Category: Tribute

Following a long and cruel illness, which he and his family bore with great fortitude, Owen Lock died on 19th March 2010.

Owen was born on 8^th August 1927 and grew up in Cirencester, England, where he attended Grammar School.  In 1945, he won a State Scholarship to study physics at the University of Bristol, where he graduated in 1948 with a First Class Honours B.Sc. degree.  Immediately after the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the pi-meson by Cecil Powell and his colleagues, Owen joined that international group, working with the newly-developed technique of photographic nuclear emulsions, that were exposed to cosmic rays in high-altitude balloon flights.  His numerous papers from that time include observations of the production and decays of mu-, pi- and K-mesons and their interactions with nuclei.  He wrote a review article in Progress in Cosmic Ray Physics in 1951 and obtained his Ph.D. in 1952.  By then he had been, successively, secretary and chairman of the Bristol branch of the Association of Scientific Workers and had joined the World Federation of Scientific Workers and the British Pugwash Movement.

He met his wife, Eleanor, in Bristol.  They were married in 1952 and moved to Manchester, where Owen took up a Research Fellowship.  He worked there with Patrick Blackett on further investigation of the K-mesons, discovered by Rochester and Butler in 1946-1947.  They stayed five months in Manchester, before Owen took up a lectureship at the University of Birmingham in 1953.  In addition to lecturing in the Physics and Extra-mural Departments, he formed a group to expose nuclear emulsions to beams at the newly-constructed 1 GeV proton-cyclotron.  There followed a rich series of papers on proton interactions with matter and the nuclear disintegrations they provoke.  Whilst in Birmingham he wrote a book:  High Energy Nuclear Physics, which was subsequently translated into Russian, French and Polish.

Having savoured the rich, international atmosphere in Powell’s group in Bristol, Owen was attracted by CERN.  He applied and was awarded a Research Associateship in 1959, which led to a staff appointment in 1960, when he took over the joint leadership of the Nuclear Emulsion Group in NP Division.  Here he was responsible for organizing the exposure of emulsions to beams from the Proton-Synchrotron (which started in November, 1959), in conjunction with groups from institutes all over Europe and beyond.  He became, in turn, PS Physics Coordinator, Secretary of the Emulsion Experiments Committee and of the Nuclear Physics Research Committee.  He initiated and organized the first Easter School for emulsion physicists, held in St. Cergue in 1962 and repeated in 1963.  This became the CERN School of Physics, held each year in a different CERN member state.  He was subsequently responsible for the School becoming a joint venture with JINR, Dubna, USSR, which, starting in 1970, was hosted alternately in the eastern and western parts of Europe.

The breadth of his human contacts and his rare organizational talent led Owen, in 1965, to transfer to Personnel Division to become Head of the Fellows and Visitors Service.  As early as 1962, he had started organizing conferences and, in 1966, became Head of the Scientific Conference Secretariat and secretary to a working group, chaired by Bernard Gregory, on ESRO (later ESA).  In 1968, he was appointed acting Division Leader and, in 1970, Head of Education Services and Deputy to the PE Division Leader until 1977.

That year he became Personal Assistant to John Adams (co-DG with Léon van Hove), and Secretary of the Board of Directors and of the Management Board. He guaranteed continuity, as he also fulfilled these roles under two subsequent DGs, Herwig Schopper and Carlo Rubbia.  As early as 1965 he had accompanied Bernard Gregory to Moscow to negotiate an agreement with the State Committee for Atomic Energy on collaboration between the new accelerator institute, IHEP (Protvino) and CERN.  First contacts with China followed under Willibald Jentschke in 1971, which resulted in a visit by a Chinese delegation to CERN in 1973 and return visits in 1975 and 1977.  These contacts led to cooperation agreements with China, signed during visits in 1979 by John Adams and in 1981 and 1985 by Herwig Schopper, where Owen was the link-person. In 1976, the International Council of Scientific Unions founded what, in 1978, became the International Committee for Future Accelerators, ICFA, with John Adams as chairman and Owen as secretary.  Under Carlo Rubbia, Owen became responsible for relations with Central and Eastern Europe, in addition to his ongoing contacts with China and India, which continued until his retirement in 1992.  He was largely responsible for five countries acceding to full membership of CERN:  Finland, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Owen was a highly-educated and widely-read, yet modest person, who, complementing his outstanding contributions to physics and scientific cooperation, possessed deep convictions that led him to weld human contacts and friendships, encompassing people throughout the world.  To his family and to those of us who have experienced his generosity and had the privilege of being guided by him, an era has ended and we feel the loss. Our sympathy goes to his wife, Eleanor, and his four sons, Nicholas, Adrian, Evan and Eric.

