MEETINGS
On 9-14 September 2001 the International Autumn School on the Digital Library and E-publishing for Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, a course on digital libraries and e-publishing, will be held at CERN. It has been specially developed for librarians in the fields of physics, astronomy and mathematics. It is being organized by Tilburg University and Ticer B V - renowned for their International Summer School on the Digital Library - in co-operation with the CERN Scientific Information Service and the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library. The course director is Rick Luce, research library director at Los Alamos.
The course aims to provide knowledge support to academic libraries, research libraries and publishers in the current transitional phase, and to identify new roles and opportunities. Group discussions and workshops will be included.
Among those taking part will be Martin Blume (American Physical Society), David Dallman (CERN), Hans Geleijnse (European University Institute, Italy), Emanuella Giavarra (Chambers of Mark Watson-Gandy, UK), Gertraud Griepke (Springer-Verlag), André Heck (Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory), Carol Ann Hughes (Questia Media, US), Rick Johnson (The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, US), Michael Jost (FIZ Karlsruhe), David Kohl (Cincinnati), Rick Luce (Los Alamos), Teun Nijssen and Thomas W Place (Tilburg, NL), Marten Stavenga (Elsevier Science, NL), Herbert Van de Sompel (Cornell) and Jens Vigen (CERN).
A detailed programme, biographies of the lecturers and administrative details are available at http://www.ticer.nl/ autumn01/.
A course brochure can be requested by filling out the form at http://www.ticer.nl/autumn01/form.htm or by contacting Mrs Jola Prinsen, Ticer B V, PO Box 4191, 5004 JD Tilburg, The Netherlands; tel. +31 13 4668310; fax +31 13 4668383; e-mail ticer@uvt.nl; Web http://www.ticer.nl.
The International Workshop on Ageing Phenomena in Gaseous Detectors will be held at DESY, Hamburg, on 2-5 October. Further information is available at http://www.desy.de/agingworkshop.
Lattice 2001 - the XIX International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory will be held on 19-24 August at Berlin's Humboldt University. Conference topics include: QCD spectrum and quark masses; hadronic matrix elements; non-zero temperature and density; heavy quark physics; topology and confinement; chiral symmetry; spin and Higgs models, quantum gravity and random surfaces; and algorithms and machines. Further information is available at www.desy.de/ lattice2001.
Electromagnetic Interactions with Nucleons and Nuclei, a EuroConference on Hadron Production with Electromagnetic Probes, will take place on 2-7 October in Santori, Greece. Part of this year's European Science Foundation Euresco Conference Programme, it is supported by the European Commission's research director-general.
The ultimate goal of today's hadronic physics with electromagnetic probes (photons, electrons and muons) is to understand the strong interaction between quarks and gluons as described by underlying field theory - quantum chromodynamics - in the transition region where quarks and gluons become "confined" into the observed subnuclear particles. The conference is chaired by Klaus Rith (Erlangen).
Further information is available at http:// www.esf.org/euresco/01/pc01117a.htm.
HEP-MAD'01 is the first of a proposed series of biennial high-energy physics conferences in Madagascar. The main motivation is to promote high-energy physics and, more generally, theoretical physics in this remote part of the world, and to help the establishment of a future Theoretical Physics Institute.
The conference will be held this year on 27 September - 5 October in Antananarivo (the capital) and will alternate with the traditional QCD conference in Montpellier. However, the range of subjects discussed will be wider, touching on all aspects of high-energy physics (theoretical and experimental) and including astrophysics. The conference will include plenary and/or review talks by experts as well as short contributions and/or posters from young physicists. For more information visit http: //www.lpm.univ-montp2. fr:7082/~qcd/.
Alexander Baldin 1926-2001
The Directorate of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Dubna, Russian Federation) deeply regrets to announce the death on 29 April, at the age of 75, of the outstanding scientist Alexander Mikhailovich Baldin.
Academician Baldin's many roles within the world of physics included that of scientific leader of the JINR Laboratory of High Energies, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor and laureate of the USSR State and Lenin prizes in the field of science and technology.
He made pioneering and fundamental contributions to the development of the physics of particle electromagnetic interactions and relativistic nuclear physics, as well as to the creation of a new type of accelerator for charged particles and high-energy nuclei based on superconducting technology. His work is internationally recognized and is widely cited by the physics community.
