The Stony Brook Nuclear Structure Laboratory: A Personal History

By Linwood Lee, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University

Prologue

The State University of NY (SUNY) was established in 1948, as a unit of the New York State Department of Education, in response to the expected demand for higher education following WWII. It initially brought together 29 State supported institutions, mostly Teachers Colleges, under a central administration. Since there was only one State institution on Long Island, a new “State University College on Long Island” was established in 1957 on a donated estate in Oyster Bay. SUNY got its big start when Nelson Rockefeller, a strong supporter of SUNY, became Governor in 1958. He appointed a select commission, chaired by Henry Heald, then Chairman of the Ford Foundation, to recommend the framework for the future of SUNY. The forthcoming “Heald Report” called for major expansion of SUNY and the creation of two comprehensive University Centers “to stand with the finest in the Country”, one on Long Island and one upstate. The SUNY Trustees 1960 Master Plan expanded the Centers to four with one to be built at Stony Brook on land donated by Ward Melville, a shoe magnate. The other three were to be in Albany, Buffalo, and Binghamton on expanded existing campuses. Ground was broken for the Stony Brook campus on 1960 with Governor Rockefeller turning the first spade.

It was into this situation that T. Alexander (Alec) Pond arrived at Stony Brook in the Fall of 1962 as the new Chairman of the Physics Department replacing Leonard Eisenbud, the original Chairman. Leonard had led the recruiting of a high-quality faculty, mostly theorists, and had received approval to establish a PhD program starting Fall 1962, but wanted to step down. Alec was the ideal person to take over. He had great ambition for the Department and the University and was developing his plans well before his arrival. He looked for funding opportunities within the State and federal system and, with Department approval, had proposals ready to go. He knew it was important to initiate projects large enough to be noticed in the academic community. The Physics Department proposed to study the structure of the atomic nucleus and create the Stony Brook Nuclear Structure Laboratory (NSL), which would have a tandem Van de Graaff accelerator, and appropriate researchers to exploit its capability. Proposals were submitted to both SUNY and the NSF, which was already supporting labs at several Universities. Strong support for the proposals came in the form of a letter from Maurice Goldhaber, the Director of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) pointing out that the energy range complemented the energies of existing and future facilities at BNL, facilitating collaborations.

The proposal for purchase of the tandem and construction of its building was submitted to SUNY officials in December 1962 and won approval from Harry Porter, the SUNY Provost in mid- February. The State legislature (finally) in April 1964, appropriated funds for a standard EN tandem and a 25000 square foot laboratory building. When a subsequent grant from NSF “for half the estimated cost of the building” was received in October 1964 Alec persuaded the Stony Brook leadership to use the NSF funds to acquire the newly developed model FN (King) tandem which proved to be far superior to the EN.

With the funds in hand the Physics Department had its high profile facility but no experimental nuclear physicists (and only one theorist) to develop and utilize the Nuclear Structure Laboratory. A search was initiated for the Laboratory Director and at the urging of Jim Raz, the only nuclear theorist, with whom I had worked at Argonne National Laboratory, I agreed to be a candidate.

Stony Brook

In the late fall of 1964 I visited Stony Brook for two days at the invitation of Alec Pond. In addition to presenting a Colloquium on our research at Argonne I met with most of the Physics faculty as well as Arts and Sciences Dean, Stanley Ross. In our discussions Alec exhibited great enthusiasm for the (yet unannounced) aspirations of Stony Brook. Among these was that John Toll, the dynamic Chairman of Physics at The University of Maryland, was expected to become Stony Brook’s President in the fall of 1965, finalizing a multiyear search. Alec also expressed confidence that Nobelist C.N.(Frank)Yang would leave The Institute for Advanced Studies to hold an Einstein Professorship at Stony Brook and establish an Institute for Theoretical Physics.

One discussion regarding the Laboratory was over equipment funds which would be immediately available. New York State recognizes that a new building must be suitably equipped and lists are prepared and budgeted as construction proceeds. Alec and his colleagues had done well in “equipping” the existing new Physics Building and a large portion had been allocated to the nuclear program. This would provide the means to start preparing for experiments as accelerator acquisition and building design and construction proceeded.

Stony Brook concluded its search by late 1964 and I was offered the position of Professor and Director of the Nuclear Structure Laboratory (NSL). The decision to move was very difficult. We were very happy at Argonne and in the Chicago suburbs. The years at Argonne had been extremely productive and personally enjoyable. The Physics Division at Argonne was almost family - a marvelous group of friends and collaborators. However the opportunity to be part of the creation of a possibly great University proved decisive and I accepted the position and prepared to start at Stony Brook at the start of the Fall 1965 semester.

Alec’s “predictions”, and more, started to become reality even before I arrived. The announcement that John Toll would become Stony Brook’s President was made in the early Spring 1965 followed by the appointment of H. Bentley Glass, a very distinguished biologist, as Academic Vice President. A four-page article in “Science” July 30, 1965 summarized Stony Brook’s recent accomplishments including a discussion of the NSL and the likelihood of Yang’s appointment which was formally announced in November. Articles in “Physics Today”, “Time”, and ”Newsweek” soon followed and it was clear that Stony Brook had arrived. It was no longer necessary to start discussions by describing the University.