His close friends

Jacques Billan came to CERN in 1969 as an Electronician Engineer and an Engineer of «Arts et Métiers».  According to his vocational training he immediately took part in the conception and development of new magnetic measurement benches for the CERN magnets.  His involvements have thus been essential in the biggest projects such as ISR, LEP and LHC. Most of his contributions revealed themselves as challenges.  The de-magnetization in-situ of the 27 km vacuum chambers of the LEP was one of them.  The magnetic measurement benches for the LHC super-conducting magnets, the development of which he actively participated, allowed to validate the magnetic qualities of those magnets which are confirmed with the beams of particles.

Jacques was expert in magnetic measurements recognized not only at CERN, but in the whole world.  Becoming Mister Magnetic Materials he gave courses about this subject, but never boasting, never playing the superior scientist.

Since his retirement in 2005, when we faced problems, he readily came with advices and found solutions for us.  We still met twice a year and were happy to discuss with him about his recent settlement in Valromey, so lovely to his spouse, about his new home, his bee-hives and his numerous voluntary activities, such as in the club of astronomy at Sutrieu…

We all have appreciated, besides his competence of course, his constant willingness to help, his great kindness and his nice simplicity.  But nevertheless it is his heart, which we considered so great, which suddenly betrayed him in the flight in helicopter which transported him from the hospital of Belley to the hospital of Lyon, on the 7th of October 2009.

We deeply regret his premature passing on, and express to Anne and to his family all our sympathy and condolences.

His former colleagues and friends

Message of René Cartier to François Wittgenstein (in French only)

Message only in french below

The sudden passing away of Robert Muzelier, on the 15^th of February, has touched us profoundly.

“Dear Robert, on the 6th of February you were still among us, participating in the activities of the GAC-EPA Committee;  we scarcely imagined then that you would leave us so suddenly;  we are in shock.”

Robert entered CERN on 14 January 1957 for a long career and active professional life in the Finance Division.  He took up responsibilities in the CERN-ESO Pensioners’ Association to tackle and defend with determination the rights and interests of the pensioners, particularly in the domain of Health Insurance.  Indeed, he had joined the CHIS-Board as soon as he retired in August 1998, and he participated also with vigour in the meetings of the Commission on Social Protection.

We will forever remember Robert as a loyal and endearing friend and we wish to express to his wife our sincerest and deep-felt sympathy.

The GAC-EPA Committee

Klaus Goebel, an early leading figure in radiation protection at CERN, passed away on 1 October 2009.

Klaus came to CERN in 1956 together with Wolfgang Gentner for whom he had worked as assistant from 1954-55, after gaining a diploma in economics and a doctorate in physics at the university of Freiburg, Germany.

During these early years at the Laboratory, Klaus measured isotope concentrations in meteorites and as leader of the Spallation Research Group he used the Synchrocyclotron (SC) to measure isotope production by protons.  This interest in trace measurements carried over to his work in CERN’s Health Physics Group, which he joined in 1962.  He took over successively the radiation protection work at the SC and the Proton Synchrotron as section leader and became deputy group leader.  In 1969-70 he spent a sabbatical as a health physicist at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

When Klaus came back to CERN the preparatory work for the construction of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was under way and in 1971 John Adams called on him as leader of the Radiation Group to design the SPS Radiation Protection System. It was the first computer-controlled on-line radiation detection and alarm system employed inside the accelerator tunnel (radiation damage protection), in experimental areas (radiation protection of people) and for the site (environmental protection).

With the completion of the SPS in 1976 Klaus took over the responsibility for radiation safety for the whole of CERN, changing the name of the relevant group from Health Physics to Radiation Protection.  Increasing awareness of radiation risks called for frequent reviews of procedures and for availability of full information both inside and outside the Laboratory, in particular during the planning of the Large Electron Positron collider, LEP.

