Fellowships for US Lab Directors

CCEMarFACES33-38 14/2/06 12:21 Page 33 FACES AND PLACES AWARDS Fellowships for US lab directors Two associate directors of US particle-physics laboratories were among the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to receive awards as new fellows at the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting in St Louis, Missouri, on 18 February. They join other leading figures in US particle physics and related fields that were elected as new fellows by the AAAS Council during 2005. Swapan Chattopadhyay, associate director for accelerators at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), was awarded the distinction of fellow for his “fundamental contributions to accelerator science, including phase-space cooling, innovative collider designs and pioneering Swapan Chattopadhyay, left, and Samuel Aronson, received AAAS fellowships in February. femto-sources, and for mentoring accelerator scientists at facilities worldwide, especially in Accelerator Department, the Physics professor at the University of Chicago, was developing countries”. He is responsible for Department, the Superconducting Magnet honoured “for his exceptional research in the all aspects of Jefferson Lab’s accelerator and Division, the Instrumentation Division and the evolution of the earliest universe, explaining Free-Electron Laser (FEL) programmes, Center for Accelerator Physics. its significance to the public, and for including R&D and operations, maintenance Neil V Baggett, advisor for planning and co-founding the interdisciplinary field of and upgrades of the Continuous Electron communication in the high-energy physics particle physics and cosmology”. Beam Accelerator Facility and the FEL. programme of the Office of Science of the US Lastly, C W Francis Everitt, research professor Samuel Aronson, associate laboratory Department of Energy, was also elected as a at the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory director for high-energy and nuclear physics fellow. He receives the honour “for significant of Stanford University also became a AAAS (HENP) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, achievements in fundamental physics fellow. Everitt is principal investigator for Gravity became a fellow for his “leadership in the research and for important contributions to Probe B, the NASA satellite launched in April science and management of experimental the research and educational programmes of 2004 that uses four ultra-precise gyroscopes to particle physics, especially heavy-ion physics the US Department of Energy”. make precise measurements of the geodetic at Brookhaven National Laboratory”. The HENP In cosmology and astroparticle physics, effect and the frame-dragging effect predicted directorate encompasses the Collider- Michael Turner, astronomy and astrophysics by the general theory of relativity. Honorary degree for CERN’s Fabio Sauli The celebrations of the 30th anniversary of Sauli’s doctoral student in the 1970s, and the Université de Haute Alsace in Mulhouse in participated in developing high-accuracy drift October 2005 culminated in a ceremony to chambers. The most recent development in award CERN’s Fabio Sauli the title of Doctor the group, the Gas Electron Multiplier, has Honoris Causa. The distinction, presented by been adopted by experiments both at CERN Guy Schultz, university president, honours and worldwide, owing to its exceptional Sauli’s lifelong activity in the development of performance with extreme particle fluxes. advanced detectors for particle physics. Having reached the CERN age limit, Sauli Under Sauli’s direction, CERN’s Gas retires this month, but intends to continue his Detectors Development group – which was scientific work in association with INFN- founded and led for many years by Georges Trieste, contributing to the design of CERN’s Fabio Sauli, left, receiving the title of Charpak – has continued to contribute many experiments making use of novel Doctor Honoris Causa from Guy Schultz, innovations to the field and to the training of a technologies, and lecturing on advanced president of the Université de Haute Alsace. generation of scientists. Schultz himself was instrumentation at various universities. (Courtesy Université de Haute Alsace.) CERN Courier March 2006 33 CCEMarFACES33-38 14/2/06 12:21 Page 34 FACES AND PLACES CELEBRATION La Sapienza honours Bernardini’s 75 years… Carlo Bernardini, one of the physicists who built Another testimonial was given by Giuseppe Di the first electron–positron storage ring, AdA in Giugno, who recalled the historic night when 1960, celebrated his 75th birthday at a electrons were first accumulated in AdA. symposium held in his honour at the University The afternoon session on science and society of Rome La Sapienza. A description of the was chaired by Tullio de Mauro, former