PEOPLE New director at Cornell... MauryTigner, who two decades ago was the driving force behind the half-mile-circumfer­ ence electron accelerator at Cornell, has been named next director of Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies (LNS).Tigner will succeed Karl Berkelman, who steps down on 30 June. LNS operates the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. Tigner was professor of physics at Cornell from 1977 to 1994 and in his final year was named the first holder of the Hans A Bethe Pierre-Etienne Bisch (left), Prefet of the Chair in Physics, a post that a serious illness departement de I'Ain, France, with CERN forced him to relinquish. In the intervening director-general Luciano Maiani. Much of years, as professor emeritus, he has edited a CERN, and most of the footprint of its handbook on accelerator physics and engi­ 27 km LEP/LHC tunnel, lies inside Ain. As a neering {CERN Courier December 1999 p38), special contribution to CERN, the and with his wife has made long visits to departement has financed an assembly and Beijing as a visiting scientist at the Institute of storage area adjacent to the construction High Energy Physics as well as a senior site for the new LHC collider. adviser to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Maury Tigner has been named next director of Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. MEETINGS gamma-gamma and gamma-electron quarks and leptons; standard model collisions, and accelerator, interaction region analyses; and effects from physics beyond the The 2nd workshop on Electronic (such as lasers and optical systems) and standard model.The event will be organized Publishing - New Schemes for Electronic detector issues.The chairmen for the meeting by A Buras (TU-Munich). See "http://www. Publishing in Physics will be held at CERN are R Heuer (University of Hamburg/DESY) desy.de/desy-th/workshop.OO/index.html". on 31 March. Further information is available and VTelnov (Budker INP/DESY). For details, from Anita Olofsson at CERN, tel. +41 22 767 e-mail "[email protected]". See also A Euro Summer School on Exotic Beams 2431, e-mail "[email protected]". See "http://www.desy.de/~gg2000". (within the framework of High-Level Scientific also "http://documents.cern.ch/AGE/ Conferences of the EU) will take place on 31 fullAgenda.php3?ida=a99231#s5". A workshop entitled CP Violation and Rare August - 8 September in Leuven, Belgium. For Processes: Standard Model and Beyond more details, contact Mark Huyse, IKS, An International Workshop on High will be held at DESY, Hamburg, on 26-29 Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Energy Photon Colliders will be held at September. It will cover topics on CP violation Belgium, tel. +32 16 327272, fax +32 16 327 DESY, Hamburg, on 14-17 June.The event will in K, B and lepton sectors; rare decays and 985, e-mail "[email protected]. cover physics opportunities at high-energy scattering processes; mass matrices for ac.be". LETTERS electrochemical phenomena were of the "Einstein and Newton were always going to be highest order, but even more important was one and two, but what was surprising about CERN Courier welcomes feedback but his epoch-making concept of fields. the Top 10 was that there were seven out-and- reserves the right to edit letters. Please e-mail Much, if not most, of 19th- and out theorists." "[email protected]". 20th-century physics was based on this The Physics World article from which theTop concept (as were the contributions of seven 10 was taken (December 1999 pp7-13) also Famous physicists physicists in the list). reveals that Einstein's top three physicists For several reasons I was very surprised to Thus I must take exception to Physics were Newton (2nd in the Physics World poll), read the list of the "Top 10 physicists of all World's rating. Faraday and Maxwell (3rd). time" (January/February pll). Tom Ypsilantis, Bologna. Peter Rodgers, editor, Physics World. I was surprised, initially, by the almost total Physics World replies: exclusion of experimentalists (except for Michael Faraday just missed the Top 10, fin­ Cosmic rays Ernest Rutherford), but primarily for the ishing in joint 11th place with Ludwig Articles in the October 1999 issue of CERN exclusion of Micheal Faraday. Boltzmann and Max Planck. Like DrYpsilantis I Courier that discussed prospects for cosmic- Faraday's experimental contributions in the was surprised by the lack of experimenters in ray studies using existing LEP detectors areas of electromagnetic, optical and theTop 10. Indeed, I told the BBC Web site: claimed to have seen "intriguing" events t> 40 CERN Courier March 2000 PEOPLE ...and new directors for DESY AWARDS The Administrative Council of the German Wolf prize Electron Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg has extended the size of the DESY directorate. The The prestigious Wolf prize for physics will be board of directors now has six members shared this year by Raymond Davis of instead of five. Pennsylvania and Masatoshi Koshiba ofTokyo. The new director is