Lab says its farewells to Albrecht Wagner…
On 3 April, DESY celebrated its own Wagner Fest – a farewell colloquium to mark the retirement of its long-time chair of the board of directors, Albrecht Wagner.
Wagner was a member of the DESY directorate for 18 years – first as research director, then as its chairman from 1999 until he handed over the baton to his successor, Helmut Dosch, on 2 March. "Wagner made crucial contributions towards the building of several new top-class facilities for basic research at DESY," emphasized Frieder Meyer-Krahmer, state secretary of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in his welcome address. He congratulated the long-time DESY director for his merits. He said: "You rendered outstanding and lasting services to DESY and basic research in Germany and to the Federal Republic of Germany."
During the colloquium, which was attended by around 500 guests from all over the world, several eminent speakers gave their personal recollections of Wagner and honoured his decisive achievements as a key player in science and research policy. Among the speakers were Atsuto Suzuki, director-general of KEK and chair of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), who said he was "very impressed by Wagner's outstanding, strong leadership and deep enthusiasm for science", and CERN's director-general, Rolf Heuer, who honoured him as "a friend and colleague who is always a step ahead".
Other laboratory directors included William G Stirling, former director-general of the ESRF, who highlighted Wagner's contributions to the development of photon science at DESY and around the world. Maury Tigner, director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education, emphasized his achievements as a key leader in the planning and development of lepton colliders, especially through his former position as chair of ICFA and the International Linear Collider (ILC) Steering Committee. Ralph Eichler, president of ETH Zurich, praised Wagner's management skills in "convincing partners, public and politics" even in difficult times, and Jonathan Dorfan, former director of SLAC, honoured him as a "leader whose influence has been truly global and who will be greatly missed".
Under Wagner's leadership, decisions were made at DESY to build the X-ray free-electron laser (European XFEL) and upgrade the PETRA storage ring to be the most brilliant synchrotron radiation source in the world – PETRA III (p8). The ILC and the European XFEL are both to be realized using superconducting RF technology that was developed by the international TESLA Technology Collaboration under DESY's leadership. Wagner played a decisive role in this success, which is appreciated all over the world.
Wagner has been connected with DESY since 1974. After his studies at the universities of Munich, Göttingen and Heidelberg, he worked on experiments at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, CERN and at the DESY storage rings DORIS and PETRA. From 1984 to 1991, he was a professor at the University of Heidelberg; in 1991 he was appointed professor at the University of Hamburg and Research Director of DESY.
…while Hamburg honours Volker Soergel
Volker Soergel, who was chair of the DESY Board of Directors from 1981 to 1993, has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg.
Soergel was honoured for his merits in the close and successful collaboration of DESY and the University of Hamburg and for his contributions to the national and international visibility of Hamburg as a centre of science and research. Under his aegis, the electron–proton storage ring HERA was built in Hamburg. HERA offered unique research possibilities to students and scientists from Hamburg and significantly strengthened Hamburg as a research location.