Past Spotlights
July 23, 2018 -
In Memory of Charles Richard Dickens
by Les Cottrell
On July 15, Janet Dixon shared the message with friends and family that her husband Charles Richard Dickens,
known as "Chuck" by people at SLAC, had passed away peacefully on July 14, 2018, at the age of 84.
"There was not any one condition that caused his death," she wrote. "It was more just a case of good
living and old age."
Chuck was a first-generation American, born in Alameda, California, to parents who came from England.
He started work at SLAC with the Computation Group in 1966, before the lab's construction was completed.
In 1969 he was appointed director of the SLAC Computation Center and then, upon the recommendation of a special search
committee headed by Professor Edward McClusky of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Chuck was
appointed as director of the Stanford Computation Center in 1971. He continued to lead SLAC's computer facility,
taking on the responsibility for establishing general policies and long-range planning of the lab's computing needs.
By 1980, he had turned his focus solely on SLAC, heading our Scientific Computing Services until his retirement.
During his leadership, he oversaw huge advancements in the field of computing, including the introduction of several
generations of IBM mainframes and operating systems, and the move from batch-only computing with teams of operators
managing tapes, printers, card readers and consoles 24/7, to "lights-out operation" with interactive terminals,
networking, the World Wide Web, Unix, and personal computers.
One of his favorite quotes was from a book by Jerome Friedman on data mining and statistics, which said: "Every time
computing power increases by a factor of ten, we should totally rethink how and what we compute."
He retired in 1996 after three decades at SLAC, prompting a nationwide search for his replacement, but would return
to celebrate milestone events like the 1998 shutdown party for SLAC's 17-year-old IBM Virtual Machine system or,
most recently, my own retirement earlier this year.
Chuck was a great leader, setting the vision for the group and providing opportunities, resources, and encouragement
to his people. He was also compassionate and understanding. Ken Martell once said, "My coolest recollection of Chuck
is when we (I was a computer operator in the union) went on strike around 1973. We were blocking the intersection of
Palm and Galvez on [Stanford] campus and I saw Chuck walking towards us. I thought, Oh [expletive], here goes my job!
Instead, he handed out PB&J sandwiches to us. He said we looked kind of hungry standing in the hot street."
He will be missed.
Memorial Service (UPDATED):
A Celebration of Chuck’ s life will be held at St. Augustine of Canterbury church on Saturday, September 29 at 2 p.m.
1800 Wildcat Blvd., Rocklin, CA with Pastor Liz Armstrong officiating. Memorial donations to Chuck’s memory can be
made to the Tam Alumni Association, PO Box 992, San Ramon, CA 94583.
April 23, 2018 - July 23, 2018
Roland Sharpe, 1924-2018
Roland L. Sharpe, the Supervising Engineer responsible for the original design and construction of SLAC, died on March 15, 2018 at 94.
Sharpe was responsible for recommending both the current design (instead of the initially proposed two parallel tunnels design), as well
as its present site. He later formed his own company and was in great demand internationally. SLAC reached out to Sharpe in 1994 and he
served as a consultant for seismic work as well as new research facility construction.
Shepherding the building of a landmark facility
In 1959 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) tasked Sharpe, who was with John Blume & Associates at that time, with reviewing the
University’s proposal to construct a $107 million Two-Mile Linear Electron Accelerator research facility. Sharpe and his team completed
a detailed feasibility study for the project with a cost estimate of $114 million. Upon Congressional approval and Stanford’s selection
of Aetron-Blume-Atkinson to manage the project, Sharpe became the Technical Director, in charge of all engineering and architectural
design and construction, except for that of the accelerator itself.
Sharpe worked closely with Panofsky and the physicists to develop an integrated workflow and schedule. A diplomatic manager, he
insisted on written minutes “to avoid arguments later.” At SLAC’s formal dedication in September 1966, President Lyndon Johnson
sent a telegram with "congratulations for completing the first major U.S. funded project within budget, on time, and works
as predicted."
