Category: Tribute

Paul Déchelette passed away at the beginning of October.  We were very many to bid him our last farewell, a sure sign of his popularity, of the friendship and respect he commanded well beyond the sphere of his work.

After his youth days in Roanne (France) where he was born, Paul joined CERN in February 1959, at the time of the first experiments when everything had still to be done and to be invented. He soon joined a physics group where his qualities were immediately highly appreciated.

For him everything had to be perfect and he produced gems of precision from just a small sketch. The solutions he was able to find for numerous problems in preparing experiments made him an essential asset of the group. He was always willing to share his know-how, discreetly, always available with a high sense of responsibility, without ever putting himself forward. His black notebook in which he wrote in his beautiful writing was a reference.  It is not surprising that he made so many friends.

He was, among others, one of the pillars of the CERN Ski Club and many were the Cernois who learned to ski with him. He also knew how to enjoy life with friends on the good occasion. His wife Eliane and his children Philippe and Isabelle and their families can be assured of our fond remembrances.

Maria Fidecaro & Guiseppe Fidecaro

Frank joined CERN in 1957.  As a young lad he had started at the bottom of the ladder and became an experienced specialist in high precision grinding at the UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority).  At CERN he worked initially in the Central Workshop, then at the PS Linac. In 1962 he became the mechanical technician in charge of the first large neutrino experiment.  In 1963 he joined the Technical Assistance Group in the NP Division where he was responsible for supervising the Mechanical Lab and its staff until he retired.

Frank was a competent, intelligent and likeable person.  He was soft-spoken and treated everybody with respect, regardless of their hierarchical position.  At the UKAEA he had been “shop steward” and had learned to obtain results through persuasion, never resorting to authority.  He was mild and tactful but would defend his positions in a firm and clear way.  He had an eye for sorting out difficulties before they became serious.  He defended people and principles in a quiet, unassuming way.  If anything had gone wrong he would work until the causes would be identified and corrected.  In the case of people, he would be happy only if the person could be restored to a good level of confidence and efficiency.  Many saw their problems solved, but only few realized how much effort and patience Frank had invested in their case, acting more as a friend than a colleague.

Frank had an outstanding, almost uninhibited sense of humour.  He was a Londoner, very attached to his town and proud of its fierce resistence during the most difficult years of the war. From this period he derived an interest for history and was particularly well read in the world events of the last century.

Above all Frank was a man of wisdom and, in this field, definitely our senior. We learned a lot, and still have to learn, from his example.

His friends and colleagues

Henri Bertrand, or Riquet as he was known to his friends and colleagues in the old NP Division, started working at CERN in 1963 in the Technical Assistance Group at the start of a new neutrino experiment. Officially a mechanic, he participated in a number of projects where he left the mark of his intelligence and professional capacities.

He participated in the construction of large automatic cameras and of spark chambers with both parallel plate and thin foil walls. Eventually he became a specialist in the construction of multi-wire proportional chambers and it was in this capacity that he became known to a whole generation of physicists.
Each activity he undertook was marked by a determination to succeed, be it a difficult soldering operation, the repair of delicate mechanical pieces or even building a house. Many of us came to appreciate his advice and became his friends.

We will remember his lively spirit, his sense of humour, his courteous and open cordiality. His adolescence had been marked by the Second World War, during which his father, a railway worker, helped many people to escape to Switzerland. This experience was perhaps at the origin of his wisdom and humanity.
These qualities will always remain in our memory.

His friends and colleagues

We learned with great sadness that our colleague, Ernst Hugi, died on 8th March 2004.

Following a period of technical work in India, Ernst Hugi joined the CERN’s Engineering Division during the early days of the laboratory. He worked on technical aspects of the PS where he was concerned with the installation and subsequent operation of the cooling systems for the accelerator and its surrounding experimental areas.

He went on to look after the ISR cooling systems before joining the SPS Division at the beginning of the project where he studied and installed cooling and air conditioning systems for the new machine and its experimental areas.  The large amount of heat to be eliminated meant that he had to work closely with the Geneva cantonal authorities to obtain cooling water taken from the lake by the new Vengeron installations.  Because of his concern for the environment, he was very aware of the problems of wastewater disposal.  He looked after these installations until his long, productive and interesting career ended in 1989.

