Max Born, Paul Dirac, Peter Dirichlet, Enrico Fermi, James Frank, Karl Gauss, Werner Heisenberg, Gustav Hertz, David Hilbert, Robert Oppenheimer, Walter Nernst, Wolfgang Paul, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Planck, Robert Pohl, Bernhard Riemann, Arnold Sommerfeld and Victor Weiskopf: these are all famous physicists or mathematicians who revolutionized our understanding of the world that surrounds us. They will be remembered for thousands of years to come and they have something else in common: they all worked and taught at the University of Göttingen, for periods ranging from a few months to decades. In particular, during 1900–1935 Göttingen became the Mecca of physics.
Never in the history of science has a single city attracted virtually all of the prestigious scientists in a major discipline at such a key moment in its evolution. Even those who did not work at the university, like Bohr, Einstein or Schrödinger, were frequent visitors to Göttingen to meet with their colleagues. To date, the University of Göttingen has had 45 Nobel prize laureates in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. In just physics and chemistry, Göttingen has won more Nobel prizes than the great MIT.
It was therefore with considerable emotion that, as director of the school, I opened the 32nd CERN School of Computing (CSC) on 17 August in the historic Pauliner Kirche church. This opening took place in the presence of Prof. Dr Rolf Heuer (CERN director-general), Wolfgang Meyer (Mayor of the city of Göttingen), Prof. Kurt von Figura (president of the Georg-August University of Göttingen), Frédéric Hemmer (head of the IT Department) and Prof. Arnulf Quadt (chairman of the Local Organizing Committee).
To celebrate this unique venue, a special Göttingen physics history afternoon was organized on Saturday 22 August. A tour of the old town was organized to show the places where some of these famous Göttingen scientists lived and worked. More than 50 participants visited the original mansions of famous physicists in the Eastquarter, the Gauss graveyard in Albany Park, the Gauss Observatory and the old university library. The afternoon ended with a memorable presentation by Prof. Michael Uhrmacher about Göttingen scientific history, followed by an inspiring talk from Dr Beatrix Vierkorn-Rudolph, the head of fundamental research from the Federal Ministry of Science and Education in Germany.
A summer university
But the CSC is not about physics; it is about scientific computing. 14 lecturers delivered 49 hours of lectures and hands-on exercises, with the 50th hour consisting of presentations given by students selected after a call for proposals.
This year, the programme underwent a significant facelift: more than one-third of the programme was entirely new and the rest has been significantly updated.
• Data technologies: this brand new theme was designed and delivered by Alberto Pace and Bernd Panzer-Steindel, with the assistance of Andreas Peters for the exercises. Data technologies is expected to be one of the major challenges in the coming years, not only in scientific but also in general-purpose computing. The theme tackled a whole range of topics such as status and prospects of storage devices, storage architecture, models, performance and reliability aspects.
• Data analysis was another new series given by Ivica Puljak and Aatos Heikkinen that focused on aspects like visualization, Bayesian probability and multivariate analysis.
• Virtualization and cloud technologies: this was the final newcomer, addressing one of the current hottest topics, delivered by Pedrag Buncic.
This innovative programme was complemented by our seven other tried-and-tested series covering physics computing (by Rudi Frühwirth), root (by Axel Naumann and Bertrand Bellenot), secure programming (by Sebastian Lopienski), security (by Alberto Pace), computer architecture (by Sverre Jarp and Andrzej Nowak), software engineering (by Bob Jacobsen) and networking (by the school director).
CSC is about physics computing but it is not a physics-computing conference. It is not a forum to present projects and achievements, but a place to deliver academic knowledge. This is an event with only a few lecturers, to maximize coherence and consistency. The CSC has evolved to become a summer university, and like any university, CSC organizes an examination.
This year 69 students attended the school and 63 of them successfully passed the final examination and received the CSC Diploma as well as the Georg-August University European Certificate of Credits (six ECTS credits awarded). The examination jury was pleased to award special distinctions to:
• Anton Alkin from Bogolubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine, who obtained the highest mark;
• Luis Munoz Meijias from CERN who ranked second;
• Adrian Vogel from the University of Bonn, Germany, who obtained the third highest mark.
Since the creation of the examination in 2002, CERN has awarded this fully recognized CSC Diploma to 453 students.
Göttingen: the result of a national contest It is 34 years since the school was last held in Germany. The German co-ordinating Committee for Particle Physics was approached and launched a national contest to select the hosts. The committee, in turn, appointed Volker Gülzow of DESY to oversee the selection process. An unprecedented number of proposals were received (six in total), and following a shortlist and site visits, Göttingen was selected.
Two German institutions (the Helmholtz-Alliance and Göttingen International) provided financial support for participants. This resulted in partial or total grants for 15 students: 10 from faraway countries and five from Germany. These contributions help to maintain the global dimension of the school and this year the participants represented 31 different nationalities.
Onsite the school received exceptional support from a team of more than 15 people. We are particularly indebted to the central team: Arnulf Quadt (chairman), Jörn Grosse-Knetter (deputy chairman), Lucie Hamdi (administrative assistant), Jörg Meyer (technical co-ordinator) and Fabian Kohn (sports co-ordinator).
Sports programme: a success story
The sports programme, which was introduced a few years ago, is encountering a growing success. The idea is to propose two to three hours of sport every afternoon to those who are interested. This can be the opportunity to discover a new activity or to enjoy the sports available at nearby facilities. Several of the lecturers act as sport instructors or organizers. This year we were delighted to see a dozen students taking their first climbing lesson, another dozen starting tennis, a couple of students trying swimming and ladies playing football for the first time. Basketball and volleyball complemented the daily activities. The sports programme is obviously optional and yet 95% of the students participated during the first week.
In addition to this programme, a special sports day has been organized since 2007. Participants can select one of five proposed activities of decreasing physical difficulty. This year the choice was between rock climbing (highest level), river canoeing, "skyrope" adventure park, biking and hiking (lowest level), or resting at a wellness centre.
This sports programme would not be complete without the traditional matches and tournaments: the football match, the mixed-doubles badminton tournament and, new this year, a tennis tournament.
The aim of the programme is not only to provide a healthy work-life balance before the late afternoon working sessions begin, it also provides additional opportunities for interactions between students, lecturers and organizers. After all, social networking is another goal of CSC.