A testament to Sharpe’s designs, the original structures from the early 1960’s sustained only minor damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake, and were evaluated with high marks by independent structural engineering firms 30 years after their construction - in sharp
contrast to many newer facilities deemed in need of serious strengthening..
Ongoing contributions to SLAC
In 1994, Sharpe to returned to SLAC as a consultant to reassess SLAC’s structures and. was recognized for his "intimate knowledge of
SLAC, vast experience,… and intellectual curiosity [which enabled SLAC] to develop an innovative seismic assessment program."
Beyond developing the Seismic Program, Sharpe contributed to other successful SLAC projects including the SPEAR3 project (dedicated in 2004)
and the Linac Coherent Light Source – LCLS (dedicated in 2010).
Prolific author and mentor
Roland Sharpe was the author of over 200 technical papers throughout his career. He was also a valued member of many professional organizations:
- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Distinguished Member
- Structural Engineering World Congress (SEWC) Founder, Past President
- Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Honorary Member
- Structural Engineers Association of California College of Fellows and Honorary Member
- Japan Structural Consultants Association (JSCA) Honorary Member
- Association of Consulting Engineers India, Honorary Fellow Member
Memorial service arrangements and obituary details will be provided when available.
References:
Huggins, R. The Development of Seismic Guidelines for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC-PUB-7248). Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, August 1996.
Sharpe, R. Engineering Design Summary Report for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (ABA-107). Aetron-Blume-Atkinson, 1966.
Sharpe, R. 52-Year Application of Provisions to Major Research Facility. 14th U.S.-Japan Workshop on the Improvement of Structural Design and Construction Practices, December 3-5, 2012.
March 1, 2018 - April 23, 2018
John Ehrman, 1935-2018
Dr. John Robert Ehrman was born on July 5, 1935 in Richmond VA, and earned his PhD in physics at the University of Illinois. While there he took a
programming course on the ILLIAC and became, in his words, "hooked on computers." He also programmed their IBM 650, of course again in the
low-level assembly language which became his passion. After graduation he was hired by the computer center to manage the group running their IBM 7090/7094
computers.
In February of 1964 in San Francisco he went to his first meeting of the IBM SHARE Users Group, and his reaction was "this is much more fun
than staid, stodgy academic conferences." That meeting was the start of his participation in that organization for over half a century.
After leaving Illinois he traveled around the country before taking a job in the computer center at SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
in February 1966. He taught assembler language courses both at SLAC and on the Stanford campus, and worked on projects involving Assembler, Fortran, and
the Wylbur interactive text editor. He often wrote up meticulous notes in his fine calligraphic hand for distribution to anyone interested. In 1971 he
published a textbook, "System/360 and assembler language programming."
He remained active in SHARE, was involved in projects for them on Assembler, Fortran, and Testran, and served on their board from 1972-1974.
John left SLAC in 1983 and joined IBM at their Santa Teresa lab in San Jose. In 1988 he began a project to create the High Level Assembler, which
incorporated and expanded on the earlier user-contributed "SLAC mods" to the standard Assembler H. In May of 1992 the first version was released,
and it continued to be actively developed for the next twenty years.
John loved classical choral music, and was a bass singer in Schola Cantorum, based in Mountain View, for 52 years.
John is survived by a younger sister who lives in Sacramento, and by Tineke Graafland, his wife and partner of 33 years. Tineke and John had met
at SLAC, where she worked in the Human Resources department.
John died at home of cancer on February 20, 2018.
John Ehrman biography
January 22, 2018 - February 28, 2018
Bill Burgess: Greatly Loved, Much Missed and Very Fondly Remembered!
Bill died at 11 am on October 10, 2017 in Arizona at 75 years young, with all of his close family present. His wife Myra, Greg,
his eldest son, who came from Scotland to help over the last few weeks, Greg's wife, (Mya), and their two daughters arrived in time
to be with Bill before he finally gave up the fight, and his youngest son, Paul, who had been with them all the time, and of great
help as they all struggled with Myra and Bill's ill health.
