Hardback ISBN 9781905264957, £18.99. Paperback ISBN 9780753522110, £13.99.
CERN Courier readers don’t need to be told that the search for the Higgs boson consumes a considerable fraction of resources in modern particle physics. I am certain that many of you have been asked by family, friends and neighbours for an explanation of what the fuss is all about.
Ian Sample’s Massive is a marvellous book and well worth reading by both researchers and the layman. In it, Sample describes the history and the personalities behind the search for the Higgs boson. He dispels the common simplifying myth that a single lone genius named Peter Higgs was the sole theoretical mind behind the idea. Instead, Sample gives appropriate credit to the many theorists who made equally critical intellectual contributions.
The author also guides us through history, stopping at points of interest along the way, from the prediction of and the discovery of the W and Z bosons, to the debacle that was the Superconducting Super Collider, to today’s exciting efforts at both the Tevatron and the LHC. Along the journey, he relates entertaining anecdotes that he gleaned from interviews with many researchers central to the effort to search for the Higgs over the past several decades. I know personally many of the people whose names appear throughout the book, and I can attest that Sample has accurately conveyed their voices without the distortions that one often observes when reading a report in the media.
Sample’s book does have an intentional weakness. He has clearly chosen to focus on the history and personalities involved in the saga of the Higgs boson and to gloss over many technical physics details. A reader who wants to understand more about quarks and leptons and the forces that tie them together will find many other books that do a much better job with these and similar concepts. The book contains only as much physics as is necessary to tie together the human narrative and these two topics are melded together into a seamless and pleasant read.
I did find one physics error in the book. While describing the search for the Higgs boson at the LHC, Sample writes about the decay modes for Higgs bosons with both low and high mass. For the high mass, he states that the expectation is to see four leptons, while at low mass he mentions only the two-photon decay mode. He gives the false impression that this is the dominant mode, rather than simply the one that is popular at the LHC owing to the lower backgrounds. This regrettable error will offend only the purists and does not detract from what I think is an excellent book. I strongly recommend it.
by David Goodstein, Princeton University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780691139661, £15.95 ($22.95). E-book ISBN 9781400834570, $22.95.
Now that we can easily access scientific papers without leaving our offices, thanks to the availability of electronic versions of the most important journals, many of us at CERN rarely visit the library. Yet there are many other good reasons to stop by, among them the recently created bookshop, which houses a diverse collection of interesting books. This is where I first saw this book, in which David Goodstein shares his knowledge and reflections on scientific misconduct, including first-hand reports on some of the allegations that he studied as Caltech’s vice provost.
Throughout the book, Goodstein presents several cases with considerable detail, such that the reader is invited to judge whether scientific misconduct happened or not. The opening case describes Robert Millikan’s determination of the electron’s charge, based on measurements of 58 oil droplets, and addresses the allegation that this was a subset of all observations, selected because they were in line with the experimenter’s convictions. The verdict, “not guilty”, is supported by 22 informative pages, offering the reader a tour of the difficulties of the experiment – in the context of 1912 – including an explanation of why viscosity played a more important role than gravity or electricity in understanding the movement of the oil drops. I particularly enjoyed seeing four pages from the original notebooks where the measurements were written down. Rather than “manipulating” his data, Millikan carefully selected high-quality observations to obtain an accurate measurement: his result agrees with the modern value within its quoted 0.2% uncertainty.
The book also contains a highly entertaining report of the “strange and complex case of cold fusion”, following the saga from March 1989 to recent days. Here there is also no evidence of scientific fraud, defined by the author as “faking or fabricating data or plagiarism”. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons should not have announced their “discovery” as they did (in a press conference) and when they did (too early, fearing to be scooped by someone else). Nuclear fusion on a tabletop would really be too good to be true and many physicists and electrochemists promptly dismissed those claims after finding that they could not reproduce the results in their own labs; but “self-delusion, misperceptions, unrealistic expectations and flawed experimentation are not instances of scientific fraud”. Real fraud, in physics, is illustrated by the putative discovery of element 118 by Victor Ninov (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and by the “remarkable” breakthroughs of Jan Hendrik Schön (Bell Labs) in the field of organic semiconductors. Caltech’s own problems of research misconduct are illustrated with two cases in biology.