Meanwhile there was much to be done. The Laboratory building had to be sited and designed; the contract with High Voltage Engineering (HVEC) had to be negotiated and finalized and NSL faculty and staff had to be recruited. All of these had to be addressed simultaneously and immediately. It was agreed that I would take some of my accumulated vacation time at Argonne to be a consultant to Stony Brook during part of the period before my arrival. For help with the building and accelerator I was fortunate to recruit Karl Eklund who had worked with Allan Bromley in setting up the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale. His work at Yale was essentially finished and Allan recommended him highly.

Funds for SUNY buildings and equipment are provided through the State University Construction Fund (SUCF) which normally chooses and negotiates with providers. Fortunately, Karl and I were allowed in these cases to work directly with HVEC and the architects on behalf of the Fund. A grant from NSF for part of the building costs enabled us to purchase a larger model FN (King) tandem and before discussions with HVEC I visited several FN installations to obtain information on any problems and suggested improvements. Two improvements prompted by these visits were the choice of pure sulfur hexafluoride insulating gas with liquid storage and a new high intensity Helium ion source. The resulting contract with HVEC also included their supervision of the tandem installation for which funds were provided.

The architect chosen by SUCF, Smith, Haines Lundberg & Wheeler, had done much of the early Stony Brook campus, and had also done much work for AT&T. They produced rather dull buildings with good engineering, the last of which was very helpful for us. Once suggestions to locate the Lab at the edge of the campus because of radiation were rejected (shielding would suffice) a site was chosen. The Lab would be a separate building adjacent to Physics and positioned to expand into part of a new Physics building in the future. The space arrangement was to be very simple; large shielded areas for tandem and experimental areas and a single large area combining accelerator control, data stations, and evolving spaces such as a library/seminar area, computer stations and grad student desks. This proved to be a singular asset for the Laboratory. Instead of dispersing to their offices elsewhere, students, postdocs and staff all tended to stay in the Lab, leading to a collegial atmosphere for the exchange of ideas.

The offer from Stony Brook included two junior faculty positions and four support positions to be filled before the opening of the NSL. As soon as I accepted I contacted many friends and colleagues in the Nuclear Physics community for help in locating the best possible faculty candidates. Outstanding among the early applicants was Dave Fossan from the small but excellent Lockheed group using the Stanford tandem. Dave had been a postdoc at Copenhagen before Lockheed and was strongly recommended by colleagues at both laboratories. Dave and I visited Stony Brook together right after the Spring 1965 APS meeting and it became clear that he was the perfect person for us. We were able to offer Dave an Assistant Professorship starting in Fall 1965 and, fortunately for us, he promptly accepted. Dave was the backbone of our Laboratory from his arrival until his untimely death in 2003. He mentored by far the most students and his skill and enthusiasm for Physics inspired all of us.

After considering a number of other candidates for the second position we chose Bob Weinberg, a former student of Leon Lidofsky at Columbia and a NATO postdoc at Harwell UK. He was very highly recommended by the faculty at Columbia and by George Morrison with whom he was working at Harwell. His expertise in the use of computers to analyze reaction data matched our needs well and he accepted our offer to start in the fall of 1966.

The architect produced an excellent building design which met all of our requirements very well. Unfortunately, the estimated cost was about double the amount budgeted by the Construction Fund. Their people had treated the Lab building as if it were classroom space with no consideration for the needs of a Nuclear Laboratory. My response was to contact colleagues who were involved in recent or current Laboratory construction regarding their building costs. All responses confirmed the accuracy of the Smith-Haines estimate. This, coupled with the potential embarrassment of an accelerator arriving and no place to put it, convinced the Fund to revise the budget to an amount which met our needs after a few “luxuries” were dropped out of the proposed design. Even after this agreement I never felt really comfortable until a bulldozer arrived to destroy the beautiful small woods which was to be the Lab location.

Getting Going

The contract with HVEC called for assembly and testing of the accelerator at the factory before disassembly and shipping to Stony Brook. This was slowly proceeding with minor difficulties through much of 1966 and early 1967, anticipating delivery in late 1967. Meantime Alec Pond had created the position of “Director of the Physical Laboratories” in the Department office and moved Karl Eklund into that position. While searching for a replacement Associate Director for NSL I received a note from Georges Temmer at Florida State on the possible availability of Tony Bastin, who had recently left their lab for England (and had been replaced) but now was hoping to return to accelerator technology. I immediately contacted Tony and was able to convince him to join us as Associate Lab Director starting January 1968. We were also able to augment our technical staff with Gene Schultz, an experienced accelerator technician who had just worked on installation of an FN Tandem at Argonne and was looking for a change. His experience there was a great asset that helped our upcoming assembly go very smoothly.