in charge of research "Their observations of the elusive neutrinos with synchrotron radiation, which in the past of astrophysical origin have opened a new years has developed to become a second window of opportunity for the study of astro­ important research field along with elemen­ nomical objects, such as the Sun and tary particle physics. exploding stars, and the study of fundamental Jochen R Schneider was nominated the properties of matter," the jury stated. new director of this field, a position that he Davis pioneered solar neutrino measure­ assumed on 1 January. ments by the radiochemical method, while The administrative council also nominated Koshiba led the design and construction of Robert Klanner as DESY research director. He the versatile Kamiokande neutrino detectors will be in charge of elementary particle in Japan.The $100 000 prizes will be pre­ physics, which was the initial major research sented at the Israeli Knesset on 21 May. field of DESY. He succeeds Albrecht Wagner, who becomes head of the DESY directorate Dennis Skopik, former director of the Robert Klanner - new DESY research director. (director-general). Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory, Saskatoon, becomes deputy associate direc­ Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study tor of physics at the Jefferson Laboratory, recently hosted a meeting entitled Symmetry Newport News, Virginia, where Larry Cardman Lost and Found to mark Stephen Adler's is associate director for physics. 60th birthday. Organized by Ed Witten and Frank Wilczek, the event focused on themes CERN physicist Emanuele Quercigh has connected with Adler's pioneering work on been awarded the Gold Medal of the Faculty chiral symmetry and field theory anomalies, of Mathematics and Physics of Comenius which revived interest in field theory in the University, Bratislava, and the Slovak Academy late 1960s and opened the door to what of Sciences' Diorys llkovic Gold Honour Medal would become today's Standard Model and for Achievements in Physics. Quercigh plays a later developments. Stephen Adler is seen leading role in heavy-ion experiments at here (right) with William Bardeen, who CERN, in which Slovak physicists have them­ spoke on "Anomalies in quantum field selves made important contributions. In the theory". (Kirk McDonald.) search for new forms of nuclear matter, these studies have provided evidence for the sub­ stantially increased production of strange "with the highest muon density ever seen" - remarkable progress in this direction, so that particles (up to 15 times as many omega- five "spectacular" unexplained events with today's main obstacle is not the lack of high- minus particles) in lead-lead collisions. some 150 muons each. quality data but the lack of reliable Adding a few more drift chambers, the simulations of cosmic-ray interactions with "muon pattern would give a window on the the atmosphere. energy and composition of the primary LEP detectors would face the same problem cosmic-ray particles", "boosting studies...in and would be limited to the measurement of the knee region (near 1015 eV)". only the muon component of cosmic air In high-energy cosmic-ray events, three key showers. parameters are unknown: the primary energy, An experiment in the Baksan Valley in the the primary composition and the height of the Russian Caucasus has been taking cosmic- initial interaction in the atmosphere. ray muon data for some eight years under Therefore, simultaneous measurements of similar conditions. Seven events have more several distinct physical quantities are needed than 3500 muons each - and no anomalies to disentangle these parameters. are claimed! The cosmic-ray community has made Friedrich Dydak, CERN. Emanuele Quercigh - Slovak awards. CERN Courier March 2000 41 PEOPLE postwar French theoretical physics, with the Louis Michel 1923-99 creation of the Ecole Polytechnique theory centre, and he served on many committees, Eminent French theorist Louis Michel died in sequently bore additional fruit with the dis­ including a term as president of the French December. Born in Roanne, France, he stud­ covery of the tau lepton in 1975. Physical Society and almost 20 years with ied at the Ecole Polytechnique before carrying Other landmarks of Michel's work include various CNRS boards, including the scientific out research at Manchester, in the fledgling his framework for handling the analysis of council. CERN Theory Group at Copenhagen and at polarized particles and the 1959 Michel was a member of key international Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation describ­ scientific collaborations, and his numerous before returning to France, where he held ing relativistic spin precession in an students in turn went on to fulfil major roles. posts at Lille, Paris, the Ecole Polytechnique, electromagnetic field. His understanding of physics and his mastery and finally the Institut des Hautes Etudes In the 1960s his counsel in the underlying of mathematics were much in demand for Scientifiques at Bures-sur-Yvette.