The first chapter is particularly worth reading, reminding us of the main ideas of Francis Bacon and Karl Popper regarding the scientific method, although I prefer the elegant summary provided by Bo Anderson back in 1984: “Nature never tells you when you are right but only when you are wrong; therefore, you have only learned something when you disagree with the data.” Also, Richard Feynman argued that scientists should carefully report everything they are aware of that could invalidate their measurements or models. Goodstein shows that these laudable ideas are not really suitable in the real world, to ensure rapid and robust scientific progress. Based on his own experience, he argues that bad theories and the experiments that prove them wrong are “quickly and quietly forgotten”. Who has ever received a Nobel prize for showing that a model disagreed with data? After listing “fifteen seemingly plausible ethical principles for science”, he systematically reveals their insufficiencies as guidelines to sound scientific conduct and replaces them with a more pragmatic “user’s manual” on how to pursue a successful and honest career in science.
I would have liked to have seen more examples of scientific fraud, including cases of fabricated data in biology and medicine, but it is understandable that Goodstein prefers to address cases he knows well. Although a little “Caltech-centric”, this is an interesting and easy-to-read book, suitable for relaxing with at the end of the year.
by Richard M Weiner, CreateSpace. Paperback ISBN 9781451501728, $9.99.
Still looking for Christmas presents? Maybe one for your auntie who still doesn’t understand what you find so fascinating about physics? You may have already tried buying her popular science books, but they are sitting on a shelf, unread? Well, here is a book with an interesting basic idea: a novel about a scientist, a young genius with well developed mad streaks, a dramatic death in a computing centre, capable and less capable police forces from various countries, privately funded research organizations, CERN (as we do and don’t know it) and a theory. What if one could change the constants of nature? What if, for example, the charge of the electron could be modified in a way that it would have an influence on the size of atoms? Do smaller atoms mean smaller people, and would that solve the world’s energy crisis?
Richard Weiner, author and professor of theoretical physics, based at Marburg University in Germany and the University of Paris-Sud, France, thought that this idea was worth exploring – at least in fiction. His first “science thriller”, published in 2006 in German and in 2010 in English, first kills scientist Trevor McCallum and then traces his steps from geeky childhood via troubled adolescence to genial research and his last moments before he dies of an improbable surge in computational power. Sounds like good holiday reading?
Well, unfortunately your auntie might not be too impressed because The Miniatom Project does not really hold what it promises. While the precept is certainly original and the idea to use it in a novel to engage the non-scientist is laudable, the plot is very constructed, dialogues and characterizations clunky and the tone at times verges on being patronizing. Inconsistencies about CERN and thinly disguised CERN personalities (an attempt at a roman à clef?) will not trouble your auntie that much, but the translation is likely to grate with her. CERN certainly is fertile soil for art and fiction of all kinds but The Miniatom Project could have done with more editing before going to print.
by Lee Pullen, Mariana Barrosa and Lars Christensen (ed.), ESO. Hardback ISBN 9783923524648. €9.90. Free PDF version available from www.postcardsfromuniverse.org.
I’m a sucker for beautiful astronomy books and this one ticks all of the right boxes, right from the table of contents, which shows an artist’s view of the Earth stretching out into deep space. It is a good visualization of the depth and breadth of the science covered by the book.
This is no ordinary astronomy photo book. It is a compilation of articles by the Cosmic Diary bloggers who told their story throughout the International Year of Astronomy, 2009. As an anthology of front-line astronomy, it will soon date but it will have lasting value as a snapshot of the different researchers – first-person accounts that personalize the science and give a picture of the reality of life in research. The biographies serve to underline the truly international dimension of the research. Indeed, I am impressed by the variety of the bloggers, spanning five continents, which is no mean feat.