Bill had been finding life increasingly more difficult these last few years with severe arthritis making walking difficult, and a
multi-year struggle with lung cancer, going through surgery and radical chemotherapy, but ever upbeat, always looking for the silver
lining, and always with a "to the point" joke to tell at everyone's expense, and most often with a glass of good malt
scotch nearby. In typical fashion, he dealt with the weakening legs by getting a powerful electric motor scooter to aid his getting around
(and he enjoyed terrorizing walkers and fellow-shoppers when he visited the local shopping centers. Some of us remember an unlikely,
yet very joyous, celebration lunch at Domaine Chandon, celebrating the announcement of Bill being declared cancer free in April 2015,
after his very long and very hard fight overcoming lung cancer.
Born, educated and wed in Scotland, he matured in cryogenic engineering at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, the
European center for high energy physics founded just after the end of WW II, and supported by some 22 European countries. There he
worked under the direction of Tom Taylor. He was well liked, a very hard worker and anxious to learn all he could in this new,
exciting environment. His practical and intuitive knowledge of cryogenics was admired and valued by colleagues and he contributed to
the successful installation and operation of the CERN ISR, (Intersecting Storage Ring) low-beta insertion, the first system of
superconducting magnets routinely operated in a particle collider. Later, he went on to work on LEP, (the Large Electron Project),
superconducting high-luminosity insertion, which again was brought to a timely and successful completion. He left CERN with a record
of project successes and had earned the reputation of being a strong team player. His many friendships from that era lasted
throughout his SLAC time, indeed until his death.
Bill was recruited in 1988 to take on a challenging job at SLAC where the first electron-positron linear collider was being built.
Working directly with Bill Ash, he was part of the team building the SLD detector for the new collider Tiny beam spot sizes, (one
micron), and high magnetic field gradient super-conducting quadrupole design were the technical parameters forced by the science, and
Bill's first job was the design of the liquid helium system that brought in the cryo-coolant, but could not take up too much space.
This was Bill's first challenge. His second was moving into a leadership engineering role, in a new lab with new colleagues. All of
this he accomplished well. He quickly built a cadre of friends, created a technical team, together with Bill Ash, and integrated
into the SLD experiment quickly and effectively. His proposed technical solution faced critical opposition from some of the local
conservative engineers, but in the end his ingenious design worked beautifully!
Also as part of the SLD/SLC project, Bill managed to rescue a considerable amount of the cryogenic equipment from the Texas SSC
project. It required political as well as technical skills of the first order to make the two manufacturers, (Air Liquide in France
and Sulzer in Switzerland), acquiesce to the terms of their contracts. But Bill did so in typical fashion, and actually made all of
it work reliably, as specified. He also did a substantial rework on the spin-rotator magnets for the SLC Polarized Gun project, and
engineered the Accelerator Polarized Gun cooling system, and later the repositioning and modification of the helium liquefier used
for the hydrogen targets for the experiments at End Station A. And still later, he was responsible for the testing and commissioning
of the large, new BaBar superconducting magnet, which included taking many trips to Europe to help in bringing that construction
project to completion.
He also had another important skill, (especially for someone who would retire in a few more years), and that was his good habit of
good documentation. He managed that aspect of the Cryogenic Group very well. Any question about any component on any system under
his charge would be answered in short order. He also brought all of the cryogenic control systems up to current technology of digital
and computer control.
His infectious enthusiasm was only outdone by his honesty. One could not help liking him, and his ability to manage/build team spirit
and develop technical know-how as he mentored younger colleagues was something he was proud of. One of his technical consultant
colleagues, Hans Quack, said on the occasion of Bill's retirement, "Bill brought interesting solutions to cryogenic problems,
but more importantly, he brought color into our lives." So true.
Bill was one of those rare people who seemed larger than life, always with a great big cheerful smile on his face, and he will
never be forgotten by those who spent time with him. He made lifelong friendships wherever he worked or even traveled. European
colleagues invited him to their homes and would stay at Bill and Myra's home when visiting the United States. He and his beloved
Myra were amazing hosts at their well known parties and dinners. He loved to barbecue and to entertain. And indeed, Bill really loved
life.