Public awareness for radiation issues grew tremendously following the Chernobyl Accident in 1986.  In view of his contributions in the field of radiation protection, Klaus was elected President of the Fachverband für Strahlenschutz (The Swiss/German Radiation Protection Society) in 1988 during the critical period following the accident.  While working at CERN his expertise in radiation protection matters was frequently requested, for example, for the spallation neutron source project in Karlsruhe and for the radiation protection system for the JET fusion project in Culham, UK.

Klaus leaves his wife Elfriede and two children to whom we convey our condolences.

His ex-colleagues and friends

Karl Ley entered CERN in 1957 and, after working for some time in the Central Workshop, joined Professor Antonino Zichichi’s Group in the NP (Nuclear Physics) Division as a mechanical technician.  He had specialised in fine mechanics as a watchmaker from a technical school in Schwarzwald.

Towards 1968 he became a member of the Technical Assistance Group of the NP Division where he stayed until the age of retirement.

Karl was highly respected by all on account of his outstanding professional competence and of an open and friendly personality.  Always ready to accept a new and challenging project he would put into it all his intelligence, knowledge and experience, studying and finding new and original solutions.  He pioneered the construction of very large thin foil spark chambers for the Omega spectrometer and introduced the first remotely controlled gas supply systems for large arrays of multiwire proportional counters as used in the main experiments at the ISR and extended later to other areas.

On the personal side Karl was always ready to volunteer his help and was available also when unusual difficulties in the field of human relations or an element of personal risk were present.

All of us will remember him as a loyal and charming colleague of exceptional human warmth as well as one of the finest members of our group.

We deeply regret his premature passing away and wish to express to Gerhild and to the family all our sympathy and condolences in this time of bereavement and sorrow.

His former colleagues and friends.

It was with shock and sorrow that we heard Jim Allaby passed away on 7 April.  Jim was born in Preston, England, in October 1936.  After obtaining a first degree in physics at King’s College, London, he moved to Liverpool to study for his PhD at the university’s synchrocyclotron.  This was his first proton-proton scattering experiment, and was also the start of a lifelong friendship with Bert Diddens, who was there as a CERN fellow.

In the early 1960s Jim moved to SLAC where he worked with Dave Ritson on electron inelastic scatterings.  Ritson greatly appreciated Jim’s calm and systematic approach to any kind of problem he was confronted with.  Thus it was natural for Jim to visit SLAC later and for Ritson to join the DELPHI Collaboration in the 1990s.

Jim came to CERN in the summer of 1965.  He joined the CERN group of Giuseppe Cocconi, Bert Diddens and Alan Wetherell, who were preparing proton-proton scattering experiments, in a slowly extracted proton beam, at the highest PS energies.  This led to the discovery of structures in large-angle scattering and the “black disc” behaviour of elastic scattering.  Jim had a very good command of the English language and was the careful editor of the relevant publications, as for many later experiments.

In 1968 a CERN group — formed around Alan, Bert and Jim — initiated a collaboration to study particle production and the total hadron-hadron cross section at the new 70 GeV Serpukhov accelerator.  Jim took this mission very seriously and learned Russian, much better than the others.  The bureaucracy was tough;  people in Protvino were not allowed any non-professional contact with the CERN team, but Jim excelled in overcoming this, thanks to his character, social skills and knowledge of the language.

Jim’s role in the development of relations with Eastern Europe continued during the time of the SPS, when he served on the Joint Scientific Committee for the cooperation between CERN and IHEP.  Later he was co-chairman on a similar committee for cooperation between CERN and JINR.

In 1970 the CERN group joined the Rome-ISS (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) group who had proposed measuring small-angle elastic scattering at the nearly-completed Intersecting Storage Rings using the technique that became known as “Roman pots”.

Jim participated in the initial phase of the experiment, which brought several discoveries including the rising proton-proton cross-section.  However, he was becoming more involved in serving the physics community, as PS Coordinator in 1970 and later as a member of the team preparing the SPS experimental programme.  John Adams then appointed him as Physics Coordinator for this programme, working in close collaboration with the Experimental Areas Groups, in charge of designing the areas and the beams.  This fruitful cooperation led to the construction of the initial complement of beams with all the required particle detection and identification devices.  This was an activity in which Jim displayed his very special qualities as someone always ready to serve his community by implementing his own vision, but capable of making reasonable compromises and decisions without upsetting his partners.

