Gordon Donaldson - Remembrance

January 28, 2013 (PO17-U).  Gordon Bryce Donaldson died in Glasgow on November 28, 2012 at the age of 71.  He was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Strathclyde and a prominent member of the worldwide applied superconductivity community.  Through most of his career he was deeply involved in the design, fabrication and practical applications of SQUIDs.  

Gordon was born in Edinburgh on August 10, 1941, and brought up and educated in Glasgow, which was so very much his home city.  After attending Glasgow Academy he won a scholarship to study physics at Cambridge University, where he was a member of Christ’s College.  He stayed at Cambridge for his PhD, working on tunnelling between superconductors at the Royal Society Mond Laboratory under the direction of

In 1975, after a sabbatical at The University of California, Berkeley with John Clarke’s group, Gordon moved back to Glasgow to a lectureship in the Department of Applied Physics at Strathclyde University where he founded a new research group to make and use superconducting devices, especially SQUIDs. From quite modest beginnings, with just two staff and one tiny laboratory, the group grew steadily, acquiring new facilities and members, until in the 1990s it had well over 20 members together with a host of collaborators from elsewhere in Glasgow and abroad. He was appointed to a personal professorship in 1985 and became Professor of Applied Physics two years later. He was also head of department from 1984 to 1986 and again from 1993 to 1998.

Gordon’s research interests extended well beyond Strathclyde.   In 1988 with funding from the Wellcome Trust he started a ten-year collaboration with Glasgow University and the Southern General Hospital to establish a new laboratory to use SQUIDs made at Strathclyde for biomagnetic measurements on patients and volunteers.

Late 1986 saw the advent of high-temperature (high-T_c ) superconductivity. This unexpected discovery was hugely significant and exciting, with an explosive interest in superconductivity and with funding worldwide to match. In due course, a UK National Committee for Superconductivity was established.   Gordon became its Coordinator for three years from 1990.  Its role was to promote and support UK superconductivity research in industry and academia, and he and his team visited all UK groups many times, making sure support was effectively and fairly distributed.  He was especially proud of having established the Cambridge Winter School in Superconductivity, first held in 1991, which ran every year for a decade, bringing together experts for an intensive week of training for PhD students and young research staff from all parts of the UK and beyond.  He led missions to the USA, Europe and Japan to promote the UK’s position. He also made other fact-finding trips abroad on behalf of various government agencies.

In 1998 he was invited to become editor of Superconductor Science and Technology (SuST), a London-based international journal. Research in high-T_c superconductivity was exceedingly active at that time.  He was editor until 2008, remaining on their Editorial Board for some years after. He was a key member from 1990 to 1993 of the Low Temperature Group of the Institute of Physics in London, and became its Chairman for the last three years of his tenure.

Through all this time Gordon was much involved in teaching and in many university matters.  He was particularly fond of the course How Things Work that he developed and taught for fifteen years, which was so much in keeping with his passion for useful practical physics and science.  He was appointed to the Institute of Physics Degree Accreditation Committee (for UK and Ireland). He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and became Convenor of their Physics Panel. He was a Trustee of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation, also in Edinburgh.  There were sabbaticals in Virginia 1981 and in Sydney Australia in 1999, where he made many new friends and from which he brought home new research ideas.  There were also trips to China and twice to India, as well as many lectures at summer-schools throughout Europe.

Gordon’s  long list of publications and contributions to books attest to his many contributions to the advance of superconducting technology. He will be especially remembered as co-inventor of thin-film SQUID gradiometers and independent originator of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials and structures using SQUIDs.

 He organised and chaired two international conferences, one in Glasgow in 1991 (ISEC—International Superconductive Electronics Conference) and a larger one (EUCAS—European Conference on Applied Superconductivity) in Edinburgh in 1995, together with smaller specialist meetings.  During his Australian sabbatical, it was his enthusiasm and customary way of making a good case that led to ISEC’s being held in Sydney in 2003.

He is survived by his wife Christine, his son and daughter and two grandchildren.

We end on a personal note.  We have lost a close colleague and a good friend, and will miss him greatly, as will so many others in the wider academic community of which he was such a key member.  We have fond memories of his unforgettable stories, told with such style and humour, of our harmonious collaborations and of the leisure time spent together—outings here, there and everywhere—which we shall always cherish.

Colin Pegrum, Alex Braginski and John Clarke

Rob McGrath died in a Car Accident

October 7, 2012 (PO16)  Dr. William (Rob) McGrath died on August 8, 2012 in a car accident while vacationing with his family.  Rob graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and attended University of California, Berkeley obtaining a Ph.D in Physics.  Currently he was a Project Manager/Senior Research Scientist/Principal Physicist at JPL Pasadena supervising the Submillimeter-Wave Superconductive Sensors Group.

He developed quantum-noise limited SIS heterodyne receivers, pioneered THz hot-electron superconducting bolometers (HEB) at JPL and performed original studies of mixing mechanisms in high-T_c based Josephson junctions and HEBs.

His awards include: Lew Allen Award for Excellence from JPL, three other Recognition Awards from JPL, sixteen NASA Achievement Awards including two NASA Space Act Awards, and NASA Recognition Award for Analysis of "High-T_c Hot Electron Superconductive Mixer for Terahertz Applications".  He held six patents, over 180 publications and participated in the following professional organizations: IEEE, APS, Sigma Xi, and MIT Club of SoCal. He enjoyed scuba diving, biking, snow skiing, astronomy and wood-working. He is survived by his wife Lisa, of twenty-five years and daughter Kelly.