He is remembered with great warmth and with admiration for his hard work and engineering talent.
This article has been pulled together by friends and colleagues who worked with Bill Burgess: M. Breidenback, A. Candia, W.
Craddock. V. Flynn, D. leith, S. St. Lorant, M. Smith. We are grateful for help from
CERN from Tom Taylor and Philippe Lebrun.
September 29, 2017 - January 22, 2018;
SLAC Newsletters ALL digital!
The SLAC Archives, History & Records Office (AHRO)
recently completed a long-term project to digitize
and deposit in an archival repository all of the
available laboratory's staff newsletters from 1963 to
May 2011. The newsletters and their index are available
online
We are still on the hunt for a few missing issues
from the 1960s and 1970s, and
will be more than grateful to any 'Lab Hero' who can locate
one or more of these until now fugitive publications.
February 6, 2017 - September 29, 2017
Share your memories of Sid
Sidney Drell was an integral part of SLAC and Stanford through decades of his career,
during which he was known for his significant contributions to science, national security
and nuclear arms control. A man of conscience and integrity, Drell was also known for his
humility and wisdom, making lasting impressions on the people whose lives he touched.
As a way of celebrating and remembering him, we'd like to collect any of your "Sid Stories"
that you would like to share with us, be they funny, serious, casual, profound ...
or somewhere in-between.
Share your story
Read Sid stories shared by others
October 31, 2014 - February 6, 2017
Stanford Web Archive Portal (SWAP) Launches with SLAC's First Web Pages
- Stanford University Libraries press release, October 2014, announcing launch of Stanford Wayback Archive with SLAC's
first pages
- SLAC's press release October 29, 2014
- SUL October 2014 video tour of SLAC's first U.S. website
- CBS Channel 5
news story (video) on SLAC's first U.S. website
Read more in AHO's online exhibit
August 22, 2013 - October 31, 2014
The Universe Through Fermi's Eyes: Celebrating the First Five Years
On June 11, 2008, what was then the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) rode a Delta II rocket into
low-Earth orbit. After two months of tests and checks and calibrations, on August 11, 2008, NASA declared GLAST
open for business as astrophysics' premier eye on the gamma-ray sky. Five years, a name change, a near miss with
a defunct Soviet spy satellite, and countless surprises later, the spacecraft now known as the Fermi Gamma-ray
Space Telescope (FGST) is still going strong, with another five-year mission stretching ahead of it.
Read more in SLAC Today 8/22/2013
July 8, 2013 - August 22, 2013
On July 6, 1973, a team of research pioneers extracted the first hard X-rays from SLAC's particle accelerator
SPEAR. The event marked the beginning of a new era of accelerator-based X-ray science and spawned the Stanford
Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), which continues to lead the field today.
- SPEAR-heading X-ray Science for 40
Years, SLAC Today, 7/8/2013
- Archives short feature: Stanford Synchrotron Radiation
Project (SSRP)
- John Harris and Herman Winick, "SSRL
Report: SPEAR Becomes a Shared Facility," The SLAC Beam Line, 1-2/1980, p.14-15
- Sebastian Doniach, Keith Hodgson, Ingolf Lindau, Piero Pianetta, and Herman Winick, Early Work with
Synchrotron Radiation at Stanford, Journal of Synchrotron Radiation (1997) 4, p.380-395
May 8, 2013 - July 8, 2013
The SLAC "Accelepede" won first prize for
costume contest in the 72nd Annual Bay to Breakers in San Francisco
on Sunday, May 15, 1983. Thirty-one SLACers and friends costumed in red boxes connected by white ducts ran the
race, attended by two volunteer "repair units." The team, represented by John Winston, Rob Witthuas, Bob Gex, and
Ken Witthaus, donated their prize, an Atari 5200 SuperSystem video game console,
to Children's Hospital at Stanford.