The array of subjects is also impressive – from a fascinating account of meteorites to the recipe for making stars. However, as the links between particle physics and astronomy become stronger, I would have liked to have read something about neutrinos or on gravitational waves, rather than a third description of how to detect exoplanets.
It is perhaps inevitable that the book’s biggest strength – its diversity – also gives rise to some weaknesses. This includes a mixed bag of writing styles and a few rather acronym-heavy, dry accounts. And the English does not always flow comfortably. But the approach of only light-handed editing is an attractive one because it allows the writers’ personalities to show through. The vast majority of the contributions are written in a chatty, friendly style and take the reader on a visual voyage of discovery.
If I chose to study physics, it was partly because I stumbled on a book in my school library about the mysteries surrounding the superluminal jets emanating from the quasar 3C273. Wow, I thought. I want to know more&ellip; I can quite imagine Postcards providing the same inspiration.
by Edward Weiler, Abrams. Hardback ISBN 9780810989979, £19.95 ($29.95).
The publisher and NASA have joined forces to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope with the release of this inspirational “coffee-table” book. It not only pieces together the story of the telescope itself and the remarkable fruits of its labour, but also gives much prominence to the unparalleled teamwork by the men and women in conceiving, building, launching and operating Hubble – not to mention including detailed information and photographs from various NASA servicing missions.
Being the most celebrated celestial observer since Galileo assembled his first optical instruments, Hubble has without a doubt revolutionized astronomy and produced many of the most significant space photographs of our time.
In this “journey”, notable scientists describe the meaning and significance of the top-20 Hubble images and mission astronauts write about their experiences servicing it on various shuttle missions. The book includes a description of how the telescope works before presenting the wondrous world of our solar system, the stars and interstellar clouds. A later chapter explores the outer galaxies and Hubble’s quest to document them.
This book makes an ideal gift for readers young and old with an interest in science, space and astronomy. Younger readers will marvel at more than 100 classic photographs – many of them full page – and older ones will relish the accompanying text and captions.
by Shing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis, Basic Books. Hardback ISBN 9780465020232, $30.
Geometry is the architecture of space, explains Shing-Tung Yau at the start of this book. For most of history, this architecture used the rigid straight lines inherited from Pythagoras, Euclid and other Ancient Greeks. Then, René Descartes, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann in turn showed how it could become more flexible.
Whichever way it was constructed, geometry remained largely abstract until almost 100 years ago, when Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity showed how matter influences the space around it. Ever since this pioneer synthesis, mathematicians have been exploring the possibilities of geometry for physics, and vice versa. One early milestone was the attempt by Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein to extend space from four to five dimensions. Although their attempt to extract new physics failed, it has never stopped physicists and mathematicians from exploring the potential of multidimensional spaces.
In the same way that Einstein’s work revolutionized the theory of gravity, so in the closing years of the 20th century string theory emerged as a new way of viewing elementary particles and their various interactions. Unlike Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, this book is not an introduction to the physics fundamentals of string theory. Instead, it is more concerned with the mathematics that string theory uses.
In 1950, a geometer named Eugenio Calabi launched a bold new conjecture. More than a quarter of a century later, this conjecture was proved by Shing-Tung Yau, and the geometry has since been known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. The two names have become so closely associated that Yau wryly points out how many people assume that his first name is Calabi!
Following a description of such arcane mathematics is difficult, the proof even more so. However, it is dutifully done, in a way redolent of Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Last Theorem, which commendably made mathematics understandable without using equations. Some of Yau’s explanations are difficult to follow but a glossary of mathematical terms at the end of the book is a great help. The remainder of the book explains the potential of Calabi-Yau geometry as a framework for string theories – a subject that seems to have taken a place alongside rocket science as a perceived pinnacle of intellectual ingenuity.
While books with two co-authors are not unusual, this one is: one author writes a narrative in the first person, the other uses the third person. Nevertheless it works. For anyone interested in string theory it is a good book for understanding what has been achieved so far, and by whom (however, some notable contributions are missing). It is also a timely reminder of the latent power and elegance of mathematics. Calabi-Yau manifolds could help revolutionize our understanding of the world around us in the same way that Riemannian geometry did. However, while many great minds have chipped away at the problem, the ultimate latter-day Einstein has yet to emerge.