Tony and Gene now occupied two of the State funded support positions and it was necessary to fill the rest. I decided to devote one of the remaining positions to the making of targets (usually thin films) for our future experiments. Traditionally the making of targets for their experiments was part of the “learning experience” for graduate students but as experiments were becoming more demanding target development was becoming a field for professionals. By about 1970 there were “target makers”, mostly in national laboratories, and I felt our lab should have one. The man we recruited, Dan Riel, worked hard to acquire the specialized skills required and we were able to provide him with the equipment necessary for a target laboratory. Target making is an art and Dan became one of its masters. In May 1972 16 target makers (all but four Canadian) met in Montreal to discuss the art and share experiences. Dan was one of the attendees and suggested that the group consider becoming a more formal organization. This was followed by a meeting in October 1973 at Stony Brook at which the “Nuclear Target Development Association” (which still exists) decided to incorporate, and with formal incorporation in 1975 Dan was elected President. Dan left us in 1979 for a job at JLab in Virginia and we were very fortunate to immediately recruit Andre Lipski to replace him. He had been the target maker at the Rutgers Nuclear Lab which had just lost its funding so was ready to continue and expand our target preparation work. Stony Brook became a major target source for many other labs where the skills were not available. The targets were usually free or “at cost”; any payment was by barter. Sadly, now that NSL is no longer active, Andre is no longer making targets but performing other tasks for the Department

Meanwhile Dave Fossan and I were recruiting graduate students and arranging for the equipment needed to initiate our experimental program as soon as the tandem became available. Dave was able to start some experiments at Brookhaven Lab (BNL) and spent the summer of 1966 there. I was at BNL one month and finished up some Argonne work the other. Back at Stony Brook we submitted our first proposal for operating support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the only federal agency funding new University nuclear physics initiatives. It was for $19,555 to support grad students and some faculty during the summer of 1967 and was funded. I should say at this point that Bill Rodney, who did an excellent job running the Nuclear Physics desk at NSF for many years, was supportive of Stony Brook from the beginning and did his best for us. It was NSF policy to favor installations which they had financed so our State financed program had to prove itself outstanding among university nuclear laboratories.

As plans for the Laboratory proceeded it became clear that a program involving only three faculty could not make take full advantage of the capabilities and promise of NSL, Fortunately I became aware that Peter Paul, an outstanding young visitor at Stanford, would be leaving there for another position. I was able to convince the Physics Department of our needs and that Peter represented an unusual opportunity and we were able to invite him to join us. Fortunately, Peter welcomed the excitement of building a new program and accepted our offer to start January of 1968. He has been a driving force in the Laboratory and the University right from his arrival.

Delivery and Assembly

At HVEC construction of the Tandem proceeded with the usual minor setbacks and successes. Factory tests were completed in late 1967 and delivery scheduled for early Spring 1968. Meanwhile, after finally obtaining adequate funds, ground was broken for the building with completion just in time for acceptance of the accelerator. The high voltage portion of the accelerator system is contained inside a pressure tank 44 ft. long and 13 ft. diameter. To get the tank into the building one end of the accelerator vault had to be left open (to be closed later) and a ramp prepared to move the tank down into the vault. The tank was to be shipped by rail to western CT and by oversize truck from there to Stony Brook. It was too large to be handled by The Long Island Railroad.

The building was completed just in time and the tank was due to arrive on a beautiful spring day in early April of 1968. The arrival was not without excitement and humor. On entry to the campus at the North entrance the truck carrying the tank got “hung up” at the crest as its length to clearance ratio was too large for the slope. After much wiggling and scraping it finally made it to the slope into our building (which also had to be reduced) The tank was painted with a chrome yellow primer and as it moved slowly into the building a group of students cheerfully serenaded the procedure with renditions of “We all live in a yellow submarine”.

Once the tank was in place assembly of the tandem and associated experimental equipment proceeded at a rapid pace. At the accelerator Gene Schultz took charge of the work inside the tank and Tony Bastin the ion source, analyzing magnet, gas handling system, and other externals. Students (both graduate and undergrad) and faculty worked feverishly to set up beam lines and experimental stations, run cables, and set up electronics to have experiments ready when the tandem passed acceptance specifications.

This was accomplished by mid August and the first of hundreds of papers reporting results from experiments in the Stony Brook Nuclear Structure Laboratory (NSL) appeared in the Physical Review in early 1969.

Nuclear Theory

A top experimental group should be complemented by a similar group of top nuclear theorists. The opportunity to form such a group arrived when Frank Yang arrived to head the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Shortly after his arrival in early 1966 I had lunch with Frank and asked for his help in establishing nuclear theory at Stony Brook. His immediate response was “ Who is the best nuclear theorist in the world?” After some discussion it was decided that Gerry Brown, at that time a Professor at Princeton and Nordita, was the best theorist for Stony Brook. I knew Gerry from when we were both briefly at The University of Minnesota and from his frequent visits to Argonne and, of course, Frank knew him from their both being in Princeton. Frank contacted Gerry and, as Gerry has said, they went for “a walk in the woods” and discussed a possible move to join Frank’s Institute and establish a nuclear theory group at Stony Brook.

Gerry and his family visited on a beautiful spring weekend, getting a good first impression in spite of the “construction site” Gerry has referred to. That initiated negotiations, mostly informal, as Gerry returned to Nordita (on leave from Princeton) “before thinking more about future plans”.

There followed a correspondence between Frank and Gerry which included a tentative offer of a Professorship in ITP and other considerations which were important to Gerry. One significant source of confusion occurred when Frank’s letter containing the offer inadvertently went by surface mail, taking about six weeks to reach Gerry. Meanwhile Frank persisted although Gerry, partly out of concern about what he called “the Vietnam business” was reluctant to give up his foothold at Nordita. Gerry proposed an arrangement in which he would establish a group at Stony Brook while alternating his presence between Copenhagen and Long Island. This would not have been possible at Princeton but Frank and our President, John Toll quickly agreed and an offer was sent to Gerry (this time by air).

