Alvin Tollestrup Joins Fermilab
Alvin Tollestrup
Alvin Tollestrup has joined the Fermilab staff as a physicist in the Energy Doubler/Saver Group. Tollestrup also will assume responsibility for a new group in the Research Division's Department of Research Services, That group will be responsible for carrying on research and development on electronic detectors and data acquisition techniques.
For the past two years Tollestrup has been serving as a member of the Energy Doubler/Saver Group. He joined the Laboratory in a temporary capacity while on sabbatical leave and leave of absence from California Institute of Technology. During the past two years he has taken a major responsibility for the development of Doubler magnets and has played the key role in transforming the production of those magnets from an art to a science.
The new group which Tollestrup will head in Research Services will combine the Detector Development Group now led by Muzaffer Atac and the Experimental Systems Support Group of Tom Droege. This new group will still perform services for the Laboratory as it has in the past. Alvin has been in the physics department at CalTech for the last 27 years. During that time he was involved in converting the quarter scale model of the Bevatron into a 500 MeV and later a 1200 MeV electron synchrotron. The 500 MeV energy was fortunate in that it enabled the famous "first resonance" to be completely investigated; whereas the 300 MeV machines, as at Cornell, were limited to just reaching the peak of the resonance.
After early photoproduction experiments at CalTech he spent a year at CERN. There he participated in the planning and execution of the first experiment at the CERN Cyclotron which was the first observation of the π-e decay. Other "good" experiments he has worked on include the first measurement of the π° lifetime by the Primakoff effect, and pp annihilation to e+e-. He also developed with R. L. Walker the x-ray detector used in experiments 110, 268, and 350.