This obituary might be replaced by a more comprehensive one, if we obtain additional relevant information.

Jens Müller Is Victim of Tragic Accident

August 10, 2012 (PO15).  On July 24, 2012 we lost our colleague and friend Jens Müller in a tragic accident.  He drowned in the waters of Atlantic Ocean while saving the life of his son.

In the superconductor community, Jens was well-known as CEO of the German companies Trithor and Zenergy Power, which marked just two stations in his professional life fully dedicated to superconductor technology.

Jens was born on December 11, 1979 and, as a lucky coincidence, graduated from high school just in the aftermath of the discovery of high-temperature superconductors (HTS).  He immediately became attracted to this field, and the long-range perspective of solving fundamental issues in electric power technology by implementation of HTS.   

Jens Müller, 2010 (© Werner Stapelfeldt)

The first commercial breakthrough came in 2008 when the billet heater was successfully commissioned as the world’s first industrial scale HTS installation in a German aluminum extrusion plant.  The convincing concept and large energy savings of this product were immediately recognized and awarded a number of prestigious prizes – among them the Hermes Award (2008, see HE15), German Environmental Award (2009), the Innovation Award for Climate and Environment (2009), and the European Business Award for the Environment (2010).

At the same time, Jens initiated within the Zenergy group the development of large HTS generators and fault current limiters for electric power supply. The first hydro-generator has been successfully tested and will be soon installed in a German hydro-power plant.  Another premiere was the first live-grid HTS fault current limiter installation that protected Southern California in 2010 from a power outage due to a sudden current surge.
Jens also pushed the development of lower- cost HTS coated conductors.  Zenergy started developing a 2G manufacturing process based on ink-jet printing and an all-chemical solution approach.

In 2011, the board of directors decided to abandon the superconductivity activities at Zenergy.  Jens was released from his position at the Zenergy Power group and could not prevent the insolvency of the German Zenergy Power branch.  To continue the work on HTS components, he founded,  together with former fellow partners, the engineering consulting company ECO5 with focus on the development of HTS wind power generators.
Jens Müller was a visionary – always one step ahead, and a tireless promoter of the HTS cause.  He initiated significant developments and increased public awareness of superconductor technology. His inventions are documented in numerous patents.
Jens was a friendly and cheerful person, who gave hold, strength, and confidence to his colleagues and fellow men. His successes were due to expertise, tireless efforts deep commitment, and the unique skill to convince and to inspire others with his ideas.

Jens lost his life at the age of only 42.  With him we have lost a protagonist of superconductor technology, an excellent businessman, partner, and friend.  He has left marks, and the gap caused by his death will be hard to close. Our grief and deep compassion is with his wife and three kids. 

By Werner Prusseit  (ivSupra) and Ursula Kollenbach (formerly Zenergy Power)

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Ray Sarwinski Passed Away in March 2011

August 8, 2012 (PO14).  Raymond Edmund (Ray) Sarwinski was born Jan 11, 1936. He was raised in Peru, Illinois, where he attended the St. Beade Academy (a Catholic high school), of which he was later a benefactor, and the LaSalle College. His academic education included a B.S. in Physics, an M.S. in Physics/Mathematics and Ph.D. in Engineering Physics, all from the University of Illinois. His Ph.D. dissertation was on a NMR method of spin-echo to measure diffusion coefficients. His advisor was John Wheatley who later moved to the University of California at San Diego and also founded S.H.E. Corporation, the first ever SQUID and ultra-low temperature cryogenics (dilution refrigerator) company.

Ray's first employer was the Ohio State University, where he was a Research Associate (1966-1967) and assistant Professor (1967-1972). During the summer of 1970, Wheatley asked Ray to become SHE's first president, but he declined, wanting to keep his faculty position. However, in 1972 he moved to San Diego, CA to join SHE as its Senior Physicist, becoming SHE's Manager of R&D. Ray's work with Georgio Frossati at the Centre de Recherches sur les Très Basses Températures in Grenoble, France led to the development of SHE's 400 and 500 series of dilution refrigerators that achieved temperatures as low as 2.9 mK.
 
In 1982, Ray became an independent consultant at an impressive number of institutions and companies, including Quantum Design, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, BioMagnetic Technologies, Aerojet General, Physical Dynamics, GWR Instruments, General Atomics, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, R. G. Hansen & Associates, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hughes Aircraft, Maxwell Laboratories, CryoFab Australia, CeramPhysics, Applied Superconetics, Imotron, the University of California at San Francisco's Physics Research Laboratory, Ball Aerospace, Advanced CryoMagnetics, Tristan Technologies, Conductus, Toshiba America Magnetic Imaging, Cryogen, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Alpha Magnetics, International Cryogenics, Primex Physics, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Aerie Partners among others.  Ray founded his own company, the Cryogenic Designs, Inc., of San Diego, of which he was the President and CEO. One of its products was coil-foil which is used in many high performance non-magnetic liquid helium dewars for biomagnetic measurements.  It became also Ray’s consulting base.
 