Gerry indicated he would probably accept but delayed his reply until the Nordita Board approved the arrangement. On receiving approval in late April 1967, Gerry accepted the offer to come to Stony Brook in the fall of 1968, asking us to postpone any announcement until he had returned to Princeton in the fall of 1967. Along with Gerry, in the fall of 1968, Tom Kuo and Andy Jackson came as tenure-track faculty and Akito Arima joined the group as a Professor. Thus the start of the Stony Brook Nuclear Theory Group which continues to evolve and excel. The opportunity to establish this “Institute” was a major factor in Gerry’s decision to come to Stony Brook.

Normalcy

I will not attempt to describe the many experiments conducted in the decades following under normal operations. Initially groups formed around interests as they developed. Dave Fossan concentrated on gamma ray spectroscopy; Peter Paul’s main interest was in Giant Resonances; Bob Weinberg and I studied charged particle reactions. We also had to develop external support for operation of NSL. As mentioned above, Bill Rodney at NSF was supportive and we received a grant which enabled us to support a number of graduate students and add our first postdoc, Nelson Cue, a student of Dave Bodansky from the University of Washington.

Of course we faculty were all teaching during the academic year. In particular Bob Weinberg found great success and satisfaction teaching one of the large introductory courses. He also became heavily involved in University affairs as an “ombudsman” during the student unrest here, as on many campuses, during the late 60’s. For Bob this resulted in reduced interest in NSL , although he continued to contribute to our experimental buildup. Finally Bob decided that his future in Physics was to be in innovating teaching. He decided he would no longer be doing research in NSL and requested a tenure decision based mostly on his teaching and University service. I told the Department that, while Bob had been a fine colleague, we would need a replacement for the research program in NSL. Bob was not offered tenure and left in 1969 for a faculty position at Temple University where he has had a very successful teaching career. Meanwhile we were fortunate in immediately recruiting Bob McGrath, then a postdoc at Berkeley, as his replacement. He has been a perfect match, with a fine career in our Lab, mentoring a large number of very successful students. Later, as activity in the NSL slowed, he gradually moved into University administration, becoming Provost in 2000.

The Lab continued to produce a number of significant experimental results. Support from NSF picked up and we were able to consider adding more faculty. One direction I felt we should go was the study of “hyperfine interactions”, the study of the interaction of the nucleus with its atomic environment. Stan Hanna, a friend form Argonne who was now at Stanford, told me of his student Gene Sprouse, who had done some beautiful work on accelerator induced Mössbauer effect and other work on hyperfine interactions. I was able to convince the Department that adding him could benefit a variety of groups and in 1970, we were able to recruit him. Gene has become a world leader in the field. He and his students have performed a series of remarkable and difficult experiments, testifying to his deft leadership.

With Gene’s arrival the Lab reached its (more or less) equilibrium level: five faculty, four or five postdocs, twelve to fifteen graduate students, and selected undergrads. I will not attempt here to describe the many and varied experiments performed over the early years as our program grew and flourished. Support from NSF grew appropriately and a number of remarkable PhD students came through the Lab and have gone on to distinguished careers. During this period Nuclear Structure Physics began to move to studies of reactions induced by accelerated heavy ions for which our tandem was an ideal tool.

Two notable events occurred during the mid 1970’s. Now that Stony Brook was recognized as a major center for nuclear studies we were able to expand and recruit an outstanding young experimenter, Peter Braun-Munzinger, from the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Studies, Heidelburg. In NSL Peter initiated a series of novel experiments using beams of heavy ions, greatly expanding the lab’s output of exciting results. He later led the Department’s efforts as our priorities moved into the study of relativistic heavy ion interactions at BNL. His leadership in that transition maintained Stony Brook’s leadership at the frontiers of nuclear studies. In these efforts he was joined by Johanna Stachel who had joined us as a Noether fellow and moved into a faculty position.

The other major increment was, in 1975, the moving of the Physics Department onto a new and very large Physics Building. In the initial location of NSL we had anticipated the new building which was positioned so its basement extended to NSL and provided a complete new target room which could receive beams from the Tandem. This gave us the ability to set up experiments in one target room while the beam was in the other and also proved crucial in future expansion of NSL described below.

The Linac

During this period experiments in Nuclear Structure Physics moved toward use of beams of heavy ions (C12 and heavier) for which tandem Van der Graaffs are excellent tools. However, higher beam energies are needed if one wishes to study reactions with a variety of beams. Argonne National Lab was exploring the use of superconducting resonators in a linear accelerator booster injected by their tandem. Meanwhile a select NAS committee chaired by Gerhard Friedlander of BNL had recommended construction of two boosters at University Labs. Led by Peter Paul’s great enthusiasm we all agreed that the possibility of proposing to build a booster linac was a great opportunity for our laboratory.