[See also SLAC Today, 5/20/2013, "History
Spotlight: The 1983 Bay to Breakers SLAC 'Accelepede'"]
August 20, 2012 - May 8, 2013
Celebrating 50 Years of Discovery
Archives
exhibit at Arrillaga Alumni Center extended through May 2013
May 10, 2012 - August 20, 2012
First beam injected into B-Factory: On May 10, 1997, "at about 3:00 a.m. the first beam was injected into the
PEP-II high energy ring and immediately traveled a third of the way around the 2 kilometer circumference."
April 2, 2012 - May 10, 2012
Five Years Ago...On April 5, 2007 the LCLS burst
into life with the first electrons from the new radio-frequency photocathode gun.
Ten Years Ago...The Research Office Building (aka the ROB or Bldg. 048) was officially dedicated on April 2,
2002. The Interaction Point, May 2002, page 3
March 22, 2012 - April 2, 2012
Five years ago a new tool for peering into the materials that make up living systems
was dedicated. Dignitaries at the dedication of SSRL's Molecular Observatory for
Structural Molecular Biology at Beamline 12 included Stanford President John Hennessy,
Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau, and Intel co-founder and philanthropist Gordon
Moore.
February 24, 2012 - March 22, 2012
20th Anniversary of a Great
Idea: Building the LCLS at SLAC
The spectacular success of the Linac Coherent Light Source
(LCLS), the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser, has put SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at
the frontier of photon science. Although relevant work was done by many scientists 30 or more years ago, the idea
for the LCLS at SLAC really got started 20 years ago, when 146 scientists from around the world gathered here
in 1992 – from Feb. 24 to Feb. 27 – for the Workshop on Fourth Generation Light Sources.
December 2, 2011 - February 24, 2012
Twenty years ago, December 12, 1991, the first World Wide Web server at SLAC (and first
server outside of Europe) was successfully installed. SLAC's web site was later referred to by Sir Tim Berners-Lee
as the “killer app” for the web.
October 20, 2011 - December 2, 2011
On October 20, 2006, SLAC broke ground for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world's first X-ray
free-electron laser. Only 5 years ago and already it is producing world-class science.
October 4, 2011 - October 20, 2011
It's Nobel season again. Thirty-five years ago, Burton Richter got the call. He and Samuel Ting (MIT) were
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the Ψ/J particle.
September 15, 2011 - October 4, 2011
Twenty years ago, September 1991, SLAC physicist Paul Kunz brought word from CERN of the World Wide Web's existence to SLAC. He shared the news with Louise Addis of the
SLAC Library. Paul and Louise immediately saw the tool's potential to allow members of the particle physics
community easier access to SPIRES, a heavily used database of scientific literature. From there it spread to the
entire world...
August 10,2011 - September 15, 2011
Twenty years ago, August 1991, Paul Ginsparg, a theoretical physicist, started the first e-print archive at
hep-th@xxx.lanl.gov and invited fellow string theorists to deposit the TeX source for their new preprints by e-mail.
New preprints were announced and distributed by listserv making it possible for any physicist on the Internet to
keep up with the preprint literature.
- arXiv.org
- "The
First Free Research-Sharing
Site, arXiv, Turns 20 With an Uncertain Future," Josh Fischman, The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/10/2011
- "Brief and Biased History of Preprint and
Database Activities at the SLAC Library, 1962-1994 (with a few updates in Jan 1997, Jun 1999, Apr 2000, Jan
2002)," Louise Addis
- "Citing and Reading Behaviours in
High-Energy Physics: How a Community Stopped Worrying about Journals and Learned to Love Repositories,"
Anne Gentil-Beccot and Travis Brooks, 8/2009, SLAC-PUB-13693
- "Information Resources in
High-Energy Physics: Surveying the Present Landscape and Charting the Future Course," Anne Gentil-Beccot,
Salvatore Mele, Annette Holtkamp, Heath B. O'Connell, and Travis Brooks, 4/7/2008, SLAC-PUB-13199
June 20, 2011 - August 10,2011
Five years ago, June/19-23/2006, scientists used a ten-ton block of ice in End Station A to calibrate the
Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), a radio antenna array designed to fly over the South Pole on a
NASA balloon to search for ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrinos.