The first Global Particle Physics Photowalk brought more than 200 photographers together at five particle physics laboratories: CERN in Switzerland; DESY in Germany; Fermilab in the US; KEK in Japan; and TRIUMF in Canada. They glimpsed the state of the art in particle and nuclear physics via visits to accelerators, detectors, computing centres and isotope facilities; witnessed scientists at work in control rooms; and saw test facilities for future projects.
Following the event on 7 August, which was organized by the InterAction collaboration of particle-physics laboratories, participants submitted thousands of photographs for local and global competitions. Each laboratory selected the top photographs by jury or by staff vote; the local winners will be exhibited at the laboratories in 2011. The photographs shown here were the finalists for two global competitions: a “people’s choice” online vote and a selection chosen by international jury.
8Pi experiment Photographer: Mikey Enriquez. Laboratory: TRIUMF. This image of the 8Pi nuclear-physics experiment won third place in TRIUMF’s local competition. The muted black and white image of the 8Pi experiment’s inner detectors captures the beauty and symmetry of physics.
☆ 1st International jury.
DESY wire chamber Photographer: Hans-Peter Hildebrandt. Laboratory: DESY. This portrait of a wire chamber won first place in DESY’s local competition. This highly symmetrical image of a particle detector fascinated every member of the local DESY jury immediately. The rays leading from the centre, ending in a dark rim, separating the chamber’s sectors, and large hole in the middle that allows a blurry view of the things behind, evoke the image of a large eye. The local jury called it “technically flawless and simply fascinating”.
☆ 1st People’s choice, ☆ 2nd International jury.
The accelerator operator Photographer: Tony Reynes. Laboratory: Fermilab. This image of an accelerator operator on shift in Fermilab’s Main Control Room captured third place in Fermilab’s local competition. The Main Control Room is a mission control centre where scientists monitor the laboratory’s accelerator complex 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
☆ 2nd People’s choice
Quadrupole magnets Photographer: Heiko Roemisch. Laboratory: DESY. This image of two quadrupole magnets won second place in DESY’s local competition. The global jury noted the photo’s sense of humour and the DESY jury’s association with this image was “monstrous force”.
☆ 3rd International jury.
Electric cable at CERN Photographer: Christian Stephani. Laboratory: CERN. This image, placed third in CERN’s local competition, shows an electric cable connected to a valve that is designed to avoid pressure damage in a magnet.
KEK’s Accelerator Test Facility Photographer: Yuki Hayashi. Laboratory: KEK. This photograph of researchers working through the weekend in the Accelerator Test Facility won first place in KEK’s local jury and web competition.
Paperclips atop the world’s largest cyclotron Photographer: Ali Lambert. Laboratory: TRIUMF. This image won first place in TRIUMF’s local competition. Above the world’s largest cyclotron at TRIUMF, paperclips experience some fringe magnetic field and stand upright, appearing to dance on the table’s surface. High-school student Ali Lambert artfully captured this iconic experience of all visitors to TRIUMF.
Broken Symmetry Photographer: Ken Duszynski. Laboratory: Fermilab. This photograph of the Broken Symmetry sculpture at Fermilab’s main entrance won first place in the laboratory’s local competition. The arch straddles the road and appears perfectly symmetric when viewed directly from below, but has carefully calculated asymmetry from its other views.
Test beamline for CERN’s Linac4 project Photographer: Diego Giol. Laboratory: CERN. This won first place in CERN’s local competition. Linac4, when completed, will be CERN’s newest linear accelerator and the first link in the proton acceleration chain for the LHC.
HERA accelerator tunnel Photographer: Matthias Teschke. Laboratory: DESY. This classic image of HERA’s accelerator tunnel captured third place in DESY’s local competition. The photographer manages to guide the view around the corner and make the viewer curious about what’s behind the bend. The image plays with light and shadow, conveys a sense of space, almost infinity, while at the same time incorporating technicality.
