Drickey Memorial Lecture Created Here
The first memorial lecture in honor of the late Darrell Drickey will be held at Fermilab next week, sponsored by Universities Research Association Inc. Dr. Drickey, a physicist on the staff of Fermilab at the time of his death in December, 1974, was chairman of the Users Executive Committee. He was assistant head of the Fermilab Energy Doubler group and a collaborator on an experiment in the Meson Area.
Much of the work in arranging the memorial lectures has been led by the Fermilab Users Organization. Dr. Drickey's colleagues in the Users Organization point out his successful participation in the first scientific exchange in 1970 between the U.S.S.R. State Committee on Atomic Energy and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (now a part of ERDA). It was a pioneering effort in international cooperation as well as being one of the first successful measurements of the size of the pi meson, carried out by Dr. Drickey and a scientific team at the Serpukhov Laboratory. The success of that exchange has been the foundation of the collaborations at Fermilab which have been continuous since 1972.
In the prospectus for the memorial lecture, Louis N. Hand, chairman of the Users Executive Committee, states, "Many people feel that Drickey's contribution in leading a group at Serpukhov was a major pioneer effort in an area where high energy physicists can make a unique contribution due to the international character of our field. It was decided that a memorial lecture by a prominent physicist would be one way to memorialize a man whose untimely death was a great loss to the high energy physics community."
Dr. Hand also notes, "The Users feel that Darrell Drickey generated a spirit that is still with us; we still operate from his impact. He was a very positive person and had that ability to change the attitude of the people with whom he worked. He was one of those rare persons who insisted on overcoming difficulties and this was always evident in the projects with which he was associated." A committee is being formed to plan and carry out future lectures.
The first Darrell Drickey Memorial Lecture will be held at Fermilab on Friday, May 14 at 8:30 p.m. It will coincide with the annual meeting at Fermilab of the 800-member Users Organization, May 14 and 15.
Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez will be the first Darrell Drickey Memorial Lecturer. Title of his lecture is "Ernest Lawrence's Laboratory - Where the Big Machines Began."
Dr. Alvarez has been a physicist on the staff of the University of California at Berkeley since 1936. He received his undergraduate as well as his graduate degrees at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Alvarez has received many awards for his work, including the National Medal of Science and the Michelson award. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1968 for "decisive contributions to elementary particle physics." He was honored for "the discovery of a large number of resonance states made possible through development of the technique using hydrogen bubble chambers and data analysis."
His lecture at Fermilab deals with the stimulating atmosphere which prevailed at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in the 1930's under the direction of Ernest 0. Lawrence, an atmosphere he knew well as a young scientist and for nearly forty years. Writing in the book, "All in Our Time," in a chapter entitled: "Berkeley: A Lab Like No Other," Alvarez says,
"I was as much impressed by the 'atmosphere' in the Radiation Laboratory as I was by the marvelous pieces of experimental equipment that I found so fascinating. The whole 'style' of the laboratory was set by Ernest Lawrence, and one felt his presence at all times, even when he was not in the laboratory building. I am convinced that Ernest Lawrence's greatest invention was not the cyclotron, but the modern way of doing physics in cooperative teams."