Minister making of AdA and its first operation was of Education and well known linguistic scholar, reported in Il Nuovo Cimento on 19 December who illustrated Bernardini’s activity as Senator 1960 in an article entitled “The Frascati Storage of the Italian parliament and his tenure as dean Ring”, by Bernardini, Gianfranco Corazza, of science at La Sapienza University. The Giorgio Ghigo and Bruno Touschek. Forty-five session also emphasized Bernardini’s years later, Bernardini retired from teaching and participation in the peace movement, Unione his friends and colleagues paid homage to his Scienziati Italiani per il Disarmo, and his long and multifaceted career. contribution to public awareness of science as The symposium, held on 5 December 2005, Carlo Bernardini, who celebrated his 75th director of the science magazine, Sapere. contained both a physics and technology birthday at a symposium held in his honour. Luciano Maiani, former director-general of session, including talks by Nicola Cabibbo, CERN, chaired the final session, in which further Emilio Picasso and Ugo Amaldi, as well as a latest Belle and BaBar results, mentioning testimonials were given by Bernardini’s students science and society session. Cabibbo also the Large Electron–Positron collider (LEP) and colleagues, among them Michelangelo described the long list of physics results to achievements in precision physics. Picasso de Maria, who noticed the extraordinary have come out of electron–positron storage recalled the early days of LEP construction, capacity of Bernardini to communicate with rings, from the early days of the first paper by including the search for the site and the final friends and antagonists alike. The symposium Cabibbo and Raul Gatto on physics at decision. Amaldi focused on the importance of was closed by Giorgio Salvini, former president electron–positron accelerators, published in accelerators in medicine, noting the existence of the Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and Physical Review Letters in March 1960, to the of nearly 9000 such accelerators in the world. director of Frascati when AdA was built. …and Princeton celebrates Polyakov’s 60th A special symposium was held at Princeton Zamolodchikov, has classic status; it became University on 5–6 November 2005 to honour a Bible for string theorists. He was awarded the Alexander Polyakov, a leading figure in Dirac Medal in 1986, and the Lorentz Medal in theoretical high-energy physics. Polyakov 1994 for his work in quantum field theory, received his Masters degree from Moscow especially the theory of critical phenomena. Institute of Physics and Technology and his PhD In the past decade Polyakov’s results from the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics (along with those of Juan Maldacena and in Chernogolovka, where he stayed until 1989, Edward Witten) played a crucial role in the before moving to Princeton University in 1990. emergence of the so-called holographic The first of Polyakov’s papers, “Spontaneous From left to right: Alexander Polyakov, descriptions of quantum chromodynamics. symmetry breaking of strong interaction and Mikhail Shifman and Paul Wiegmann at the Within this approach the theory of quarks and absence of massless particles”, was written symposium held in Polyakov’s honour. gluons is presented as a limiting 4D theory at with Alexander Migdal in early 1964, before the boundary of the 5D bulk, which is Peter Higgs’ famous papers were published. The numerous developments with a profound governed by a certain gravity model (AdS/CFT two theorists, both 19 at the time, had impact on high-energy physics: the Migdal– correspondence and its modifications). This essentially discovered what later became Polyakov conformal bootstrap, ’t Hooft– line of research is currently experiencing an known as the Higgs mechanism. Owing to Polyakov monopoles, Belavin–Polyakov– explosive development. several unfortunate circumstances, this Migdal– Schwarz–Tyupkin instantons, Polyakov’s Polyakov’s other interests include theory of Polyakov paper was published in the Journal of Liouville theory and Polyakov strings. His 1984 turbulence and string cosmology. He has Experimental and Theoretical Physics only in paper “Infinite conformal symmetry in two- been a key contributor to Burgers turbulence, 1966, two years after it had been completed. dimensional quantum field theory”, with which is now a central interest for much of the Polyakov has since been instrumental in Alexander Belavin and Alexander hydrodynamics community. 34 CERN Courier March 2006 CCEMarFACES33-38 14/2/06 12:22 Page 35 FACES AND PLACES OUTREACH Science on Stage ’05 Record webcast unites illuminates physics physicists worldwide all 12 hours of programming, an Italian channel also provided coverage,

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