When we expressed our enthusiasm to Bill Rodney at NSF he suggested joining with the applied superconductivity group at Cal Tech who, with NSF funding, were developing a suitable prototype superconducting resonator which would not be used at Cal Tech. Stony Brook could be given the task of making the Cal Tech resonators into an accelerator. This seemed a marvelous opportunity for us and discussions were quickly initiated resulting in an informal collaboration agreement in May 1975. The Caltech group would produce and improve resonators and Stony Brook would test their performance with beams of particles. NSF would provide additional funds to support these developments. As part of this collaboration Gene Sprouse joined Peter in heading this effort and spent a semester at Caltech working on the resonators and developing an elegant method for resonator fine tuning. In a little over one year the work at Caltech produced a 150 Mhz resonator of lead plated copper (lead is a superconductor at liquid Helium temperatures) ready for testing with beam at Stony Brook.

Meanwhile, with the early work looking so promising, Peter and Gene produced a massive proposal for a full booster linac based on the Caltech resonators. The booster was to have forty liquid Helium cooled 150 Mhz resonators in 12 modular cryostats to reach energies of 10 Mev/A for A up to over 100. Features of the proposal were a NY State contribution of one million dollars and the ability to fit the entire accelerator complex into the existing building, avoiding any new construction. The detailed beam dynamics were provided by Ernest Courant, one of the world’s leading accelerator theorists, who was in our Institute of Theoretical Physics. The proposal was submitted to NSF July 7, 1977 with Peter and Gene as Co-Principal Investigators.

Meanwhile other university labs were also considering the possibility of major upgrades. In particular the nuclear group at Stanford proposed a booster drawing from the experience at SLAC with Niobium superconducting resonators. This resulted in a direct competition between their proposal and ours for NSF support. In response to this NSF set up a committee of accelerator experts to evaluate the two proposals. The panel was chaired by Robert Behringer from Yale and included Lowell Bollinger who was directing superconducting booster development at Argonne National Laboratory which was already well along. The panel made extensive visits to both Stanford and Stony Brook and were to advise which, if any, proposal to fund.

Tests of the Caltech 150 Mhz resonator cited above went very well and, hoping for choice of our proposal, a meeting, including Bill Rodney, was held at Caltech to determine responsibilities. A full four resonator module was ready to be sent to SB for testing with beam. For the final accelerator construction Caltech would fabricate the resonators and controllers and send them to Stony Brook for plating and assembly. A budget was worked out which was in rough agreement with the proposal. Work toward the accelerator would continue as rapidly as possible awaiting the recommendation by the panel.

In early January 1979 members of the two competing groups met with the panel at NSF offices in Washington DC to reach a final decision. Stony Brook emerged as the winner and we were off and running. On advice of the panel the proposed budget was increased and NSF funds were to be available in July. The New York State equipment funds were available immediately and could be used for “long range” items. One of these was the 400 kV ion source table required for suitable beam injection into the tandem. Specifications had already been sent out for bid and on January 9, 1979 a purchase order contract was issued by the State Office of General Services to General Ionex Corp. (GIC) for a “Heavy Ion Injection System”, a 400 kV table and all associated instrumentation. GIC was the commercial supplier of the ion sources we had been using and had come up with what appeared to be a good design. All components on the table were to be controlled from the accelerator control table through fiber optic telemetry. The remaining State funds were designated for an extensive upgrading of the tandem.

Now came the task of creating an accelerator. A prototype four resonator module was successfully tested in March 1979 and everything looked good. The team that Peter and Gene put together was truly remarkable, ranging from experienced and aspiring accelerator physicists to a number of graduate and undergraduate students. Prominent among these are Ilan Ben-Zvi on leave from the Weiszman Institute, who joined us from the Stanford team, and Mike Brennan, a new postdoc from Rutgers who had decided to do accelerator physics. Both of them are now leaders in the accelerator programs at Brookhaven National Lab. Important visitors were Bala Kurup and Raj Pillay from the Tata Institute in Mumbai and Chen Chia-ehr from Beijing University who later became President of the University. The resonator development at Cal Tech was led by Jean Delayen who later led superconducting resonator development at the Thomas Jefferson Lab in Virginia. A very special contribution was the system for computer control of the whole accelerator system which was developed by Al Scholdorf, a graduate student, John Hasstedt, our computer specialist, and Chuck Pancake, the director of the department electronics shop. The controls linked a state of the art system of small computers to provide user friendly control of the entire accelerator system. The development was part of Al Scholdorf’s PhD thesis.

By mid 1982 construction was well along. Gene Sprouse was handling the very difficult job of the cryogenic system, John Noe, our Associate Lab Director, was supervising the tandem upgrades and assembly of the accelerator modules was proceeding well. It seemed sure that we would have an operating tandem-linac system within a year. An operating Ion Source Table was delivered by GIC and beams became available for testing the linac modules as they were installed. The ion source and tandem injection beam optics were operated without the expected telemetry which GIC was having trouble completing.

With the end in sight and with support from NSF we announced an International Conference on nuclear physics with heavy ions at energies below 20 Mev/A to be held at Stony Brook April 14-16, 1983 to celebrate the dedication of our LINAC. This provided a target for us to obtain full energy performance of the tandem-linac system and on March 17 a 280 Mev S-32 beam was produced on target using all twelve of the accelerator modules. This called for the bottle of Champagne I had put in the lab refrigerator to help in the celebration.

