well, Hoyle did not immediately feel the Fred Hoyle 1915-2001 In 1958 Hoyle became Plumian Professor need to find a replacement. Finding that he of Astronomy at Cambridge (the chair once had to have one for administrative purposes, radar development. Among his colleagues held by Eddington) and went on to head the he turned to Dirac, who rarely took research were Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, and new Cambridge Institute ofTheoretical students but could not resist the "impressive the trio subsequently proposed a "Steady Astronomy, being very influential in maintain­ counterlogic" of a supervisor who didn't want State" theory of creation in which the universe ing and reinforcing Cambridge's worldwide a research student who didn't want a is continually expanding, with fresh matter reputation in astronomy. supervisor. filling the "gaps". Promoting this theory on After bitter wrangling, he resigned from During the Second World War, Hoyle worked, BBC Radio in 1950, Hoyle facetiously coined Cambridge in 1972 but continued to propose like many of his contemporary researchers, on the term "Big Bang" to describe the opposite controversial ideas, including a now unfash- t> Nathan Isgur 1947-2001

As reported briefly in CERN Courier made predictions for new excited hadrons (September p41), Nathan Isgur, a involving gluonic excitation, which still remain distinguished theoretical physicist who made to be confirmed. In another notable collabora­ landmark contributions to the physics of tion, with Chris Llewellyn Smith, the in hadrons, died on 24 July. For several applicability of perturbative QCD to exclusive years he had been fighting multiple myeloma processes was examined in detail. - a rare cancer of the bone marrow. Isgur was Isgur's most celebrated work was with Mark chief scientist of the Thomas Jefferson Wise at Caltech, one of his former undergrad­ Accelerator Facility at Newport News. uate students. Their study of sêmileptonic Born on 25 May 1947 in South Houston, decays of heavy mesons containing charm or Texas, Isgur went to Caltech for his under­ beauty quarks led to the discovery of heavy graduate education, intending to major in symmetry in QCD.This symmetry, which molecular biology. However, exposure to the becomes exact in the limit of infinite quark Feynman Lectures and Feynman himself, and mass, allows an economical description of a poor memory for chemical names led many heavy decays. Two of their Nathan to switch to physics, obtaining a BSc seminal papers each have more than a in 1968. thousand citations on the SPIRES database at He went to for a PhD, obtaining his SLAC.The discovery also led to the award of degree in 1974, and avoiding the war in the 2001 American Physical Society Vietnam. He was appointed a member of the J J to Isgur, Wise and Mikhail Toronto faculty in 1976. Isgur was a superb Voloshin. teacher and lecturer, and many of his In 1990 Isgur moved from Toronto to undergraduate and graduate students now Jefferson Lab to assume leadership of the have faculty positions at US and Canadian Nathan Isgur 1947-2001 theory group. He was attracted both by the universities. opportunity to build a new theory group, and At Toronto he collaborated with Gabriel Karl benchmark for . to guide the experimental programme of the of Guelph on the physics of baryons in the During various leaves at Oxford, Isgur new facility. Simultaneous with his appoint­ quark model.The QCD-improved quark model collaborated with Jack Paton on flux-tube ment at the lab, he joined the faculty at the for baryons was very successful and is still the models for in hadrons.Their model College of William and Mary. >

42 CERN Courier October 2001 PEOPLE

Michael Murtagh 1943-2001

ionable Steady State theory of the universe, Chair of Brookhaven's physics in 1975, associate physicist in and the notion that life and disease on Earth department, Michael Murtagh, 1977 and physicist in 1979, originate from cosmic bombardment. He was a senior physicist whose receiving tenure in 1985. also a prolific writer of science reviews and tenure at the laboratory He worked on neutrino books, and of science fiction, the latter fre­ extended over 34 years, died physics using bubble cham­ quently with his son Geoffrey as co-author. on 12 July at the age of 57. bers, from 1978 to 1986 being In his 1994 autobiography Home is Where Born in Lurgan, Armagh, involved in Experiment 734 at the Wind Blows, Hoyle recounts how he was Northern Ireland, he obtained the Alternate Gradient invited to lunch by Pauli at the 1958 Solvay a BSc at the National Synchrotron, which made meeting. Pauli remarked: "I have just read your University of Ireland, precision measurements of novel The Black Cloud. I think it is much better Maynooth,and an MSc at neutrino elastic scattering than your astronomical work." University College Dublin, He 4SL from electrons and protons, Fred Hoyle was the president of the Royal was a fellow at Dublin's and searching for neutrino Michael Murtagh Astronomical Society from 1971 to 1973 and Institute for Advanced Studies oscillations. 1943-2001 a Foreign Associate of the US National before moving to the US, where From 1991 to 1993, Academy of Sciences. He received prestigious he earned his PhD at Harvard in 1974. Michael Murtagh served as Physics awards in many countries, including the 1997 Murtagh went to Brookhaven in 1970 as a Department Associate Chair, becoming Crafoord prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish guest junior research associate. In 1973 he Deputy Chair in 1993. In 1998 he was named Academy of Sciences, shared with Edwin joined the physics department as a research Physics Chair. He was elected a fellow of the Salpeter of Cornell. He was knighted in 1972. associate. He was named assistant physicist American Physical Society in 1996.

Explore At Jefferson Lab, Isgur initiated a appointed chief scientist of the lab in 1996. programme to strengthen ties with the local When Isgur's illness was diagnosed, he and regional nuclear physics groups.Through started to publish at an accelerated rate. He Q Absorb joint appointments with local universities, he published some 10 papers in refereed was able to double the number of positions in journals in the last four years and left the theory group. Following this success, the about seven preprints in process of o lab extended the approach to joint experimen­ publication. tal appointments. Isgur also instituted a During his last two years at the lab he II Search programme of bridged positions, which established a collaborative lattice QCD effort allowed universities to recruit bright, young with MIT.This involved the addition of two nuclear physicists for positions a few years new staff members to the theory group as before the incumbents retired. well as substantial prototype computing Q) Discover These two programmes resulted in more hardware. than 60 new nuclear physics faculty positions Isgur was extremely committed to assuring in the south-east of the US. He devoted a a bright future for the laboratory's experimen­ ~ Browse great deal of effort to these programmes and tal programme through his constant efforts on was very pleased when they were imitated behalf of the 12 GeV upgrade project and the Digest elsewhere. Isgur was strongly concerned to proposal for a new experimental facility to keep the Jefferson experimental programme search for exotic states involving gluonic focused on key issues and often asked experi­ excitation. Surf mentalists: "What new physics will we learn He was a fellow of both the American from this experiment?" Physical Society and the Royal Society of He was very effective in these interactions , and he received many honours both because of his ability to express new physics in Canada and the US. Link ideas in simple terms.This, as well as his skill Those of us who knew Nathan Isgur have in creating enthusiasm for physics in a non­ lost a very special friend and physics has lost 0) technical audience, was a great asset in a great leader and teacher. meetings with policymakers and funders. Gabriel Karl, Guelph, and John Domingo, O Bookmark In recognition of his contributions, Isgur was Jefferson Lab.

CERN Courier October 2001 43