During his career, Ray published over 30 refereed scientific publications in the field of low temperature physics and technology, including papers on low temperature properties of matter, superconductivity, NMR, dewars, SQUID instruments, sensors and cryogenic refrigeration. He was also granted 30 patents for his inventions related to the development of diverse devices such as the stabilized point contact toroidal rf SQUID, vapor-shielded metal and non-metal helium dewars, integration of cryocoolers and storage dewars to prolong hold time (including the first 1000 day hold-time liquid helium dewar), ELF SQUID receivers, towable horizontal dewars, ultra-low temperature dilution refrigerators and the variable temperature superconducting susceptometer. Ray's experience included also the development of custom designed cryogenic systems, scientific programming, level detectors, variable temperature ground based satellite coolers and cascade JT refrigerators. He was also involved in design of MRI magnets for both superconducting and permanent magnet coils, active and passive shielded magnet systems, magnet shim coil design and iron placement to produce homogenous fields.
 
Ray's honors included: 3M Teaching Fellow, Alfred E. Sloan Research Fellow, and Membership on the U.S. National Committee for the International Institute of Refrigeration.
 
Ray was a special person with many interests. The long list included photography, science fiction, astronomy, magic tricks, guns, board games, poker, orchids, esoteric plants, old cars (Lincoln continental, Mustang), dressing up for certain holidays (Halloween or Comic-Con), model planes and model helicopters, motorcycling, flying, collecting old and diverse things such as angel collections, coins, juke boxes, old autos, collection of buttons, and Star Wars. He loved swap meets and would share his special finds with other collectors. He had a certain "old codger reputation". He bought his last motorcycle about 1 year ago before passing away.
 
He had also an interest in computers, however, he continued arguing and fighting with them to make them do what he wanted to do regardless of computer limitations. Eventually, he would call for help. But as soon as he would go back to work on it, the same things would happen again.
 
Ray never had an unkind word to say about anyone. He loved his two sons and his friends. He would do anything to help them and assisted in solving their problems in his own special style. His last months were difficult due to a plethora of health problems. He was prepared for his departure and settled in advance all details of it, including funeral and celebration instructions.  Ray passed away on March 23, 2011.  His ashes were dispersed on the Pacific Ocean from a cryogenic dewar.

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Carl Henning of LLNL Passed Away

August 2, 2012 (PO13). Carl D. Henning, born on Feb, 28, 1939, passed away on June 13, 2012 at the Hospice of the East Bay, California.   Carl was a mechanical engineer having received his BS from Ohio University and his PhD from the University of Michigan. He spent most of his career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) where he held many senior management and technical leadership positions in research toward controlling nuclear fusion as an energy source. Carl designed the “baseball” superconducting magnet at LLNL, was responsible for building the world's largest magnet at that time, but also designing massive containment vessels for stemming the oil fires in Kuwait. He spent two years on assignment in Germany as a member of the US contingent of scientists designing the International

Carl was the author of many technical papers and presentations, held five U.S. patents, and received numerous honors and awards, including being elected as a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. In 2011 he was elected to the Fairview High School Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was raised. Carl was an adventurer, rebuilding and flying his own airplanes, and in retirement, sailing a large catamaran which he and his wife, Judy, lived on in the Caribbean for several months of each year.  Among his numerous exploit, in 1988 he flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean in his Cessna 337 which he had rebuilt. Carl, with his infectious laughter, will be remembered by his many friends as a confident, self-sufficient man who relished daunting challenges.

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Siegfried Wolff 1939-2012

August 1, 2012 (PO12). Siegfried Wolff, a well known superconducting magnet expert, passed away after a long illness on March 13, 2012, at the age of 73. After his Physics Diploma in 1965 Wolff joined the bubble chamber group at DESY in Hamburg, Germany as a technical physicist. He made substantial contributions to the successful operation of the liquid hydrogen and deuterium bubble chamber and obtained his PhD in 1969 at the University of Hamburg with a thesis on bubble formation and growth in hydrogen and deuterium bubble chambers.

In the early 1970s, when the electron-positron storage ring DORIS was constructed, Siegfried Wolff moved over to magnet design and measurement. He designed the compensation coils for a DORIS experiment equipped with a superconducting solenoid, and under his leadership the magnetic measurements for the larger storage ring PETRA were carried out. When the proton-electron collider HERA was proposed, Siegfried Wolff joined the task force which was formed by Bjorn Wiik to design and construct the superconducting accelerator magnets of the proton ring. Wolff spent a sabbatical at Fermilab in 1979/1980 where he worked in the superconducting magnet group and acquired a thorough knowledge of the design principles and construction of the superconducting dipoles and quadrupoles for the Tevatron. Back at DESY he contributed heavily to the design of the HERA dipoles and quadrupoles, and in his group of engineers and technicians a number of protype dipoles were built that performed very well and exceeded the design field of 5 Tesla. In 1984 a radical design change was proposed to increase the field capability of the magnets and improve their quench safety. The warm-iron yoke of the Tevatron-like design was to be replaced by a cold-iron yoke directly surrounding the aluminium-collared coil. Within record time Wolff’s group built a short prototype of the new dipole which reached a field of 6 Tesla without training. The new magnet concept proved extremely successful in the industrially produced HERA magnets and had a strong impact on the design of the LHC magnets. During the construction phase of HERA, Wolff and his group performed the electric and cryogenic installation of the HERA proton ring.

When the HERA collider was completed, Wolff became head of the cryogenics group at DESY. He and his group contributed strongly to the successful R&D on superconducting cavities with accelerating fields above 25 MV/m, which was carried out by the international TESLA collaboration. Wolff’s group was also involved in the cryostat construction and provided the cryogenics for the TESLA Test Facility linac which was later upgraded to the free-electron laser FLASH.