June 2, 2011 - June 20, 2011
The first synchrotron radiation coronary angiogram recorded on a human subject
occurred in May 1986 at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL).
May 20, 2011 - June 2, 2011
May 21, 1966, after five long years of massive and painstaking engineering and construction, the brand new
SLAC two-mile linear accelerator was about to (it was hoped) deliver its first
beam.
May 5, 2011 - May 20, 2011
Thirty-five years ago, in early May, charmed mesons were discovered at SPEAR by a SLAC-LBL group. On May 3
Gerson Goldhaber began to see a narrow peak at 1.87 GeV while François Pierre saw a similar spike in another graph.
On May 5 they sent around a joint memorandum to the collaboration. On May 8 Goldhaber phoned Sheldon Glashow, one
of the principal founding fathers of charm, to inform him of the evidence in confidence. On June 8, the group
issued a press release to announce that the long-sought "charmed" particle had been found.
Read more...
- Text of June 8, 1976 press
release, SLAC Beam Line, June 1976, p.2
- The Hunting of the
Quark, Sheldon Glashow, SLAC Beam Line, September 1976, p.Q-1
- The Hunting of the Quark: A True Story of Modern Physics, Michael Riordan, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987,
p.317-321
April 1, 2011 - May 5, 2011
SLAC Director Persis Drell observes that change is nothing new for staff who have been
at SLAC for 20 or 30 or 40 years. "In fact, on an absolute scale, our pace of change has actually slowed down from
the early days. ... The history of SLAC is a collection of miracles driven by the wits of the wonderful SLAC staff
who work there."
March 17, 2011 - April 1, 2011
March 17 marks two important anniversaries for the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology,
jointly located at SLAC and Stanford University. Eight years ago KIPAC itself was inaugurated with a
grant from Fred Kavli and the Kavli Foundation, while Pehong and Adele Chen provided for an endowed directorship,
held from its inception by SLAC and Stanford astrophysicist Roger Blandford. Three years later, March 17, 2006 saw
the dedication of the Kavli Building. Read more
February 24, 2011 - March 17, 2011
In February 1986, at the urging of the American Institute of Physics, the SLAC History Project was initiated with
a records survey in all administrative groups.
Under the direction of Bill Kirk, Assistant to the Director, the History Project used a survey to identify
important records, created an inventory database (SLACHIST), established a physical archives, and initiated an oral
history program. Staff of the Project included Bill Kirk, Louise Addis, and Marie LaBelle.
January 25, 2011 - February 23, 2011
On February 10, 1966, a ceremony was held at SLAC to place the last bolt -- the "golden
bolt" -- in the two-mile-long accelerator, making the underground device one physical unit for the first
time.
Even though
construction was completed in February, sectional testing of the linac continued through May of
1966, when the first beam successfully traveled the entire length of the linac.
November 9, 2010 - January 25, 2011
On November 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton named Sidney D. Drell as a winner of the Enrico Fermi Award, given for
a lifetime of achievement in the field of nuclear energy. The citation recognized Drell for "his major
contributions to arms control and national security in studies showing that a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is
compatible with maintaining the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons; and for providing practical and
innovative solutions to national security problems and nuclear weapons safety in general. He has also made major
contributions to our understanding of elementary particles."
October 13, 2010
It's National Fossil Day. Pay a visit
to Paleoparadoxia, a rare herbivorous marine mammal, at
the SLAC Visitor Center
October 6, 2010 - November 9, 2010
(with interruption on October 13 for National Fossil Day)
It's Nobel season and two of SLAC's Nobelists mark significant anniversaries this year.
- 35th: Discovery of the tau lepton by Martin Perl and collaborators at SLAC's SPEAR
- 20th: Nobel Prize awarded to SLAC's Richard Taylor, Jerome Friedman (MIT), and Henry Kendall (MIT)
for investigations of deep inelastic scattering at SLAC's End Station A
- 15th: Nobel Prize awarded to Martin Perl for discovery of the tau lepton (see above)
For more information see our Nobel page and the SLAC Virtual Visitor Center.