The Dedication/Conference was a great festive occasion. The keynote speaker at the Dedication was Edward Knapp, the Director of NSF who emphasized the linac as an outstanding example of NSF support of University laboratories. Peter and Gene also spoke along with Jim Mercerau, the head of the Caltech group. April 14 was proclaimed “LINAC DAY” by our County Legislature. In the next two days over 200 physicists from as far away as Japan and Australia presented the most recent work from their institutions, 25 papers in all. The Proceedings, edited by Peter Braun-Munzinger, were published by Harwood Academic Publishers. Most important, the addition of the superconducting linac booster, the second in the world and the first at a University, placed Stony Brook among the leading centers of nuclear structure research. Peter and Gene had done a magnificent job in creating this new facility. It was a singular moment for them and for Nuclear Physics at Stony Brook.

The successful operation of both the Stony Brook and Argonne superconducting linacs demonstrated that this new technology could be utilized at a variety of levels. Within a year from our dedication a number of laboratories were considering proposals and one, Florida State, was funded by NSF. Future resonator construction was greatly enhanced by the development, by Mike Brennan and Ilan Ben-Zvi at Stony Brook, of an improved resonator design, a Quarter Wave Resonator (QWR) which was sturdier and easier to fabricate than the Cal Tech and Argonne Split Loop Resonators (SLR). The lead plated QWR was chosen by The University of Washington for a DOE funded booster and the QWR became the design of choice for major superconducting linacs such as ALPI at INFR Legnaro Italy and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) being built at Michigan State University.

This seemed to me to be a good time for me to step down as Laboratory Director after 18 exciting years. The group decided to rotate the job of Director among the senior faculty in three-year terms and Gene Sprouse was selected to be the first. Peter Paul became Chairman of the Physics Department. I decided to take a long-postponed sabbatical at Argonne in the Spring of 1984 working with a group who were using their linac to study few nucleon transfer in reactions induced by Ni beams. It was to be a very productive visit which set the stage for the research I would do on returning to Stony Brook.

Soon after the dedication the linac was in regular use for experiments with a remarkably fast learning curve. While construction had been proceeding those not closely involved were preparing the target area for future experiments and beam lines were instrumented and ready. From May through the rest of 1983 a wide variety of experimental runs were producing good results; we were back in business with new capabilities. This was interrupted by the discovery, during a routine tank opening in January, of cracks on two sections of the glass column supporting the entire tandem structure. This was serious, and after careful study by us and HVEC it was determined that those sections of the column must be replaced, a very big job. The complete rebuilding was accomplished with great support from HVEC over a six month period and operation for experiments was resumed in July 1984.

Those six months provided an opportunity to complete several major improvement projects which did not require a tandem beam. Among these was the completion of the linac beam pre- and re-buncher arrangements in their final form. The re-buncher was positioned in the target area and a new “double-drift” pre-buncher was developed and installed. Development of the final linac control system was also completed including a computer-assisted linac phasing system which used the +45 degree beam line for energy analysis. This provided a systematic method for setting up selected linac beams, greatly increasing the efficiency of the process.

Substantial improvements were also made to the 400 kV ion source table. These included a more intense ion source and (finally) installation of a CAMAC fiber-optic control system. This enabled the final closing of the contract with General Ionics. Other projects were rebuilding of the Laddertron charging chain and the designing and installation of a radiation-protection system for the linac and target areas.

Operation with the rebuilt tandem and the complete linac resumed with great enthusiasm. The experimental stations evolved with regular improvements and new and extended efforts developed. In addition to the increase in beam energy the linac beam arrives at the target in sub-nanosecond bunches at chosen intervals, about 100 nanoseconds in normal operation. With rebunching these can be as short as 100 picoseconds or lower and we achieved a record 12 ps FWHM for a 140 Mev C-12 beam. The availability of these pulsed beams opened up new experimental opportunities.

Our ability to perform experiments involving charged particles was greatly enhanced by the installation in the summer of 1985 of a very large (2.4m diameter) scattering chamber designed by Bob McGrath. Its size provided space for the use of a variety of detector arrays and long paths for time-of flight experiments. Its appearance and designer gave it the lab nickname of Big Mac.

As linac operating experience developed during the next few years, avenues for improvements were identified. Small ones were routinely implemented, providing modest gains in operational effectiveness. Others were more challenging and required long range solutions. Most important of these problems was a mechanical instability which developed in the low beta resonators seriously limiting the power level at which they could be phase locked. The ultimate solution for this was to replace all of the low beta split loop resonators with quarter wave resonators following the design developed by Mike Brennan and Ilan Ben-Zvi (see discussion above).

As earlier I will not try to describe the many and varied experiments performed but will say a few words about the work of each of the varied research groups in the decades following initial linac operation.

Dave Fossan’s group were able to set up an array of six large Compton-suppressed Germanium gamma detectors and 14 small BGO multiplicity detectors to continue his spectroscopic studies in a wide variety of nuclei. Dave had been one of the designers of Gammasphere, a large spherical array of Ge detectors and when it began to circulate among National Labs he extended many of his experiments to its use.

Peter Paul and his group continued their giant resonance studies to resonances built upon excited nuclei and to a series of experiments using the GDR as a time reference when used to study fission dynamics. He developed an array of parallel-plate gas avalanche counters to measure fission fragment distributions in coincidence with the GDR. He also developed a series of electron-positron detectors to study internal pair decays in nuclei, particularly to search for Giant Monopole transitions which can determine the compressibility of nuclear matter.

