AdA: the world’s first electron-positron collider
On Thursday 5 December 2013, the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics [INFN] Frascati National Laboratory [LNF] was honoured as an EPS Historic Site for the realization of the Storage Ring AdA, the first ever particle-antiparticle collider. The AdA was built at the LNF in 1961 by a small team of Italian physicists under the lead of the Austrian physicist Bruno Touschek.
AdA was designed to store beams of 250 MeV energy. By 1962 it had stored electrons, and it was soon transferred…
Niels Bohr Institute and the roots of modern physics
The European Physical Society [EPS] has declared the Niels Bohr Institute as an EPS Historic Site with great international importance for developments in physics and research on 3 December 2013. The Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, was established in 1921 for the physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, who in 1913 created the ground-breaking atomic model that formed the basis for our understanding of how the world is constructed, and later as the basis for quantum mechanics, which has revolutionised technological development.Across the world, organisations declare UNESCO sites, buildings and monuments as the cultural or…
To catch a thief
Back in the 1950s, when the neutrino was still a hypothesis but iron curtain was a reality, A. Szalay in Hungary had an idea to take a snapshot of an event that would prove the existence of the neutrino. During his research at Cavendish Laboratory (United Kingdom), he became acquainted with the latest techniques for research in nuclear physics, and decided to investigate the decay of 6He, a short lived isotope. He recruited J. Csikai, then a young scientist, and together they built a cloud chamber with a sophisticated stereo-camera system.
Forget about megapixels, data acquisition system, everything was hardwired. Still, from the tracks…
An ancient cathedral in West Pomerania and the invention of an early condenser
On 11 October 2013 the 10th EPS Historic Site was inaugurated in Kamień Pomorski in Poland to commemorate the invention of the “Kleistian jar”, more commonly known as the “Leyden jar”.
Ewald Georg von Kleist (10 June 1700 – 11 December 1748) was a German jurist, Lutheran cleric, and physicist. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig and the University of Leyden. From 1722 to 1745 he was Dean of the Cathedral at Kammin in the Kingdom of Prussia (now Kamień Pomorski in Poland). On 11 October 1745 he invented…
Knowledge through high-precision measurements: the PTB
On 8 October 2013, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt [PTB] in Germany was honoured as an EPS Historic Site. The ceremonial event took place at PTB’s Berlin Institute, where the precursor of PTB, the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt [PTR], was founded in 1887. The PTR was the first large national non-university research facility in Germany and the first metrology institute in the world.Big names in physics and important scientific results characterised the first decades of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt at the end of the 19th and at the start of the 20th centuries. The then Imperial Institute…
The enchanted Tycho Brahe’s island: nature, history, science
The 7th EPS Historic Site ceremony since 2011 took place on 11 September 2013 on Hven Island, in the municipality of Landskrona, Øresund, Sweden.
Hven is the island where the world famous astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) built the most advanced observatory in 16th-century Europe for visual observation of the sky. His observations were performed using sophisticated quadrants and sextants that he himself designed, without a telescope (Galileo Galilei would be born 20 years later…
Bridging science through the LAL-LURE accelerator complex
On Friday 13 September 2013, the Laboratory of the Linear Accelerator [LAL] and the Laboratory for the Use of Electromagnetic Radiation [LURE] accelerator complex – located in Orsay, France – became the 8th EPS Historic Site. The ceremony took place in the “Pierre Marin” room which hosts ACO, a former collider and storage ring for synchrotron light, now registered French historical monument and open to the public.
After speeches from John Dudley, the President of the European Physical Society [EPS]; Martial Ducloy…
A “wireless” historic site
On 26 May 2013, a new EPS Historic Site was inaugurated in Pontecchio di Sasso Marconi (Bologna), Italy, the 6th since the beginning of this EPS initiative.
The site is “Villa Griffone”, located on the hills nearby Bologna, a beautiful residence, which belonged to the Marconi family. The inauguration of this historic site is meant to pay a tribute to the very early experimental physics work of Guglielmo Marconi. Aged only 21, in 1895 he succeeded to establish the first long range electromagnetic wave…
A historic view from Galilei’s window in Arcetri
On 17 May 2013, a new EPS Historic Site was inaugurated in Florence, Italy.
The site is the “Hill of Arcetri”, rich in buildings of considerable historical and scientific interest:
- the former Institute of Physics where, in 1926 Enrico Fermi wrote his fundamental work on the statistics that bears his name, and where young Gilberto Bernardini, first President and founder of the EPS…
A new EPS Historic Site to celebrate Bruno Pontecorvo’s centenary
The EPS Historic Sites programme of the European Physical Society [EPS] commemorates significant places in Europe for the progress and the history of physics, as a further demonstration of the EPS determination – since its birth in 1968 – to strengthen the cultural and scientific unity of Europe: east-west, north-south.
p>On 22 February 2013 a new EPS Historic Site was established in Dubna, Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research [JINR], on the occasion of the centennial of the eminent, world famous physicicst Bruno Pontecorvo…
“Hoza 69″ in Warsaw designated EPS Historic Site
The EPS Historic Sites programme of the European Physical Society [EPS] commemorates places in Europe important for the development and the history of physics. Laboratories, buildings, institutions, universities, towns, etc. associated with an event, discovery, research or body of work, by one or more individuals, that made considerable contributions to physics at the national or European/international level, can be considered for the Historic Site distinction from the EPS.
The “Hoza 69″ building in Warsaw, Poland, was the first EPS Historic Site declared by the EPS Selection Committee…
Nominations open for Historic Sites initiative
The Historic Sites Initiative has been launched by the EPS to commemorate important places in the development and history of physics across Europe.
Sites with a national, or broader, significance to physics and its history may be considered for the distinction of becoming an EPS Historic Site. Commemorated locales will be recognised with a plaque, and an unveiling ceremony, organised between the EPS and the site nominators..