Many of his numerous and important achievements remain in use today, providing evidence to young engineers of Ernst Hugi’s technical skills and the great care he took in carrying out his work.

On retirement, he went to live in the peaceful and unspoiled Jura mountains.  We hope that living in an environment that he loved so much helped him during the final difficult period of his life.

We owe Ernst a great debt of gratitude for his contribution to the development of the Pensioner’s Association by launching our monthly permanences that continue to be very appreciated by CERN pensioners. We shall remember him as a skilled and conscientious engineer, able to establish excellent relations with his colleagues.

O. Bayard

(Tribute in French only)

Charles Peyrou, who was one of the outstanding personalities at CERN for thirty years, passed away on 6 April 2003.

Born in Oloron-Sainte-Marie (France) on 18 May 1918, Charles Peyrou studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he attended the first class given by Louis Leprince-Ringuet in 1936. Here, he was part of the small group of enthusiastic physicists who took part in the first cosmic ray experiments. In 1938, the group built its first chamber, a large Wilson chamber in a magnetic field, operating with Geiger counters. After the war, following his appointment as chief engineer of one of the large national technical institutes known as the Corps de l’Etat he was detached to his old laboratory to resume research on cosmic rays, and a system of two superimposed cloud chambers was set up at the Pic du Midi. This device proved very effective in the study of the strange particles that were starting to be detected at that time. Here, for example, the disintegration of the K meson into a muon and a neutrino was identified for the first time.

Physicists were satisfied with about fifty “good” events a year in those days but progress was being made in the accelerator field. In Europe, the construction of CERN was underway. Charles Peyrou, who was already a senior lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique (1946-1954), became a professor at the University of Bern (1954-1958), where he continued to give a course until 1974. Flying in the face of a certain degree of scepticism, he dedicated himself entirely to the European cause.

Having joined CERN in 1957, he championed the Laboratory’s conversion to bubble chambers as head of the Bubble Chamber Group and subsequently of the Track Chamber Division in 1961, finally becoming Director of the latter’s mother department, the Physics II Department, in 1966, a post he held for ten years. His deep understanding of both physics and engineering enabled him to talk to physicists and engineers with equal authority. Thanks to his generous, strong, realistic temperament, his exceptional physics intuition, his tenacity and imagination, track chamber physics experienced remarkable progress.

He directed the construction of successive hydrogen bubble chambers, starting with an initial 10 cm chamber and moving on to a 30 cm chamber in 1959, a 200 cm chamber in 1965 and finally the BEBC, a bubble chamber with a superconducting magnet, which collected over 6 million photographs. The technological impact was important, especially for cryogenics and superconductivity. In parallel, Charles Peyrou offered valuable support to the European bubble chamber user community, helping physicists to conduct their research in the institutes of CERN’s various Member States.

When the time of the bubble chambers was over, he maintained an active interest in the life of CERN. He enjoyed discussing the latest physics results with young physicists. His energy, his enthusiasm for mathematics, his astounding memory and his articulacy made every encounter with him a memorable occasion. His organisational abilities and his great experience continued to benefit the whole laboratory even after his retirement.

Goodbye, Charles, and thank you.

(reprinted from the CERN weekly bulletin 17/2003)

It was with great sadness that we learned that our friend and former colleague passed away on Christmas Eve.

David J.Warner joined the CERN Linac Group of the Proton Synchrotron (PS) Division in 1965, already an accomplished accelerator physicist having worked on proton linacs at the University College in London and at Rutherford High Energy Laboratory. At the former institute he had studied science and earned his PhD.

The PS division remained the home basis for his 34 year long distinguished career at CERN. He participated with substantial contributions in all major linac projects of CERN: the new 50 MeV proton linac (Linac2) completed in 1978, the electron-positron LEP Injector Linac (LIL) operating from 1987 to 2001 and the Heavy Ion Linac (Linac3) which will serve, like Linac2, the LHC for the next decades. In his last years at CERN, David contributed to one of the visions of CERN’s far-future, the study of a Multi-TeV electron-positron Collider (CLIC).