After a spectacular success in measuring magnetic moments of fission isomers Gene Sprouse embarked on an ambitious and very successful program of laser spectroscopy of nuclei produced in reactions induced by beams from the linac. An innovative “recoil into gas” method was developed and isotope shifts and hyperfine interactions were measured for several systems. Gene and his students then turned to studies of Francium, the heaviest of the alkali elements, which is unstable and not available in nature but can be produced by beams from our linac. Francium is particularly attractive as a laboratory to explore for parity non-conserving (PNC) effects which test the Standard Model and become more probable for heavier nuclei. In collaboration with Luis Orosco from our Atomic Physics group Gene’s group were able to capture Francium atoms in a magneto-optical trap and perform a series of laser spectroscopic studies - a major series of accomplishments over a number of years. In the end our linac beams could not produce enough Francium for PNC studies and the experiment has now moved to TRIUMF, a large nuclear physics lab in Vancouver BC where Luis (now at the University of MD) and several of Gene’s students and postdocs are leading a collaboration.

With the availability of the “Big Mac” Bob McGrath and his group, in collaboration with John Alexander from Chemistry, embarked on a series of experiments to study nuclear properties at high temperature, the formation and decay of heavy composite nuclei formed in fusion-evaporation reactions. They set up an electrostatic deflector to separate the evaporation residues from beam and used arrays of small detectors and position sensitive large detectors to study their decay. Analysis of correlations between detectors gave information on the source size and energy spectra gave a measure of the effective “temperature” of the emitting nucleus. These results provided tests of various statistical models being developed to treat highly excited nuclei.

When I returned from my sabbatical at Argonne I decided to initiate a program to study the influence of few nucleon transfer on heavy ion reactions at energies near the threshold for a reaction, the “Coulomb Barrier”. Measurements a several labs had observed larger fusion cross sections than predicted by barrier penetration models and along with two graduate students and one postdoc, we set out to measure transfer strength near the barrier. To identify the transfer products we measured total energy, energy loss and mass in counters one meter from our target with velocity from time-of-flight using the linac bunching as our time reference. Using the Big Mac we were able to set up an array of ten detectors separated by ten degree intervals to get an almost complete angular distribution in one run.

In the late nineteen eighties a new approach to nuclear studies was emerging; the study of heavy ion reactions at very high energies - relativistic heavy ion collisions (RHI). The Bevalac at LBL and the AGS at Brookhaven were modified to produce beams of heavy ions and experiments were being planned. Peter Braun-Munzinger and Johanna Stachel left our lab to set up a group to work at BNL. They quickly became leaders as these studies showed promise to become a major avenue of future nuclear physics research. As particle physicists realized earlier, relativistic energy experiments are best performed in a collider mode and a proposal was developed to build a Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL. In 1989 the NSF/DOE Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), chaired by Peter Paul, designated RHIC the highest priority for new construction and urged prompt funding. With the decision to build RHIC at BNL the next new direction in nuclear physics was established. All of us agreed that this was a marvelous opportunity for Stony Brook nuclear physics. The NSL would continue its very successful program but new investments, both in theory and experiment, should be in RHI physics. Peter and Johanna were among the leaders in the experiments at the AGS and in 1990 they were able to add Tom Hemmick as an assistant professor in their group. Tom has had great success in RHI physics and also in teaching our first year courses.

As RHIC approached reality potential user groups deluged BNL with proposals for its utilization. BNL management urged groups with similar interests to merge and eventually two large detector systems and two smaller efforts were approved for construction. Peter, Johanna and Tom, along with Michael Marx from our particle physics group, took a major role in building and using PHENIX, one of the large systems. In 1995 Peter and Johanna both accepted offers of top Professorships in Germany, Johanna at Heidelberg and Peter at Darmstadt and GSI. We were soon able to establish new leadership by recruiting Barbara Jacak from Los Alamos who was already one of the PHENIX leaders. Barbara was a wonderful colleague and, with Barbara as leader, the Stony Brook group became one of the top contributors to the successes of PHENIX which continue to this day. Unfortunately for us, Barbara was lured away from us by Berkeley in 2010 but the success of the group continues. (see below)

This left NSL with the “core” faculty who had been together since 1970. In the fall of 1994 Bob McGrath accepted a part time appointment as an Associate Provost which did not diminish his research program but in 1996 a new Provost asked him to be Vice Provost, a full time job. Bob managed to graduate two more students but effectively left the Lab, becoming our Provost from 2000 until his retirement in 2010.

Meanwhile important things were happening at BNL. In the summer of 1997 the Department of Energy decided to terminate the contract with Associated Universities Inc. (AUI) which had managed BNL since its inception in 1947 and requested proposals for taking over the job. Bob suggested to the Provost and President that this was a great opportunity for Stony Brook and was given the job of coordinating the proposal preparation. The result of hard work by Bob and many colleagues was the formation of Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), an alliance between Stony Brook and Battelle (an experienced lab management company) including representation from six elite Eastern Universities. BSA won the award and took over the management of BNL on January first 1998. Jack Marburger, our former President, became Director of BNL and Peter Paul became his Deputy Director for Science. At Stoney Brook Bob McGrath became Vice President for Brookhaven Affairs and, when our Provost moved on in 1999, acting Provost and then, in 2000, Provost.