Siegfried Wolff was a superconducting magnet expert of international reputation. He was a member of various advisory committees, among them the LHC Machine Advisory Committee, and he was co-author of a book on superconducting accelerator magnets. Siegfried Wolff will be remembered by his friends and colleagues for his great technical competence, his fairness and reliability, and his willingness to accept responsibility for demanding projects.

(By friends and colleagues at DESY)

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Marty Lubell of ORNL Died in Early 2012

August 1, 2012 (PO11).  Another loss to superconducting community came only now to our attention.

Martin S. (Marty) Lubell, age 79, of Oak Ridge, passed away Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, at his home in Oak Ridge.  Marty was born June 5, 1932, in New York City, N.Y., graduated from MIT and got his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.  He initially worked at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories under Clarence Zener, but in 1959 moved from Pittsburgh, PA to Oak Ridge, TN, and worked as a physicist at ORNL and Y-12 until his retirement.

Marty was the Chairman of the 1982 ASC held in Knoxville. Among other his activities, he led the Oak Ridge superconducting magnet group that put together and tested the Large Coil Task (LCT) superconducting tokamak test solenoid of the early 1980s. 

Marty was a member of the Jewish Congregation of Oak Ridge, the Knoxville Museum of Art, and the United States Chess Federation; he wrote one of the 100 Greatest Chess Problems and was the Tri-State Chess Champion when he lived in Pittsburgh. He enjoyed refereeing soccer for both the AYSO (American Youth Soccer Association) and competitive leagues, skiing and the arts.

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Clyde Taylor of LLNL and LBNL Passed Away

August 1, 2012 (PO10).  Only now we learned that Clyde Taylor passed away November 16, 2011.  We publish this obituary based on the LBNL remembrance released by the LBNL News Center.

Clyde Taylor, a pioneer of superconducting magnet technology at both Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LLNL and LBNL), died suddenly on November 16, 2011 at the age of 80.

Clyde was born December 5, 1930, in Susanville, CA, and attended Stanford University, where he majored in engineering.  He received his B.S. in 1952 and M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1953.  He then moved to Ventura and became Chief Drilling Engineer for Shell Oil Company’s West Coast Operations.

In 1956 Clyde began his work in superconducting magnets at Lawrence Livermore Lab, rising

Livermore Lab’s fusion program at the time focused on mirror machines, in which plasma was confined by increasing gradients along magnetic field lines. Such machines required superconducting materials that could remain stable at very low temperatures while carrying very high currents and generating high magnetic fields. Livermore’s Jon Zbasnik recalls that, as part of the effort to build the Fusion Engineering Research Facility, and later the Mirror Fusion Test Facility – for which Clyde developed the “yin-yang” magnet configuration – he initiated research on niobium-tin, which is still at the  leading edge of superconducting magnet technology.

Clyde left Livermore in 1981 to join Berkeley Lab as head of the Supercon Group in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD), often working closely with Shlomo Caspi of Berkeley Lab’s Engineering Division. Clyde became head of the multilab engineering team that won the magnet design competition for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), whose planning efforts were based at Berkeley Lab. The SSC was canceled in 1993, but Caspi recalls that Clyde’s engineering skills and talent for management had led DOE to recognize AFRD’s strong position and unique analytical skills in the superconducting magnet field.

Clyde renewed his interest in niobium-tin as essential for advanced magnets when he led AFRD research toward achieving extraordinarily strong magnetic fields, beyond 10 tesla; he designed the first magnet to use windings of the material, according to Ron Scanlan, who in 1994 traded roles with Clyde and became supervisor of AFRD’s magnet group. The niobium-tin magnet they built achieved 13.6T in 1997, still a record. Today, similar magnets play an important role in AFRD’s designs for the planned Large Hadron Collider upgrade. During those years Clyde also put in place a special cabling machine at AFRD, which served as a prototype for industry and continues to supply cable to several DOE labs today.

At this time, as Scanlan recalls, Clyde also developed a solution to a major problem limiting the performance of accelerator magnets: the movement of structural elements under the tremendous forces generated by the magnets themselves, which can lead to disastrous “quenches.” His solution was a system of keys and bladders filled with liquid metal to prestress critical components. Refined by Shlomo Caspi, the bladder and key design made possible a series of record-breaking superconducting magnets built at Berkeley Lab.
Beginning in 1995, Clyde developed the “superbend” insertion devices that allowed the Advanced Light Source, built to optimize soft x-ray production, to extend operations well into the hard x-ray region, a requirement for protein-crystallography beamlines that are among the ALS’s most productive, according to AFRD’s Alan Jackson. Developed in cooperation with an industrial firm, Wang NMR, the Superbends are unique to the ALS among the world’s synchrotron light sources, which now has several of them.

Also in 1995, Clyde applied the bladder and key concept to his design for the superconducting magnet structure of a new kind of ion source for the 88-Inch Cyclotron, proposed by Claude Lyneis of the LBNL Nuclear Science Division. Called VENUS (”versatile ECR ion source for nuclear science”), the new source would be capable of producing high currents of ions, from hydrogen all the way to uranium, but required the highest magnetic fields ever achieved in this kind of ion source. Lyneis notes that the outstanding performance of VENUS, completed in 2003, was a key factor in enabling the rare ion beam facility now under construction at Michigan State University.

Clyde continued to work on both the Superbends and VENUS after his 1996 retirement and subsequent rehire as a consultant, continuing part time at the Lab until 2008. His lifelong enthusiasm for long-distance bicycle trips, backpacking, and cross-country skiing continued, as did his passion for travel abroad and for theater.