David’s work had a wide span: it covered beam dynamics and calculations of linac structures, comparison of simulations with measurements, practical design and construction proposals, and work in the control rooms. He combined a thorough theoretical understanding with a strong sense for practical and pragmatic solutions. He was a leading member both of the team that set up the collaboration with LAL for LIL and the one that built Linac3.

His independent and original thinking, his competence, high standards and proverbial integrity made him the kind, respected man whose advice was often sought.

Through his natural kindness he made it a pleasure and privilege to work with him. We shall deeply miss his friendship.

Kurt Hübner

When CERN was young and cryogenics was a new and mysterious activity, Leo Scherrer ensured the supply of liquid nitrogen, hydrogen and helium for virtually all CERN activities. He was head of the liquefier, and the liquefier grew up with him, thanks to his problem-solving gifts. Tenacious as he was, Leo succeeded in overcoming the most tricky obstacles and in finding solutions in extremis for many colleagues.

He displayed a remarkable ambition to learn all the languages of our international organisation, attempting the language of any willing colleague. Soon he was able to get along in Swedish, Portuguese and Greek.

Leo retired in 1980, aged 65. He profited from the freedom of his retirement to travel in Asia and Africa, using any imaginable means of transport. His wife Anni, who could not always accompany him, now owns a collection of picture postcards worthy of a museum.

Leo’s last years were very hard. He suffered from diabetes, he lost a foot by amputation and had to spend more than two years bedridden in a residence for retired people. His wife visited him every day. The two were inseparable.

For Leo, death was a deliverance. We wish to Anni Scherrer the strength and faith to keep her vital equilibrium, which was of such great help to Leo during his last years.

Jörg SCHMID

Rolf Hagedorn, who introduced the concept that hadronic matter has a melting point, died on 9 March 2003.

After studies in Göttingen he came to CERN in Geneva in 1954 as an accelerator theorist. He joined the CERN Theory Group after its transfer in 1957 from Copenhagen to Geneva and he was a senior physicist in the Division when he retired in 1984.

He continued his research after retirement, and up to very recently he made pertinent contributions in developments in the field of relativistic heavy ion collisions.

As an accelerator physicist he developed the theoretical predictions for the particle spectra initially observed when the CERN PS first began operation, which was important for the optimisation of secondary beams. He then developed the statistical theory of meson production in considerable detail up to very high energies. It was a consequence of these studies that he found that one should expect a limiting temperature in hadronic collisions, the Hagedorn temperature. This picture has had a major impact on theoretical thinking and on our understanding of the properties of hot hadronic matter, which is important now in the heavy ion program. Since the picture is applicable to any exponentially rising particle mass spectrum it is also influencing the development of string theories.

Among contributions to CERN, Hagedorn developed one of the earliest user-friendly interactive computing programs for algebraic manipulations, the SIGMA.

Rolf Hagedorn was a person of the highest scientific integrity and standards of reasoning. He was always willing to help colleagues and his comments were usually penetrating and deep.

He will be much missed by friends and colleagues.

(reprinted from the CERN weekly bulletin 14/2003)

Our friend and colleague Fred Asner died 25 October in his 79^th year after a long, cruel illness endured with courage and optimism.

Coming from Zagreb in Croatia he obtained his diploma in engineering in 1951. Fred worked in Switzerland from 1955 onwards, obtaining a Doctorat ès Sciences Techniques at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Zürich in 1960. The same year he joined CERN.

He was passionately involved in his work in the construction of all kinds of magnets and participated in many projects: magnets for the PS and SPS experimental areas as well as special magnets, kicker magnets and septum magnets for the Booster.

In the superconductivity field, he worked on CERN’s first superconducting quadrupole magnet and in the handing on of the technology to industry. After retirement in 1989 he remained active as a consultant to and a collaborator with several institutes and laboratories. He always remained attached to his native Croatia, encouraging it to join CERN as a member state.

In 1999 his book High Field Superconducting Magnets appeared in the Oxford Science Publications Series.

Fred was intensely curious about all aspects of life, very well informed on world events, possessed of a great musical and literary culture (he spoke 5 languages). Conversation with this very sociable man was always rich, instructive and agreeable. He will be missed by his colleagues and friends.

Mario WEISS