Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Title PROCEEDINGS OF THE CELEBRATION OF THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LAWRENCE BERKELEY LABORATORY. SYMPOSIUM AND BANQUET SPEECHES Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9772r6gq Author Authors, Various Publication Date 1982-05-07 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California l LBL-13613 ANNIVERSARY 1931-1981 Proceedings of the Celebration of the 50th Anniversary ({JJf the Lawrence Berl{eley Laboratory Symposium and Banquet Speeches October 1981 Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098 LEGAL NOTICE This book was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Govern­ ment nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or im­ plied. or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, pro~ess, or service by trade name, trademark. manuf;'cturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favor­ ing by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors ex­ pressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof. • Printed in the United States of America • Available from National Technical Information Service U.S. Department of Commerce 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield, VA 22161 Price Code: A08 • Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is an equal opportunity employer. • LBL-13613 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory University of California Berkeley, California 94720 50th ANNIVERSARY 1931-1981 Symposium and Banquet Speeches October 3, 1981 This work was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. iii Table of Contents Page Opening Remarks by the Director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, David A. Shirley • v Luis W. Alvarez, "Asteroids and Dinosaurs" •• 3 Bernard M. Oliver, "Innovations in Industrial Microelectronics" • • • • 28 Philip H. Abelson, "Energy and Electronics in a Changing World" ••• • • • • • • 49 Steven Weinberg, "The Ultimate Structure of Matter" •• •••••••••• 66 David E. Kuhl, "From Science Laboratory to Hospital: New Imaging Instruments" 90 John B. Adams, "The Evolution of a Big Science" 102 50th Anniversary Banquet - David A. Shirley, Master of Ceremonies • • • • • 131 Mo11y Lawrence 133 Bob Wilson • 139 Ed Lofgren 143 Bi11 Fretter • 147 Dr. George Keyworth (Keynote Speaker) • 150 David A. Shirley, Summary 160 v Opening Remarks by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Director David A. Shirley 50th ANNIVERSARY 1931-1981 This year, 1981, marks the 50th anniversary of the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The Laboratory was started by Ernest Lawrence in 1931 in an old wooden building on the University of California campus. By late 1932 a research program based on the newly invented cyclotron was well under way, and the Radiation Laboratory, as it was called then, had achieved international recognition. It received further official status in 1936 when the University of California Regents appointed Lawrence "Director of the Radiation Laboratory" and established a separate budget and staff for its research activities. Today the Laboratory is different in many ways from the Radiation Laboratory, but some essential characteristics developed during those early days still shape the direction and spirit of the organization. LBL's major concern is with scientific research at the frontiers of knowledge where the intellectual challenges are the greatest. It uses the multidisciplinary approach, pioneered by Lawrence, to tackle major problems. Where appropriate, it uses large and complex experimental facilities. It is deeply concerned with expanding fundamental scientif- ic knowledge for national technological needs and for solving problems ranging from the energy issues facing our nation to human health and suffering. It has a strong' commitment to the training of students and the advanced training of graduates. LBL has produced eight Nobel Laureates and presently has twenty-four members in the National Academy of Sciences. 1 Luis Alvarez, working with his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, initiated a research project a few years ago that is shedding new light on the great extinction in which half the life forms on earth were des­ troyed some sixty-five million years ago. Their findings have attracted wide attention and have stimulated spirited debate among geologists, paleontologists, biologists and physicists around the world. Alvarez, a Nobel Laureate, has been described as an experimental physicist in the classical sense; he is interested 1n everything under the sun - and beyond. A native of San Francisco, he earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago. In the 1930s he participated with Professor Arthur H. Compton in the discovery that cosmic rays are mostly positively charged atomic particles. He joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California in Berkeley in 1936. From 1940-45 he was on leave to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the University of California's Los Alamos Laboratory. Returning to Berkeley after World War II, he resumed his career as a professor of physics and research scientist. In 1968 Alvarez won the Nobel Prize for the development of the hydrogen bubble chamber and the use of it to discover a large number of previously unknown elementary particles or "resonances." His long list of achievements includes more than 30 patented inventions, for which he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1978. Other awards include the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautics Asso­ ciation, 1946; the U.S. Medal of Merit, 1947; the Einstein Award, 1961; the National Medal of Science, 1968, and the Albert A. Michelson Award of the Case Institute of Technology, 1965. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, 2 Sciences and the American Physical Society (President 1969), American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. \. 3 ASTEROIDS AND DINOSAURS LUIS W. ALVAREZ 4 Thank you Dave. It's an unexpected pleasure for me to be here talking to you today. The original program which some of you may have seen had the first speaker as Phil Handler, long time President of the National Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, Phil is very ill in a hospital in Washington and at the very last minute I was asked to fill in as a sort of pinch hitter. I was on the committee that made the arrangements for this occasion and although none of us on the committee ever said so explicitly, we all agreed that none of us should be on the program; all the speakers should be distinguished invited quests. But at the very last minute, you know, "any old port in a storm," so here I am. You might be surprised that I am talking about a subject like asteroids and dinosaurs which has nothing to with any of the programs at the Laboratory but I think Ernest Lawrence would really approve of this because one of the things that he did that was unusual for a physicist in those days was to bring in people from other disciplines and let them share the resources of the Laboratory. Before the war, before the nuclear reactor came into being, the Laboratory here had a corner, so to speak, on all the artificial radioactivity that existed in the world. We could make more radioact~ve materials than anybody; I guess more than everybody else combined. Ernest went out and beat the bushes to get people to use this because people didn't understand about tracers and their value; they didn't know what you could do with neutrons. Ernest would go out and grab people at the Faculty Club and explain to them what they could do with these marvelous new things and I'm sure he would have enjoyed seeing what the Laboratory has done by sharing its resources, in this case Frank Asaro and Helen Michel and their neutron activation analysis facility. They've shared 5 that with the geological and paleontological communities. So with that introduction I'll tell you that I'm going to be giving a report of work that's been done by a team of four; by scientific standards these days, that's a very small team, because normally a team in high energy physics has about 50 members. The first slide shows the title page of our paper that was put out by the Laboratory in 1979 and you can see the list of authors up there. These days papers are known by their first authors. So it's very important to have a name starting with A! It used to be that the most important person was first on the list, but now it's the person who's farthest up in the alphabet. The paper announcing the discovery of the psi meson which won Burt Richter his Nobel Prize, had about 50 names on it. It's universally referred to 1n the literature as Abrams, et al. Burt's name is never mentioned and so you can imagine the surprise of Frank Asaro to find himself next to the bottom on this list of four authors. Since this is my son Walt's birthday 1'11 have to apologize for an action that I took part in 41 years ago, by not naming him for Ernest Lawrence or Arthur Compton, but rather for his grandfather, Walter. Otherwise he would be at the top, but it really doesn't make any difference. This is completely a team effort and everyone has done something that nobody else on the team could do and that's the thing that makes it fun.