George Marx 1927-2002
George Marx, the emblematic figure of the past 50 years of Hungarian physics passed away on 2 December 2002 after two years of a courageous fight against illness, during which he continued working - as a physicist, teacher and prominent figure in Hungarian society.
George enrolled on the physics and chemistry courses at the University of Budapest in 1945, where his interest soon turned towards astronomy and theoretical physics. His first publications dealt with classical physics, and he also applied the concepts of classical physics to problems such as the motion of nucleons in the macroscopic background field of pions, or the calculation of the cross section of resonant gamma-absorbtion on nuclei. He was a very early advocate in the Hungarian physics community of George Gamow's idea of the hot early universe as the correct approach to the history of the universe.
The first problem he attacked in particle physics decided his professional fate. He became an influential researcher on the physics of leptons with the publication of a proposal for a new exact conservation law in 1952. In parallel with, and independently of Jakov Zeldovich in the Soviet Union, and Emil Konopinski and H M Mahmoud in the US, he proposed that in addition to the electric and baryonic charges, a third fermionic charge is also conserved, which today is called lepton number. His short paper, written in German, was made known to the wider particle physics community by Eugene Wigner, with whom he began a lifelong correspondence and friendship. He eagerly followed the revolutionary discoveries in weak interactions of elementary particles during the second half of the 1950s, and soon established important personal contacts with leading researchers on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
George's research became focused on neutrinos for the first time in a paper published in 1960 in Science, where prospects of neutrino astronomy were discussed, including the detectability of neutrinos originating from the Earth. With his younger collaborators, he published several papers in the 1960s on the possibility of detecting cosmic, supernova, solar and terrestrial neutrinos. During this period he organized the first international particle physics conferences in Hungary, and at the end of the decade founded, with colleagues from Austria and Czechoslovakia, the most important and durable Central-Eastern-European co-operation in theoretical particle physics - the Bratislava-Budapest-Vienna Triangle.
His deep conviction that neutrinos play a key role in both particle physics and cosmology led him to organize a meeting concentrating exclusively on these elusive objects at Lake Balaton in 1972. This was the start of the very successful Neutrino Conference series, and he remained as chairman of its International Advisory Committee until 2002.
His work on the astrophysical bound on the mass of neutrinos was especially fruitful. This was formed in very intense discussions with Zeldovich, and realized in collaboration with a young diploma student. George can be considered one of the great promoters of astroparticle physics and of the modern evolution of cosmology in the 1970s.
His original ideas and readiness for lively professional discussions made him a central figure in the global high-energy community in the 1970s, when he served as chairman of the High Energy Physics Board of the EPS. A series of very successful conferences at Lake Balaton and in Budapest embodied his talent for getting together the most active and talented physicists. The grove of oak trees in the quiet spa of Balatonfüred planted by giants such as Pontecorvo, Dirac, Feynman, Reines, Zeldovich and Wigner helps us remember these wonderful conferences.
George also had a mission to teach. He was heavily involved in the modernization of the physics curriculum in secondary schools and wrote several textbooks in co-operation with high-school teachers. When inexpensive personal computers appeared on the market, he initiated the publication of simulation programs for a wide range of physical phenomena. As an impressive speaker, he was regularly asked to organize seminars for teachers in Asia and Africa by Unesco, and organized his last teacher's conference on nuclear education only last summer.
His devotion underpinned the "golden age" of the Hungarian (Eötvös) Physical Society. He proposed and realized the integration of high-school physics teachers into the Society, which at nearly 110 years old became one of the strongest scientific organizations in Hungary. George himself served several times as secretary general or president of the Society, and remained an active member of its presidential board until his death. His favourite institution inside the Society was its monthly bulletin Fizikai Szemle (Review of Physics). He was elected editor-in-chief in 1957, and the December 2002 issue still reflects his editorial talent and enthusiasm.
Finally, he was one of the most widely respected Hungarian intellectuals, who frequently wrote essays in daily newspapers or literary monthly journals arguing in favour of rational and scientific solutions to many social problems. He convincingly argued that the true heroes of Hungarian history in the 20th century are not emperors, prime ministers, dictators, or revolutionaries, but famous scientists of Hungarian origin. His book (written originally in English) The Voice of Martians, which describes the lives of 28 famous Hungarian scientists of the 20th century, was on the list of bestsellers for several weeks in 2000. Its title reflects the anecdote that the isolated Hungarian language used by Wigner and his friends in the offices of Princeton (when Einstein was absent) was considered as a proof of their alien origin. The Hungarian press announced George's death with the headline "Farewell Martian".
Andras Patkos, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
Arthur Bradbury Clegg 1929-2002
Arthur Clegg, who has died aged 73 years, was responsible for setting up the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Lancaster, where he was one of the founding professors of the Physics Department.
Arthur began life near Liverpool. After national service as an instructor in the army, he went to King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a doctorate degree in nuclear physics in the Cavendish Laboratory under the supervision of Sir Denys Wilkinson. His work in this group was recognized in the citation for the award of an honorary fellowship of The Institute of Physics to Wilkinson. After Cambridge, Arthur became interested in higher energies and went to CalTech, where he worked on one of the world's first electron synchrotrons, which was being constructed there.
In 1958 Arthur rejoined Wilkinson, who had moved to Oxford, to continue research in nuclear physics. Arthur then formed his own group to do experiments at the Harwell cyclotron. Later, he became interested in particle physics and moved to the higher energy Nimrod proton synchrotron at the Rutherford Laboratory. Arthur was interested in the quark structure of baryons and realized that electrons were better tools to investigate this subject. He became a member of the committee that steered the construction of the electron synchrotron, NINA, and the formation of the Daresbury Laboratory.
In 1966 Arthur was invited to join the new University of Lancaster to form a high energy physics group. He was delighted by this invitation because it allowed him to move closer to his beloved Lake District. He worked at NINA for some years. However, on realizing the importance of even higher energies, he and his group went to work at the ISR, the first proton collider ever built, in the CHLM collaboration (CERN, Holland, Lancaster and Manchester). Later, he moved with his group to the Omega Photoproduction Collaboration at CERN, studying meson photoproduction. He continued this work at even higher energies at DESY, where he joined the H1 collaboration at HERA.
Under his leadership, the group at Lancaster thrived and today takes active roles in the ATLAS and D0 collaborations. The foundations he laid in Lancaster played a significant part in the award of the top grade of 5*A to the department in the latest UK research assessment exercise.
On the exterior Arthur was the stereotypical "absent-minded professor", but he was far from absent-minded, having a razor sharp mind and a photographic memory with total recall. He had an amazing ability to delve into the details of problems, and loved a good argument, especially if he could see it leading to the development of a junior person. Arthur was also good at developing personal relationships, and generations of students and young lecturers remember his enthusiastic and inspirational guidance with gratitude. Despite this, however, he did not suffer fools gladly, and punished foolishness wherever and whenever it occurred.
As a young man Arthur had a passion for mountaineering. When the accelerators were off he would sometimes demonstrate his rock-climbing skills by mounting the higher points of the experimental apparatus. From here he would regale his colleagues with stories of Alpine exploits with famous mountaineers. He made a number of first ascents of Alpine classics, as well as pioneering developments of crags in Scotland. One of his major enjoyments in later life was hill walking with friends and family, and he was a frequent visitor to the Lake District.
Sadly in his late fifties he developed Parkinson's Disease. He continued to work despite this and even in his last year was tussling with a detail of quark wave functions in hadrons. Arthur Clegg had a passion for truth in physics and he strove for it throughout his life.
Terry Sloan, University of Lancaster.