Wagner hands Dosch the baton at DESY
At a ceremony on 2 March, the outgoing DESY director Albrecht Wagner passed a symbolic baton to his successor, Helmut Dosch (CERN Courier December 2008 p33). The event took place in the facility's oldest experimental hall, attended by some 900 members of staff, and doubled as the opening in a series of celebrations marking the laboratory's 50th anniversary this year.
The ceremony began with speeches by representatives of the German research ministry, Bärbel Brumme-Bothe, the City of Hamburg, Rolf Greve, and the German federal state of Brandenburg, Josef Glombik, as well as chair of DESY's Extended Scientific Council, Metin Tolan, and scientific director at GSI in Darmstadt, Horst Stöcker. Wagner then spoke reflectively about the 50 successful years of DESY's history before handing a baton over to Dosch as a symbolic gesture. Dosch then presented his vision for the future of the laboratory.
To mark the start of the 50th anniversary year celebration all of the DESY directors lent a hand in officially unveiling the newly designed "DESY 50" logo. Finally, Dosch and Wagner tapped a beer keg and officially opened the night's celebration party.
A list of the official events that are planned to celebrate DESY's 50th anniversary can be found at http://zms.desy.de/news/e39081/index_eng.html.
CERN honours Charpak's 85th birthday
On 9 March CERN's main auditorium was the venue for a fascinating and moving celebration that marked the 85th birthday of Georges Charpak, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992 for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber.
Introducing the colloquium CERN's director-general, Rolf Heuer, paid an emphatic tribute to Charpak's work in education. Charpak then gave a 20 minute speech via video conference from his home in Paris. "Dear friends," he began. "Thank you for this unusual celebration. This is the first time that my birthday has been officially celebrated on the correct day". Although his date of birth was recorded as 1 August 1924, Charpak was actually born on 8 March. He went on to speak about his life, including his birth in a village in what is now the Ukraine, his emigration to France at the age of seven, his service in the resistance, his imprisonment in a concentration camp, his enthusiastic discovery of physics and his arrival at CERN. "CERN was a wonderful place. I was able to conduct science in total liberty over several decades," he said.
Charpak also spoke about his contribution to developments in the field of detectors for medical imaging and his involvement in education initiatives, the most well known of which is "La Main à la Pâte", a programme that helps schoolchildren to learn about science through simple experiments (CERN Courier March 2009 p24). Charpak's speech was followed at CERN by a presentation of his work by former colleague Ioanis Giomataris of CEA-Saclay.
• For the webcast of the entire colloquium, see http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1165736/.