☆ 3rd People’s choice.
Roof of the Meson Laboratory Photographer: Charles Peterson. Laboratory: Fermilab. This view of the roof inside the Meson Laboratory, one of the buildings in Fermilab’s fixed target experimental area, won second place in Fermilab’s local competition. Each scalloped section of the roof was intentionally built to be approximately the same size as the tunnel inside the Tevatron.
TRIUMF’s material-science facility Photographer: Mikey Enriquez. Laboratory: TRIUMF. This photograph of TRIUMF’s material-science facility won second place in TRIUMF’s local competition. The seemingly industrial and technical landscape of the facility is softened here by a digitally applied texturing technique.
Connection pipe for LHC magnet Photographer: Diego Giol. Laboratory: CERN. This photograph of a connection pipe from a spare quadrupole magnet for the LHC at CERN won second place in the laboratory’s local competition.
KEK collage Photographer: Akira Ominato. Laboratory: KEK. This collage of the KEK particle physics laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan, won second place in KEK’s local competition.
Belle Detector Photographer: Keisuke Mori. Laboratory: KEK. This photograph of the Belle Detector won second place in KEK’s local jury and web competition.
Georges Charpak, who died on 29 September, worked at CERN for most of his scientific career (CERN Courier November 2010 p6). It was there that he invented and developed the multiwire proportional chamber (MWPC), which led not only to a host of related detector techniques and applications, but also to the ultimate recognition of his contributions – the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.
Born in eastern Poland, Georges moved to Paris with his family in 1932 when he was seven. As a teenager he became active in the French resistance to fight against Nazi occupiers and was imprisoned by the French government in 1943, before being transferred to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau in 1944. He survived because the guards did not realize that their political prisoner was Jewish. After the war he became a French citizen and in 1954 he received his doctorate in nuclear physics from the Collège de France in Paris, where he studied in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He devoted his early career to nuclear physics before making the transition to high-energy particle physics.
Pioneering times
Georges arrived at CERN in 1959, his first contributions being to the team that in 1961 precisely measured the anomalous magnetic-moment of the muon, predicted by QED (CERN Courier December 2005 p12). Testing this prediction to high accuracy is of paramount importance in particle physics because a small deviation from the theoretical value would imply new physics beyond the Standard Model. The pioneering experiment at CERN inspired many physicists in a line of research that continues to this day.
Only a few years later, in 1967–1968, he developed the MWPC, a gas-filled box with a large number of parallel detector wires, each connected to individual amplifiers. Unlike earlier detectors – such as the bubble chamber, which records a few photographs per second – the multiwire chamber could record up to a million tracks a second when linked to a computer. This new technology came at just the right moment as the computer era began to blossom and proper data-acquisition electronics were under intensive development.
With the new detector, particle physics entered a new era. The speed and precision of the multiwire chamber and its offspring – the drift chamber and the time-projection chamber – revolutionized the field. Particle physicists must often sort through many millions of tracks to find one or two examples of the particles they seek, so they need fast detectors. The invention of the MWPC opened the way to operate experiments at much higher particle-collision rates and to test theories predicting the production of rare events and new massive particles. The discoveries of the W and Z bosons at CERN, the charm quark at SLAC and Brookhaven and the top quark at Fermilab would not have been possible without this type of detector, and current research in high-energy physics continues to depend on these devices.
It was an experimental technique that many others had attempted without much success, but the previous experience Georges had with similar detectors was a key to his achievement. Working with a cylindrical counter in the Collège de France in 1948, he had realized that signals were produced not by the drifting electrons released by the passage of an ionizing particle but rather by the movement of positive ions, which induce pulses of opposite polarity on the anode-sense wire. The MWPC amplifies the few ionization electrons through electron multiplication near the anode wires. The resulting avalanche produces a signal that can be timed, leading to a variety of high-precision spatial measurement systems. As Georges and his collaborators discovered, the pulses induced in orthogonal cathode strips in a MWPC permit a bi-dimensional read-out. Moreover, determination of the charge centroid provides a better accuracy along the cathode wires (better than 100 μm) than in the other direction, where the accuracy is limited by the spacing of the anode wires. This type of read-out has been used by many experiments and is still in use today at the LHC.