Clyde is warmly remembered by his many associates over the years as “a true gentleman” (Alan Jackson); “a very sincere, very kind, and very warm person, with great devotion to his work” (Bert Wang); “my mentor, supervisor, and friend for over 25 years, and one of the best people I have known” (Ron Scanlan); “a gentle person, soft-spoken and a great traveling companion [who] liked people and was eager to help, especially young people at the beginning of their career” (Shlomo Caspi); and many others, including Claude Lyneis, who put together the LBNL remembrance.

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Per Dahl Succumbed to Cancer

PO9 (May 16, 2012).  Belatedly, we learned that Per Dahl passed away in 2011.  Below we reproduce in full the obituary submitted by Peter Wanderer of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Per Fridtjof Dahl, a physicist expert in superconducting accelerator magnets, artist, and historian of modern physics died on October 1, 2011 after a two-to-three year-long struggle with lung cancer.

Per Dahl was born at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C., on August 1, 1932.  His parents were Odd Dahl, from Drammen, Norway, and Anna Augusta (Vesse), from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  Dahl was born while his father was working at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.  In 1936, his father saw the war coming and decided to take his family back to Bergen, Norway.  He returned to Norway in 1937 to oversee science in Norway during the war. 

Dahl grew up in Bergen, Norway, from the age of 4 until he was 17.  He then came to the U.S. and served three years in the U.S. Army, including two years stationed on Guam in the Pacific.  Taking after his father, Dahl was interested in science and physics from an early age.  He studied science during his Army years, and after leaving the service he entered the University of Wisconsin, obtaining his Ph.D. in Physics in 1960.  His post-doctoral work was done at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Per Dahl joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 1963.  He arrived at a time when superconductors were beginning to move from laboratory development to industrial production.  At this time, development of accelerator magnets using NbTi and Nb3Sn began.  Per became involved in the design of these magnets early in his BNL career and acquired a good understanding both of the materials and their use in magnets.  He put this knowledge to good use later in his BNL career when he became the principal person writing about magnets and superconductors for technically-oriented audiences.  This work also provided him with an opportunity to display his skills as an artist.  His drawing that shows all the critical components of a superconducting cable is still used in talks for visitors to Brookhaven. 

Per began working on the larger stage of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in 1987, where he continued work documenting the magnet program.  When the SSC effort moved from the design location, Berkeley, to the laboratory location in Texas, Per expanded his work to include both the documentation of the conventional construction effort and preparation of information in support of the SSC mission (e.g., publisher of the SSC News).

Following termination of the SSC project in 1993, Per moved to the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL).  During much of that time he was on leave to the Office of High Energy Physics, where he was Program Officer for a number of university grants.  He also consulted with BNL about the nascent RHIC magnet system.  He retired from LBNL in 1996 but kept contact with the lab through a visiting scientist appointment and work at the Office for the History of Science and Technology at UC-Berkeley until 2005.

Dahl is the author of numerous scientific papers and several books:  From Nuclear Transmutation to Nuclear Fission, 1932-1939 (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., Bristol, England and Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2002); Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., UK, Bristol England and Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1999), which was featured in the NOVA TV-production, Hitler’s Sunken Secret, DOX Production, London, 2004; Flash of the Cathode Rays: A History of J.J. Thomson’s Electron (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., UK, Bristol, England and Philadelphia, USA, 1997); Superconductivity: Its Historical Roots and Development from Mercury to the Ceramic Oxides (American Institute of Physics, New York, 1992); Ludvig Colding and the Conservation of Energy Principle: Experimental and Philosophical Contributions, The Sources of Science N. 104 (Johnson Reprint Corp., New York and London, 1972).

Throughout his life, Dahl was able to pursue his love for physics, art and his family.  While at Brookhaven, he was a president of the South Bay Art Association (1967-1968), and he was also the president of the Brookhaven National Laboratory Art Society for several years.  He was a fellow of the American Physical Society.

He is survived by his devoted wife of 45 years, Eleanor, and two sons: Erik (married to Christa), of Pebble Beach, CA; and Thomas (married to Jo) and two grandchildren, Emily and Alex, of Westford, MA. 

Peter Wanderer, Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY
Eleanor Dahl, Emeryville, CA
Erik J. Dahl, Pebble Beach, CA and Thomas F. Dahl, Westford, MA

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Akira Tonomura Passed Away at 70

May 2, 2012 (PO8); updated May 7, 2012 (PO8-1).  Akira Tonomura of Hitachi Central Research Laboratory died of pancreatic cancer early on May 2, 2012, at a hospital in Hidaka, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. He was 70. Tonomura was best known for developing electron holography for observing microscopic structures in matter using the wave nature of electrons and confirming the so-called Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, the existence of which had long been disputed among physicists.  He was tipped as a future Nobel Prize winner for years.  The sad news above we cite after the online Kyodo News of May 2, 2012. 

Tonomura was born on April 25, 1942.  He graduated from Tokyo University (1965) and obtained his two doctoral degrees from Nagoya (Engineering, 1975) and Gakushuin (Philosophy/Physics) Universities.  Joined Hitachi in 1965 and performed part of his

Tonomura was Fellow of numerous societies of which we mention here the Japanese Society of Appl. Phys., APS (from 1999), the Microscopy Society of America, Eur. Phys. Soc., Institute of Physics (UK, 2007) and of AAAS (USA, 2007).  Of his many honors and awards we list here the Nishina Memorial Prize (1982), Asahi Prize (1987), Japan Academy Prize and Imperial Prize (1991), and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (1999, USA).  He became Member of Science Council of Japan (2005), Foreign Associate of Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (2006), and Member of the Japan Academy in 2007.