June 23, 2010 - October 6, 2010
Fifteen years ago in June 1995, members of the Homebrew Computer Club reunited at SLAC for the taping of a PBS television documentary. Homebrew began
meeting at SLAC 35 years ago in 1975.
May 28, 2010 - June 23, 2010
May 28, 1970: Jack Goad, long-time employee in Manufacturing and Fabrication's Light Machine Shop was SLAC's first
retiree.
April 27, 2010 - May 28, 2010
Has it really been five years since Archimedes made his appearance at SLAC?
Using SLAC science for heritage preservation was of great interest to the archives world.
April 1, 2010 - April 27, 2010
Did SLAC host ghosts 30 and 35 years ago?
March 2, 2010 - March 31, 2010
On February 28, 2000 NASA announced the award
to Stanford University for development of a space-based gamma ray telescope named GLAST. The
telescope was to be a collaboration of NASA, the Department of Energy, and five non-US nations. The management
of the project was to be centered at SLAC.
GLAST is now the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
February 17, 2010 - March 1, 2010
Forty years ago this month French President Georges Pompidou was the first head of state to visit SLAC while in
power. The President arrived by helicopter on the SLAC Green on Friday, February 27, 1970.
December 8, 2009 - February 17, 2010
In December 1991 the web became truly worldwide when SLAC launched the first web site
in North America.
November 1, 2009 - December 8, 2009
Thirty-five years ago this month the world of physics was dazzled when two separate experiments
at SLAC and at Brookhaven independently discovered the first of a new set of particle states, the J/Psi particle.
The events were dubbed the November Revolution.
October 21, 2009 - November 1, 2009
Twenty years ago this month the Bay Area was struck by the Loma Prieta
earthquake. Read about the effect on SLAC and its recovery in "SLAC
Survives a Pretty Big One" in the December 1989 issue of the SLAC
Beam Line. Other local archives share memories:
October 19, 2009 - October 20, 2009
New Archives Month Contest! Share the inside story on working at
this lab and celebrate the many and varied contributions of all sorts of
specialists to its daily science and science support activities. Do you
have a significant item in your work area right now? Something you use or
have used - or see or have seen - on a regular basis that has special
meaning to you in your work? Take a photograph of the item and write a
few words explaining its significance. See our contest page for more details.
October 15, 2009 - October 19, 2009
Twenty years ago this weekend the Bay Area was struck by the Loma Prieta
earthquake. Read about the effect on SLAC and its recovery in "SLAC
Survives a Pretty Big One" in the December 1989 issue of the SLAC
Beam Line.
October 1, 2009 - October 15, 2009
New Archives Month Contest! Share the inside story on working at
this lab and celebrate the many and varied contributions of all sorts of
specialists to its daily science and science support activities. Do you
have a significant item in your work area right now? Something you use or
have used - or see or have seen - on a regular basis that has special
meaning to you in your work? Take a photograph of the item and write a
few words explaining its significance. See our contest page for more details.
August 21, 2009 - September 30, 2009
On August 21, 1969, the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to today’s Department of Energy,
made the final
payment to Stanford University for the construction of the original SLAC linac, experimental endstations and
supporting infrastructure. Associate Director of the Business Services Division Fred V. L. Pindar (seated, second
from left) is seen signing a bit of paperwork while members of the AEC and SLAC staffs look on. Standing directly
behind Fred Pindar (wearing sunglasses) is Win Field, SLAC staff counsel.
August 13, 2009 - August 21, 2009
BaBar was dedicated on August 13, 1999 with a celebration
honoring international collaboration. Participants, sporting souvenir BaBar caps, gathered on the SLAC Green to
listen to speakers including Martha Krebs, Director of DOE's Office of Science as well as respresentatives from
SLAC and the collaboration.