The pitch of the wires limits spatial resolution in the MWPC and the coverage of large areas requires many wires and, therefore, many channels of amplification and read-out. However, Georges and his co-workers found that delayed signals were seen in the MWPC and that the measurement of the time of these signals – the drift time – could provide high-accuracy spatial information. This forms the basis of the operation of the drift chamber, where the wires are much more widely spaced. Drift chambers have been developed by groups worldwide and are used in many experiments because of their economical read-out, high accuracy and the possibility to build detectors with large areas.
The combination of drift-time information with charge-centroid read-out offered the possibility of 3D read-out from a single chamber and in 1974 David Nygren at Berkeley proposed a new evolution of the drift chamber, the time-projection chamber (CERN Courier January/February 2004 p40). This has since been widely used by many experiments, in particular ALEPH and DELPHI at CERN’s Large Electron–Positron collider and now ALICE at the LHC.
In 1970 Fabio Sauli joined the group at CERN and played an important role in the subsequent developments of the multiwire chamber and the drift chamber. Among these was another promising concept, the multistep avalanche chamber. This was developed in the period 1979–1989 with the aim of reaching even higher counting rates. The basic idea was to split the amplification into two stages and overcome space-charge effects that otherwise counteracted the gain. Here, other distinguished physicists participated in the experimental effort, including Amos Breskin, Stan Majewski, Wotjek Dominic and Vladimir Peskov.
These detectors were subsequently developed further and adapted for detecting UV light to tackle new applications, ranging from fundamental research to medicine, biology and industry. One approach is to use a multistep parallel-plate avalanche chamber coupled to an image intensifier and a CCD to read the UV light emitted during the avalanche. In comparison with photographic emulsions, there is a significant gain in time for data acquisition, with the added advantages of linearity, wider dynamic range in the intensity measurement and a greatly improved signal-to-noise ratio. In collaboration with Tom Ypsilantis and his group, a particular effort was devoted to improving the ring-imaging Cherenkov (RICH) counter, which is used to identify elementary particles. From these investigations, new solid and gas UV photocathodes have been invented and developed.
Georges spent time and effort to push the application of these detectors in medical radiology, where the trend is for digital read-out to replace photographic film so as to improve sensitivity and spatial resolution. The multistep avalanche chambers found important applications in β-radiography, which is employed in medical and biological investigations to form “images” of human or animal tissues labelled with β-emitting radionuclides. In 1989 Georges founded a new company, Biospace Instruments, aimed at using this technology for biomedical applications as well as a high-pressure xenon multiwire chamber for low-dose radiography.
In the 1980s Georges and I began a close collaboration at CERN, developing new detector concepts adapted to solve specific problems in particle physics, including a high-energy gamma telescope with good energy resolution. In 1990 we began working with Leon Lederman on a new device – the “optical trigger” – which was to select particles containing the b quark in real time in high-intensity proton collisions. These particles fly a short distance before decaying and this serves to differentiate the decay products from other particles produced in the target. In a suitably positioned, thin crystal cell, internal reflection enhances the Cherenkov light produced by the decay products – while that from other relativistic particles passes straight through. This provides a way to tag the b-quark particles and enrich the collected sample with good events.
In 1991 we proposed the Hadron Blind Detector, which was then developed by an international collaboration. In this concept, most of the particles produced in proton collisions, which are hadrons, are not seen by the detector, while electrons and high-momentum muons are reconstructed efficiently. This selection criterion filters out unwanted events. The concept was demonstrated in October 1992 at CERN, just before the announcement of the Nobel prize, at a time when Georges and other team members were conducting experiments at night. In these investigations we used a gaseous parallel-plate detector and while optimizing it we demonstrated experimentally the advantage of a narrow amplification gap. This triggered the idea of building a device with an even narrower amplification gap and from that a new detector concept was born: the Micro-Mesh gaseous structure or MicroMegas, which our group at Saclay has developed since 1995. Georges used to say that this detector and some other new concepts belonging to the family of micropattern gaseous detectors (MPGDs) will revolutionize nuclear and particle physics just as his detector did.