Tonomura’s contributions to superconductivity started nearly a quarter of century ago when his group studied the AB effect and made the first single flux quantum observation by electron-holographic spectroscopy¹.  Subsequently, he and his group made real-time observations of vortex lattices in type II superconductors² by Lorentz microscopy, and published multiple contribution on studies of such lattices and flux pinning in   low- and high-T_c superconductors. The more complete overview of his numerous achievements in science can be found here.

¹T. Matsuda et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 62 2519 (1989).
²K. Harada et al., Nature, 360 51 (1992).

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February 2, 2012 (PO7).  Slovak scientist, Dr. Milan Polák, passed away on January 31st, 2012, after a severe short illness.  His rather sudden departure at 74 came as a sad surprise to his colleagues and co-workers in Slovakia and abroad.  He has been well-known to the superconductivity community through his active studies of electromagnetic properties of superconductors, superconducting magnets and devices, in particular on AC losses and related problems.

Milan Polák was born in 1937 in Strekov, finished university studies in 1960, got his Ph.D. in 1967 and the habilitation (D.Sc.) in 1989, both at Slovak Academy of Science (SAS) in Bratislava. From 1967

Polák made significant contributions to applied superconductivity, e.g., designed and tested NbTi coils for the generation of magnetic fields at industrial frequencies, AC loss measurements of superconductors and superconducting coils, development of low AC loss YBCO superconductors. He successfully managed several national and international research projects and published about 190 publications in international journals.

For 50 years he was active in the Institute Electrical Engineering of SAS and, to the end of his activity, liked the “hands on” experimental work in laboratory, which was a stimulating example also for much younger colleagues.  He was also as a member of several scientific boards and, as the director of IEE, was also involved in effective reorganization of the Institute of Electrical Engineering at the time of “political change”.   

Milan was a very creative colleague, and up to the end of his live stimulated others to useful activities.  His colleagues and collaborators appreciated his experience and knowledge as well as his friendship and sense for humour.  For this author it was a special privilege to spend with him the time of his last MT-22 conference (Sept. 2011) and also participate in experiments performed together during his last years.
P. Kováč
IEE SAS

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Antonio Barone Dies on December 4, 2011

December 10, 2012 (PO6).  Antonio Barone (AB) prematurely passed away on Dec 4th 2011 at the age of 72, after a one-year battle with cancer. He left behind his wife Sveva and his two sons, Alberto and Livio. Antonio was currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Napoli Federico II, where he had been teaching for about 40 years.

The initial research activity of AB was in the field of nuclear physics. In this context, almost 45 years ago, the Ge “Lithium drift” semiconductor detectors represented a novelty, due to the high energy resolution allowed by those devices. Superconductors stimulated new approaches to radiation detection and this motivated Antonio’s interests toward the superconductivity. In the 1967

The strong interaction of AB with the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Academy of Sciences, in Moscow, characterizes a long period of his research activity with a precious merging of theoretical and experimental aspects. All this body of work converged into the famous monograph on the “Physics and Applications of the Josephson Effect”, written in collaboration with Gianfranco Paternò in 1982. This became rapidly the reference text for the Josephson effect, as documented by thousands of citations and the fact it was translated into Russian, Japanese and Chinese. In 1983, AB was awarded by the Academy of Sciences in Moscow the highest academic title of “Doctor of the Physical-Mathematical Sciences”, and later the coveted Kapitza Prize.

The discovery of high-T_c superconductors (HTS) opened new problems and perspectives. In this context, AB and his group, significantly contributed by reporting original results on the “archetype” high-T_c Josephson junctions. Of great impact were the studies on unconventional superconductivity, first developed for ”p-wave” superconductors, but definitely very inspiring for the d-wave experiments on HTS compounds, and later on the physics of HTS Josephson junctions.
 
Macroscopic quantum phenomena and “particle detectors” are the keywords and the logical paths where to bring back several relevant contributions of Antonio scattered in more than 40 years of activity. Topics of his interest ranged from the fundamentals of macroscopic quantum tunnelling to barrier penetration in nonstationary fields, to finally a project into a wider vision of macroscopic quantum phenomena in unconventional systems.

Antonio is universally considered not only the founder of the Superconductivity School in the Napoli area, but also as the “grande maestro” and one of the most representative physicists in Italy. He has filled very relevant positions of scientific management in Italy and participated in many international committees. He has significantly contributed to the popularization of superconductivity as a divulgator, as a professor, as a researcher and as a manager.

An intense wave of sympathy and friendships has arrived from all over the world testifying how his gentleness, his sense of science and his smile were a solid bridge of friendship and respect with colleagues, students and people of everyday life. This premature departure cannot be dissociated from so many years spent working together. This moment cannot be dissociated from the awareness of having had the privilege to deal with a real gentleman of science and life, a man of vision and perspective.

Francesco Tafuri, Giampiero Pepe and Ruggero Vaglio

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Shoji Tanaka of ISTEC Died Suddenly at 84

November 14, 2011 (PO5).  Professor Shoji Tanaka, the preeminent luminary of Japanese superconductivity community suddenly died of pneumonia on November 11, 2011, at the age of 84.  The Funeral ceremony was held on November 15th. 

The IEEE Council on Superconductivity and European Society for Applied Superconductivity express their sincere condolences to ISTEC and all Japanese colleagues.