August 1, 2009 - August 13, 2009
On August 1, 1964, Sheldon Glashow and James Bjorken published a paper in Physics
Letters in which they coined the term "charm" for a theoretical new particle, the charm quark. The paper is cited more than 550 times in
the SPIRES-HEP database.
May 1, 2009 - July 31, 2009
35th Anniversary X-ray science at SLAC began with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation
Project (SSRP). A
successful pilot
project at SPEAR led to the National Science Foundation funding the SSRP which began operations in May 1974, 8
months ahead of schedule. SSRP was the world's first synchrotron radiation hard x-ray light source based on an
electron storage ring and led to a revolution in x-ray science.
April 14, 2009 - April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 11 marked the 20th anniversary of the first recording of a Z° particle by the Stanford Linear
Collider. The feature article in the April 1989 issue of the SLAC employee newsletter, SLAC Beam Line,
crowed, "The long wait is over," but Burton Richter's lab director's column in the same issue cautioned staff that
the SLC still had a long road ahead of it.
It was 20 years ago this month, in that same issue of SLAC Beam Line, that the Stanford Synchrotron
Radiation Laboratory announced a major advance in the imaging of human coronary arteries employing dual beams of
synchrotron radiation produced in a dedicated run at the SPEAR storage ring.
Read the entire April 1989 issue of the SLAC Beam Line
online.
January 9, 2009 - April 14, 2009
We continue to reap the rewards of our Archives Month contest last October. Just
before the winter shutdown, Ray Wallace, formerly of Power Conversion, brought in a stack of newsletters that he has
saved over the years.
The contest is over, but we are still accepting donations. The list has been updated.
November 10, 2008 - January 9, 2009
And the winners of the random drawing are...
- Cherrill Spencer
- David Aston
- John Halperin
- Ruth McDunn
We thank everyone who participated in our Archives Month contest. We received 112
gap-filling newsletter issues
from present and former lab staff. For more details see SLAC
Today (11/4/2008).
Cherrill Spencer also earned a special commendation prize for the highest number of valid entries which filled
75 gaps!
October 1, 2008 - November 10, 2008
The SLAC Archives & History Office is celebrating American Archives Month (October
2008) with a contest to help
complete our collection of SLAC published newsletter. Archives staff have identified gaps in our holdings of SLAC
popular periodical publications—like SLAC News, Beam Line, The Interaction Point (TIP), SSRL Users Newsletter,
Computing@SLAC, etc.
May 6, 2008 - September 30, 2008
We are thrilled that Olof Hallonsten, PhD student at Lund
University in Sweden, is diligently researching part of SLAC's history of photon science. His aim is to explore the
multiple and complex relationships between scientific conduct in a laboratory and the characteristics of instrumentation and infrastructure through the case of synchrotron light facilities. He is using SSRL, MAX-lab, and ESRF as his case studies. We look forward to the completion of his thesis.
For a peek at his work see “Why large research infrastructures can
be built despite small investments? MAX-lab and the
Swedish research infrastructure,” part of the SISTER working paper series, co-written with Mats Benner.
9/15/2009 UPDATE: Olof successfully defended his thesis Small science on big machines last
Friday.
February 7, 2008 - May 6, 2008
Wolfgang "Pief" K. H. Panofsky died of a
heart attack on the evening of September 24, 2007. Pief was the founding
director of the lab
and led SLAC until 1984. He
remained active and engaged until the day of his death.
September 25, 2007 - February 7, 2008
Wolfgang "Pief" K. H. Panofsky died of a heart attack on the evening of September 24, 2007. Pief was the founding director of the lab and led
SLAC until 1984. He remained active and engaged until the day of his death. We will miss him very, very much. As a way of celebrating and remembering him, we'd like to collect any of your "Pief Stories" that you would like to share with us,
be they funny, serious, casual, profound, or somewhere in-between. Staff
Memorial for Dr. Panofsky, September 28, 2007 (streaming video)
May 2005 - September 25, 2007
Welcome to our newly renovated web site. Be sure to check out the new Digital Resources and Oral History pages.
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