Georges spent many weekends and summer holidays at his house in Cargèse, a village established by Greeks at the end of the 18th century in Corsica. His house was located two steps from the Institut d’Etudes Scientifiques de Cargèse. Developed by the physicist Maurice Lévy in the 1960s, the institute became an important summer school for theoretical physics, gathering together some distinguished physicists and many of those involved in the Standard Model, which was under intense development at that time. Georges used to join these lectures during summer and always welcomed the participants at his house nearby for a sip of wine. He invited many physicists to his house to discuss new ideas in physics as well as many other subjects. Among these visitors was Alvaro De Rújula, who with Georges, Sheldon Glashow and Robert Wilson proposed the use of neutrinos produced by a multi-tera-electron-volt proton synchrotron as a tool for geological research: at these energies, the neutrinos are suitable for “tomography” of the Earth because they have a range comparable to its diameter.
Given his experiences during the Second World War as a political prisoner it is perhaps not surprising that later in life Georges became a highly motivated humanitarian campaigner. In particular, he was a founder member of the Yuri Orlov committee, the human-rights group that was set up by a group of accelerator and particle physicists at CERN in 1980. Orlov, a Soviet physicist who had been imprisoned for his support of human rights, soon became a cause célèbre in the western scientific world. Shortly afterwards the committee broadened its scope to support Anatoly Shcharansky and Andrei Sakharov – also in the Soviet Union – and many individuals elsewhere from the worlds of science, mathematics and technology who, for political or ideological reasons, were being persecuted or imprisoned by authoritarian régimes of differing political colours. One of Georges’ many public actions in this context was at the press conference organized by the Yuri Orlov committee at the United Nations in Geneva in October 1980. Already an eminent figure in science at that time, and well respected for his complete freedom from ideological bias, he was able to contribute much to the influence of this and similar events. The combined efforts of such groups and individual activists eventually bore fruit in the form of favourable outcomes in these three particular cases as well as in others worldwide.
In the mid-1990s Georges returned to Paris and a new life with highly diversified activities began for him. Keen to popularize science, he became widely known to the general public through several books that made physics accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Together with Richard Garwin he wrote Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age in which they evaluate the benefits of nuclear energy and show how it can provide an assured, economically feasible and environmentally responsible supply of energy that avoids the hazards of weapon proliferation. They make a strong statement in favour of arms control and outline specific strategies for achieving this goal worldwide. In 2004, with Henri Broch, he wrote Devenez Sorciers, Devenez Savants, later translated into English, which derided pseudoscience, astrology and other misconceptions (CERN Courier March 2005 p48).
Education was also of great importance to Georges. He created La Main à la P√¢te, an association to introduce hands-on science education in primary schools in France, an idea that had been first initiated in Chicago by his friend Leon Lederman. From 1996, with the support of the French Academy of Sciences and some of his colleagues, Georges propagated the new idea of teaching science in primary schools. The prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieur des Mines (ENSM) at Saint Etienne created a laboratory in his honour and established the “puRkwa Prize” to reward pedagogical initiatives that help children to acquire the scientific spirit.
Since returning to Paris, part of his scientific activity was connected to the work in my laboratory at Saclay, which he used to visit several times a year. We kept an old oscilloscope especially for him, as he disliked the new digital devices. He co-signed many publications related to our research. One example in 1996 was the new development by CERN and Saclay of a promising way of fabricating the MicroMegas detector, referred to as “bulk” technology, which is now widely used by many experiments and allows the fabrication of large and cost-effective detectors (CERN Courier December 2009 p23). Every two years, since 2002, we have organized a conference in Paris on Large TPCs for Low-Energy Detection. The purpose of the meeting is an extensive discussion of present and future projects using a large time-projection chamber (TPC) for low-energy and low-background detection of rare events (low-energy neutrinos, double beta decay, dark matter, solar axions etc.). Georges actively participated in the conference, giving introductory talks that pointed out links between science, education and technology.