Shoji Tanaka was born on September 17, 1927.  He obtained his B.S. in Applied Mathematics (1950) and Ph.D. in Engineering (1961) from the University of Tokyo.  In 1999 he became honorary D.Sc. degree from the Purdue University, USA.  In 1955 he was appointed Lecturer, in 1958 Associate Professor and in 1968 full Professor of the University of Tokyo.  Upon his

Professor Tanaka was best known worldwide for his group’s confirmation of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate oxides (1986) and the leadership of the International Superconductivity Technology Center (ISTEC).   In 1988, he was appointed the first Director General of ISTEC’s Superconductivity Research Laboratory (SRL), which he directed until 2008.  In 1988 he also became the Vice President of ISTEC.  Currently, he was still Advisor to ISTEC/SRL.  In his role, he wielded significant influence in the Japanese science community.  We include the last unofficial photograph of him, a snapshot taken on October 24th at the ISS 2011 conference ( 24th International Symposium on Superconductivity, held at Tower Hall Funabori, Tokyo, October 24 to 26th), not much over two weeks before his passing away.

Shoji Tanaka was author or co-author of about 500 publications, of these over hundred preceding his first involvement with oxide superconductivity (in BaPb1-xBixO3 system) around 1984.  His earlier interests concentrated among others on magnetoresistance and galvanomagnetic effects in semiconductors, for example doped  Si, CdS, etc.  He was also active in various semiconductor device structures, electron transport phenomena, and charge density wave effects in two-dimensional materials.  He contributed to ESNF by his reminiscences “The History of ISTEC” (RN18, April 2011).

Professor Tanaka was decorated by the Emperor of Japan with the Purple Ribbon Medal in 1990 and with the 3rd Class Order of Merit of the Rising Sun in 1999.  He also received numerous prizes: the Technical Achievement Prize of the World Congress on Superconductors in 1988, and the Greatest Prize of the Japan Ceramics Association, also in 1988. In 2003, the Japan Society of Applied Physics presented to Prof. Tanaka the Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2004 the IEEE Council on Superconductivity presented to him the IEEE Max Swerdlow Award for Sustained Service to the Applied Superconductivity Community. 

We make accessible the official ISTEC obituary received on November 15th.

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Igor Yanson Deceased at 73

September 28, 2011 (PO4).  On July 25, 2011, Professor Igor Yanson has tragically passed away. Igor was born in Kharkov, Ukraine (USSR) on March 18, 1938. Although he never had a chance to meet his father, who fell victim to the Stalinist regime, due to his mother’s efforts he had graduated with honors from the specialized secondary music school and developed a keen interest in radio-electronics. Sharing these two passions throughout his life, in 1957 joined the Kharkov State University to study radio-electronics, and in 1958 the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State Conservatory to study piano. Graduating cum laude from the former in 1961, he had pursued his passion for science at the Kharkov Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering, where he worked ever since. Being accustomed to finishing everything he started, in 1963 he also graduated cum laude from the conservatory as a performing pianist.

Upon choosing science as his true calling, already in 1964 he was the first to detect the radiation of the non-stationary Josephson effect in superconductors. For this discovery he received the Ukraine Youth Prize on science and technology in 1967. This work has been mentioned by Brian Josephson in his Nobel Prize lecture in 1973. From that moment and to his last day Igor Yanson remained an internationally renowned scientist, always at the frontier of experimental physics. In 1979 he published a seminal paper on DNA mass spectrometry, and in 1974 he had experimentally discovered a completely new and very powerful method in solid state physics – the Point Contact Spectroscopy (PCS). Together with his colleague Igor Kulik, who provided theoretical support, and others, he has perfected this method to its present state, where it has become an established tool, at hand in every laboratory, for the investigation of the electron-quasiparticle interactions in metals and other conductors at the nanoscale down to one-atom contacts.

For his work, and especially for PCS,  he received the Ukraine State Prize in 1980, the EPS Europhysics prize in 1987, the Humboldt Research award in 1996, and the Lisa Meitner Prize in 2008. In 1979 he was elected a corresponding member, and in 1992 he became a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In his 50 years at the Institute for Low Temperature Physics in Kharkov he had gathered in his department a team of scientists with whom he co-authored five monographs and over two hundred and fifty scientific articles in most renowned journals.  They will carry his work further.

Igor Yanson is survived by his wife, four children and five grandchildren, who inherited both his passion for music and for experimental science.

(Authored by Yanson department colleagues with Yanson family approval)

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Ernst-Helmut Brandt Succumbed to Cancer

September 9, 2011 (PO3).  On September 1st 2011, Dr. Ernst-Helmut Brandt died peacefully (in his sleep) at home, thus succumbing to an inoperable pancreatic cancer. The vortex community in superconductivity thus lost one of best-known and respected theoreticians.

Ernst-Helmut Brandt was born in Berlin-Kaulsdorf on September 17, 1941, as the second son of the publisher and bookseller Helmut Brandt and Elise Brandt nee Stümpfle. His love of nature and his interest in technical tinkering Ernst Helmut developed already as a child. From October 1961 to June 1967, he studied physics at the University of Stuttgart and the Technical University and the Free University of Berlin (Summer 1966).  From June 1967 to June 1969 he finished the doctoral thesis under Professor

(Abbreviated and edited from a draft by Prof.Klaus Morawetz, Münster Univ. of Applied Science)

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January 14, 2011 (PO2).  German theoretical physicist, Prof. Gert Eilenberger, passed away on November 21st, 2010, after a severe short illness.  His rather sudden departure at 74 came as a sad surprise to his colleagues.  He has been well-known to the superconductivity community as the originator of Eilenberger equations, which are applicable to BCS-like superconductors.  These equations are a simplification of Gor’kov equations and are useful especially for superconducting alloys (1968).