In 1998 I turned 70. My small program had produced some good results in “near barrier” physics and, more important, two PhD students who obtained good postdoc positions. I decided that I should not commit to any more graduate students so I told our Chairman I would retire if a nuclear physicist were added to replace me and I could continue to teach some of our first year courses with a modest compensation; at that time new faculty could not be added without a retirement. The next year our Chair, Janos Kirz, had received approval from the Dean and I retired effective Dec 31, 1999. My replacement was Axel Drees one of the current leaders in our RHI program and, as of this writing (2020), Department Chairman.

Even with the depletion of faculty, research progress in NSL continued to be high thanks to Dave Fossan’s extremely active spectroscopy group and the continuing successes in Gene Sprouse’s trapping and studying of Francium (the world’s only Francium lab). Dave would form collaborations for approved experiments at Gammasphere and obtain preliminary data here with his smaller array. Armed with this information the Gammasphere experiments usually went well and their productivity was remarkable. In 2002 we were also able to add Norbert Pietralla, an outstanding young PhD from Cologne by way of Yale. His interests in Nuclear Spectroscopy complemented Dave’s nicely and he quickly attracted graduate students and produced good results.

A singular moment in the history of Stony Brook Physics and the NSL occurred in the spring of 2000 when the Stony Brook Physics Department hosted a “Reunion”, inviting as former students, postdocs and faculty for a weekend of physics and remembrance. The response for our lab was very good. Almost a third of the people we were able to contact were able to come and many others sent extensive regrets. On Saturday afternoon there were breakout sessions for short talks and general discussion. Ours was, as always, in the middle of the control room, and was very lively. It was especially gratifying to see different generations of our students sharing their memories and tell of their varied current undertakings. The gathering reminded all of us that the greatest contribution of our Lab to science was not our experiments but our 62 PhD students, many of whom have had distinguished careers and the many postdocs and visitors who passed through the NSL.

The 90’s had been exciting years for the NSL but a great loss for Nuclear Physics, and for all of us, occurred when Dave Fossan suffered a massive fatal heart attack in the summer of 2003. Dave was the first faculty member I brought here and was a marvelous personal friend and colleague for all those years. We all were deeply saddened. He had become a world leader in nuclear spectroscopy and was by far the most productive member of our group (21 PhD students, 17 postdocs and 260 publications). His presence is still felt in nuclear physics with the successes of his students and the Gammasphere detector.

Dave’s passing was a huge loss for Nuclear Structure Physics and, of course, for the NSL. Gene and Norbert continued to make good use of beams form the linac for several years and completed the thesis work for five more students, but choices had to be made. Norbert’s became obvious; he was offered the Professorship in Nuclear Physics at the University or Darmstadt, one of the most distinguished in Germany. That was an offer one does not refuse and he left us in 2005. Gene completed beautiful Atomic Physics studies of Francium and some other unstable systems and the linac produced its last beams in November 2006 which was close to the end of our last NSF grant. Almost immediately Gene was offered the position of Editor in Chief for the American Physical Society, one of the three leadership positions in APS. Gene accepted this new challenge and did a magnificent job for eight years before returning to Stony Brook.

As word of the closing down of our linac spread we were contacted by Shengyun Zhu, who had been a visitor in NSL working with Gene, suggesting that our linac might become a booster for the tandem at the China Institute for Atomic Physics, where he had a leadership position, Discussions followed and it was finally agreed that China would “purchase” the entire linac for a sum representing its market value. In 2009 a small army of technicians and workers came to NSL and everything associated with the linac was loaded into shipping containers bound for Beijing. Recent word from Zhu suggests it is almost installed in their laboratory.

The tandem was used for a few years for experiments in our grad/senior laboratory but as of this writing it is “operative” but suffering from lack of SF6 and funds for even minor repairs. Meanwhile Nuclear Physics at Stony Brook is thriving. The PHENIX detector at RHIC continues to produce groundbreaking results and the Stony Brook group is one of its leaders. Before she left us in 2010 Barbara Jacak had been “spokesman” for the PHENIX collaboration and in 2004 Abhay Deshpande was added to the group as a BNL-RIKEN fellow. He is a leader in “RHIC SPIN’ studies in which polarized proton and deuteron beams are studying the quark contribution to the spin of the nucleon.

The Stony Brook Nuclear group is also looking farther into the future. The study of nuclear structure is evolving into nucleon structure, the study of the behavior of the quark content of the proton and neutron best done with high energy electrons as probes. Toward this end the 2019 NSAC Long Range Plan (Chaired by Don Geesaman, a student of Bob McGrath) endorsed the creation of an Electron Ion Collider (EIC). Designs are being developed and it is hoped that an EIC will be the next major investment in Nuclear Science. A Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science (CFNS) has been created in collaboration with BNL with Abhay Deshpande as Director. The center combines both theory and experimental work and will concentrate on the physics and development of an EIC. As I complete this “History” word has come from DOE that BNL has been chosen as the site for the EIC assuring Stony Brook’s leadership in Nuclear Science will continue.