Georges was active until the end. He recently published, together with François Vannucci, a new book, which can be considered as his testament, celebrating the physics that he loved. I met him at his home a day before his death and was impressed by the clarity of his mind. He was excited to hear of the new progress in physics and in detector developments conducted by my group. He was himself thinking about a novel radon detector, believing that its industrial success would allow him “to buy new shoes”, a phrase he used the day of the award of the Nobel prize 18 years ago.
Georges liked music and especially classic songs. He often invited musicians to his home in Paris and enjoyed the company of artists from the opera and friends at a typical Parisian bistro where they would sing around a piano player. For his last resting place, as he had wished, several musicians played classical music during the ceremony. I will keep in my memory a kind man, a humanist, who was enthusiastic, optimistic and always open to new ideas. I have the feeling, as many other colleagues do, that our second “father” has passed away.
I would like to thank Fabio Sauli, John Eades and Peter Schmid for their help in the preparation of this tribute.
During an intense series of meetings, which concluded on 17 September, the CERN Council overwhelmingly approved the laboratory’s revised Medium Term Plan for the period 2011 to 2015. The plan was originally presented to Council at its June session, at which Council asked CERN management to introduce cost-saving measures. In the revised plan, contributions from the member states will be reduced by a total SFr135 m over the five-year period; measures to consolidate CERN’s social security systems will bring the total reduction to the programme to SFr343 m.
The plan protects the LHC programme, achieving cost savings by slowing down the pace of other programmes. CERN management considers this a good result for the laboratory given the current financial environment. “The plan we presented to Council is firmly science-driven,” explained CERN’s director-general, Rolf Heuer. “It reduces spending on research and consolidation through careful and responsible adjustment of the pace originally foreseen in a way that does not compromise the future research programme unduly. The reductions will be painful, but in the current financial environment, they are fair.”
Among the programmes to be affected is the upgrade to the LHC’s beam intensity. This will now proceed later than originally planned, with the new linear accelerator expected to be connected in 2016 instead of 2015. In addition, there will be no running of CERN’s accelerators in 2012. The decision not to run the LHC in 2012 had already been taken in February for purely technical reasons; now the complete CERN accelerator complex will join the LHC in a year-long shutdown.
Looking further ahead, the plan allows for continuing R&D on the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) study and on high-intensity proton sources, but at a slower pace than originally foreseen. Work on CLIC may provide technology for the development of a new machine to study in depth the discoveries made by the LHC, while high-intensity proton sources will allow CERN to play its part in global developments for neutrino physics.
“Council’s decision is an important one for European science,” said Council president Michel Spiro. “Although Council acknowledges that the cuts will be painful, we recognize the excellent performance of the LHC and its detectors, and consequently took decisions that minimize the disruption to CERN and its global user community. Council’s decision underlines Europe’s commitment to basic research, and is testimony to the robustness of the CERN model of international collaboration in science. Council is grateful for the pragmatism, and the realism of the CERN management in proposing real cost savings in time of crisis.”
Many people around the world, not only particle physicists, were deeply saddened to learn that Georges Charpak passed away on 29 September.
A student of Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the Collège de France, Charpak joined CERN in 1959, just five years after the organization’s foundation. From the start, he applied himself to the development of new particle-detector techniques. His outstanding and pioneering efforts – particularly the invention of the multiwire proportional chamber in 1968 – revolutionized particle physics, taking the field into the electronic age. The techniques he pioneered are reflected in many experiments today, not only in particle physics but in many other areas of research.
The significance of his work did not go unnoticed and was crowned with the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992. In making this award, the Swedish Academy recognized not only Charpak’s contribution to science but also to society. Detectors evolved from his pioneering work have found applications in many walks of life ranging from medicine to security.
A full tribute and obituary will appear in the next issue of CERN Courier.
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