Gert Eilenberger was born in 1936 in Hamburg, got his Ph.D. in 1961 under the well-known Friedrich Hund, and the habilitation (D.Sc.) in 1965, both at Göttingen.  Soon after a postdoctoral stint at Cornell (1965-1967) he became affiliated with the Cologne University and was appointed full professor in 1970. 

Gert was a very engaged and passionate colleague with a strong instinct for what is right and beneficial to the community.  His colleagues and collaborators appreciated his deep and broad knowledge as well as his warm heart and sense of humor.   For this Editor it was a special privilege to know him and be able to interact with, also in matters of FZJ science policy of 1990s.

Alex I. Braginski

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Hisashi Kado Succumbed to Cancer

December 27, 2010 (PO1).  Hisashi Kado, a pioneer of modern biomagnetic SQUID instrumentation in Japan passed away on December 22nd, 2010, after a three-years-long battle with cancer.  He left behind his wife and three sons.

Hisahi was born on February 7th, 1948 and graduated from the Department of Biophysical Engineering, faculty of Engineering Science at the Osaka University in 1971.  His PhD degree he also obtained from Osaka University, in 1984.

In 1971 Hisashi joined the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) and started his research activity by getting involved in measurements of human hearing system and developing non-invasive methods of functional

In 1995 Hisashi was appointed Professor at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT), and organized there the Applied Electronics Laboratory of KIT, which he then headed.  The objective of this group has been to develop various measurement technologies for biomagnetism, applied physics and other industrial applications.  Hisashi’s and the group’s major success was the completion and industrialization of a 160-channel whole-head MEG system² for medical research and diagnostics, which found use internationally, both in the US and in Europe.

For his achievements Hisashi received the New Technology Development Award of the “Japan Society of Medical and Biological Engineering, Science News”.

As his close collaborator, Gen Uehara, put it, “at SSL and KIT, Hisashi lead many young common researchers to achieve uncommon results, and eventually educated them to be next generation leaders in biomagnetism.”  His premature departure leaves a deep void which will be difficult to fill.

W. James Carr Jr. Passed Away at 92 November 23, 2010 (HE52).  On November 16th, 2010, Walter James (“Jim”) Carr, Jr., author of the first useful monograph on ac losses in supercondicting composite conductors1 and of many important contributions to the field of magnetism and applied superconductivity, passed away at 92 at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Jim was born on May 6, 1918 in Knob Noster, Missouri.  He initially intended to be a journalist, but instead enrolled at the Missouri School of Mines in Rolla (now University of Missouri at

Jim Carr (ca 1980)

Jim spent all his active career of 43 years at Westinghouse and attained the highest non managerial rank of Consulting Scientist, a rare distinction in that organization.  In 1987 Jim was elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for his contributions to theories of magnetism, and for development of the theory of alternating current losses in composite superconductors.  He also became Fellow of the American Physical Society.  A seminar at the Department of Physics, University of Maryland, features annually a W. James Carr, Jr. memorial lecture.

This Editor first read an important paper on magnetic anisotropy authored by Jim back in 1950s; it strongly influenced my own work at the very beginning of my professional career.  I was thus truly awed when meeting him in person and having the privilege of working on his side some twenty plus years later.  Those of us who knew Jim well admired equally his sharp mind, impeccably logical reasoning and his most courteous gentle manners.  He was a true gentleman.  Even after his retirement he remained quite active professionally; his last paper was published only 3 years ago.  Until very recently he could be often encountered at various professional conferences.  His departure is a big loss; we’ll miss him…

Alex I. Braginski

¹W. J. Carr, Jr. AC-loss and Macroscopic Theory of Superconductors, Gordon and Breach, 1983 (second edition in 2001).

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Broad thinker advanced both the theoretical and
experimental understanding of superconductivity

November 23, 2010 (HE51).  Below we reproduce the integral text of the Harvard University obituary included in their press release of November 5, 2010.

Michael "Mike" Tinkham, whose latest appointment was as the Rumford Research Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Research Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Physics, passed away on November 4, 2010. He was 82 years old.

Born on February 23, 1928 in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, Tinkham earned his undergraduate degree at Ripon College in 1951 and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees, both in physics, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1951 and 1954 respectively. He also spent a year at the Clarendon Laboratory of Oxford as a postdoctoral fellow.

He joined the University of California, Berkeley in 1957, rising to full professor, and then left in 1966 for Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his career. Tinkham's research focused primarily on superconductivity, as captured in his classic text, Introduction to Superconductivity.

In his later years he was active in studying the unique properties of materials when sample dimensions are reduced to the nanometer range.

In the Journal of Superconductivity, Tinkham's former student Christopher Lobb '80 (Ph.D., Applied Physics), wrote:

"The opportunity to work with Mike ... was one of the greatest experiences of my life. As a researcher, Mike's rare combination of experimental and theoretical ability has kept him at the top of the field for decades.

As a teacher, Mike worked constantly to make things understandable, and did so with enthusiasm and wit. Any success I've had since leaving his group has largely been due to what I learned from him ..."

Tinkham's awards and honors included election to the National Academy of Sciences; the receipt of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize; and the Fred E. Saalfeld Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Science in 2005.

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