Baldin greatly influenced the activity of the international research centre in Dubna and was an active initiator of scientific activities in JINR member states and in many leading research centres of the world. His demise is an irreplaceable loss for world science.
Fritz Schmeissner 1915-2001
Fritz Schmeissner died on 12 April, aged 86. He may be considered the father of cryogenic engineering at CERN.
Born on 4 January 1915 in northern Bavaria, he studied physics at Munich, and shortly before the Second World War became assistant to Walther Meissner, one of the pioneers of the phenomenological study of superconductivity. Meissner's authority and the importance of his research work largely protected Schmeissner from military obligations.
After the war he became the head of the newly created Low Temperature Research Centre at Garching/Herrsching near Munich. He was well on the way to a brilliant research career when, in the late 1950s, two physicists from CERN arrived, urging him to join the team that was engaged in the design of a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber for research with the Proton Synchrotron, which was nearing completion. With some hesitation, Schmeissner committed himself for three years, but his leave of absence from his German laboratory doubled, then tripled, and eventually ended with his retirement in 1980 at the age of 65.
Schmeissner's essential achievement, as it concerns CERN, was the integration of cryogenics into both the technical and the physics aspects of the organization's particle physics research programme. This meant on the one hand tempering the ambition of particle physicists by introducing some respect for the thermodynamic and technical constraints of cryogenics, and, on the other, motivating industry to invest in the major research and development projects required by physics. Above all, it meant passing the modest wisdom of first-generation experts - the "old hands" - to young physicists, engineers and technicians who were fascinated by the possibilities and challenges of new, "big" science.
Milestones for Schmeissner were huge bubble chambers and superconducting magnets, gigantic liquid-deuterium beam targets, and a superconducting radiofrequency beam separator cooled by superfluid helium, in many respects technically a precursor of LEP2 and LHC technologies.
The number of cryoplants, cryolaboratories, cryogenic detectors and cryogenic research facilities built at CERN under Schmeissner's authority is impressive, particularly when we consider the state of the art when Schmeissner's career began. We should see the multi-cubic-metre liquid-helium installations of the LHC and its detectors against the backdrop of the days when the Meissner laboratory in Munich was proud of owning a few hundred cubic centimetres of liquid helium.
The initial spirit and outlook of CERN was determined by some strong personalities, and Fritz Schmeissner was certainly one of them. His sharp and critical mind was much appreciated and guaranteed the technical success of every project that he was involved with.
During his long career at CERN he made many friends - among research physicists and engineers, inside and outside CERN, and in industry. Some of them stayed in close contact with him during his years of serious illness and suffering, which were made bearable by his wife Anneliese and his children.
We have all lost a good friend.
Herwig Schopper.
René Morand 1940-2001
Our friend René Morand, a remarkable French physicist and a dynamic personality in particle physics, died on 20 April at the age of 61.
He began his career in 1968 with Pierre Lehmann at the Orsay linear accelerator laboratory, where he studied the photoproduction of p0 and the elastic scattering of p±, K± and p. From 1971 he worked with Michel Croissiaux at the Nuclear Research Centre, Strasbourg, and took part in the creation of a high-energy experimental physics group that collaborated in the search for new particles at CERN's ISR.
From 1973 to 1983, Morand concentrated on the physics of hyperons, first at the CERN PS and then at the SPS, before going on to the study of high-mass muon pairs from intense pion beams.
At the beginning of the 1980s, he switched to physics at electron-positron colliders, and in 1983 joined the Annecy-le-Vieux laboratory of particle physics, led by Michel Vivargent, where he made important contributions to the construction of an electromagnetic calorimeter for the L3 experiment. A tireless builder, his quest for a deeper understanding of the universe led him to the study of gravitational waves in 1993. He played a major role in the planning and development of the towers housing the optics for the interferometer of the Virgo experiment. From 1997 to 2000 he also served as technical director of LAPP. He left us before the commissioning of Virgo, where his experience and talents would have been of invaluable service. In losing René, his colleagues have also lost a friend.
Jean-Jacques Blaising, LAPP, Annecy.