CERN recognizes LHC suppliers with Golden Hadron awards
CERN's partnership with industry took centre stage on 12 August when the project leader for the laboratory's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Lyn Evans, presented awards to some of the project's major suppliers. Golden Hadron awards have been established to recognize outstanding performance of LHC suppliers. The first three went to Russia's Budker Institute of Nuclear Research (BINP), Belgian steel firm Cockerill-Sambre, and US company Wah-Chang.
The BINP received the award in recognition of high standards of fabrication of the 360 dipole and 185 quadrupole magnets that will equip the two transfer lines carrying proton beams into the LHC. BINP director Alexander Skrinsky was unable to attend the ceremony and will collect the award in September.
Cockerill-Sambre has been supplying CERN with steel since the early 1970s, and in presenting the award, Evans drew attention to the company's long-term dedication to achieving the best results. Accepting the award, company representative Santo Comel said: "CERN is not just a client, but above all a partner," going on to explain how innovations developed with CERN over the years have helped the business as a whole.
The final recipient of the first round of awards, US firm Wah-Chang, was recognized for similar dedication to excellence in the production of high-quality niobium-titanium for superconducting cable. The company's president, Lynn Davis, received the award.
Geoffrey Opat 1935 – 2002
Geoffrey Opat, one of Australia's most noted and versatile physicists, died suddenly on 7 March. Born in Melbourne on 16 November 1935, he was educated at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained his PhD in theoretical photonuclear physics in 1961. He won a Fulbright Fellowship and spent the next three years working at the University of Pennsylvania, with the late Henry Primakoff. Their work on radiative muon capture has stood the test of time and in recent years was the subject of experimental verification at TRIUMF. He returned to Melbourne in 1964, where he was the founder of Australia's first Experimental High-Energy Physics group, which worked initially with the Brookhaven 30 inch bubble chamber (filled with deuterium), studying antiproton-neutron interactions.
That experiment alone yielded 20 publications, including some measurements that are still the best available. Some notable results were on topological cross-sections, later to be verified (and improved upon) at the LEAR ring at CERN, on G-parity and on beam-target reversal symmetry, a concept that he first postulated. Later the group carried out experiments at the US Argonne National Laboratory and at the UK's Rutherford Laboratory.
Opat was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics in 1973. After that, much of his research was concerned with wave-optical experiments using beams of low-energy neutrons, and more recently, neutral atoms and molecules. He also studied the effects of gravity and inertia on the electromagnetic properties of metals. He enjoyed sabbatical years at the Rutherford Laboratory, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and the University of Washington in the US. He was best known internationally for his work on neutron optics, in particular experimental verifications of the Aharonov-Casher and Scalar Aharonov-Bohm effects, carried out with colleagues from the University of Melbourne, and collaborators at the University of Missouri. This led to the joint award in 1990 with his lifelong friend and collaborator, Tony Klein, of the prestigious Walter Boas Medal of the Australian Institute of Physics, and to his election as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Opat had an enormous influence on the teaching of physics at all levels, in Melbourne, in Australia, and in several neighbouring countries that sought out his advice. As a profound scholar, great teacher and wonderful friend, he is sorely missed by colleagues, former students and friends on all continents.