Jim’s own interest at the SPS was in studies of the neutrino neutral-current interactions performed by the CERN-Hamburg-Amsterdam-Rome-Moscow (CHARM) Collaboration.  This included tests of the nature of the charged-current interactions, which were based on the measurement of the polarization of the muons produced upstream in the iron calorimeter of the CDHS experiment.  This required transforming CHARM’s 400 tonne marble calorimeter into a muon polarimeter.  Jim was very active in the construction of the detector and, in particular, in this transformation.

At the end of the 1970s Jim became one of the founding fathers of the DELPHI experiment.  He played an important role in the genesis of the RICH detector during the phase that led from the initial spherical detector to the final cylindrical design.  DELPHI was the first collaboration to form an interdivisional group at CERN and to separate the responsibilities of the leader of the “CERN team” from the ones of the spokesman.  Jim covered the role of Team Leader for many years with his usual dedication, efficiency and friendly style of management.  In parallel he led the DELPHI Data Acquisition Project from the design to the implementation phase in 1989.

Jim was nominated Division Leader when Carlo Rubbia was CERN Director General and in this role continued strong support for the LEP programme.  He was also put in charge of relations with the CERN non-Member States.

After completing his term as Division Leader, Jim joined the L3 Collaboration at LEP.  He made important contributions to many of the publications of L3 and was chairman of the L3 Publication Board.  After L3, he worked on the AMS Experiment, participating in the preparations for the AMS first shuttle flight and for the AMS mission on the International Space Station.

After retirement Jim became a member of the Committee of the CERN-ESO Pensioners’ Association (GAC-EPA), once more in a spirit of service to the community of the CERN pensioners and their family members.

We share our sorrow with his family and we convey our deepest condolences and sympathy to Jean and Mark.

His colleagues and friends

Jean and Mark Allaby would like to thank everyone who attended Jim’s funeral. They express their gratitude for the many kind messages, cards of condolence and generous donations to Cancer Research.

Gordon Lennox Munday was born in Birmingham in 1922.  During the second world war he served in the Home Guard. After the war he worked for Philips, then he went to the University of Birmingham where he obtained a degree in physics and chemistry.

In 1955, on the recommendation of a physicist friend, he joined the team that built the PS, the CERN Proton Synchrotron, under the guidance of John Adams.  He was responsible for building the vacuum system of the future accelerator.

Shortly after this new machine was started up, Division Leader Pierre Germain entrusted him with the task of creating a group that would support the physicist users to prepare and implement their experiments.  It was his team that managed the experimental zones, designed, implemented and operated the beams on which the physicists installed their experiments.

A third phase of his career starts in 1973 when he succeeds Peter Standley at the head of the MPS Division (Machine PS).  Under his leadership the PS, initially designed to produce and accelerate protons and secondary particles for dedicated experimental zones, was transformed into a machine with multiple functions, capable of supplying beams adapted to other accelerators and especially able to satisfy the novel needs that nobody had imagined at its construction.  The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) would be the new large machine of CERN.  It is under Gordon’s responsibility that the Antiproton Accumulator (AA) was built, which ultimately would permit the implementation of the ppbar programme, leading to the discovery of the W and Z bosons and to the Nobel Prize for CERN physicists.

Still under his mandate of Leader of the Proton Synchrotron Division, its accelerators were used to produce and pre-accelerate the electrons and positrons destined for the next large machine:  LEP.

Finally, and this is probably a less well-known part of his career, Gordon ordered the meticulous analysis of all operational aspects of the PS and started a programme of development and consolidation.  The technical and operational qualities thus established by him ensured a regular operation of the proton-antiproton collider SppbarS and of LEP into the 1990s, well after his departure into retirement.  His legacy stretches even further, into the years 2000, with the feeding of protons and ions from the PS into the LHC.

The rôle of Gordon at the PS was not limited to technical and administrative aspects.  During his long career he showed the human qualities and understanding towards his collaborators that earned him respect and devotion.  He developed and maintained a team spirit amongst the members of his Division that strongly influenced its performance and success.

After his retirement in 1987 he remained close to CERN and its personnel and accepted the rôle of President of the GAC, the Groupement des anciens du CERN.  He was their spokesman with the Organization’s leadership and he succeeded in making them take into account the worries of CERN’s retirees under circumstances that are more and more difficult.

His ex-colleagues and friends of the PS.
The GAC-EPA Committee joins them in this tribute.