beamjockey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beamjockey) wrote2024-05-10 04:47 pm
beamjockey) wrote2024-05-10 04:47 pm
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I Am Retiring from Fermilab after 45 Years
I am retiring from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory after over 45 years. My final day will be Friday, 31 May.
After beamslinging, atom smashing, neutrino making, then magnet testing, then some tech writing, I wound up becoming a radiation safety physicist.
I learned all kinds of things. I helped get physics done. I worked with marvelous people. And I had considerable fun.
Thanks to Fermilab, and to Fermilab's people, for everything.
Here's what I wrote for Inside Fermilab, the lab newsletter, in response to a questionnaire. (But the questions have been stripped out by the editor, so I seem to be rambling.) (Which, let's face it, is normal.)
After beamslinging, atom smashing, neutrino making, then magnet testing, then some tech writing, I wound up becoming a radiation safety physicist.
I learned all kinds of things. I helped get physics done. I worked with marvelous people. And I had considerable fun.
Thanks to Fermilab, and to Fermilab's people, for everything.
Here's what I wrote for Inside Fermilab, the lab newsletter, in response to a questionnaire. (But the questions have been stripped out by the editor, so I seem to be rambling.) (Which, let's face it, is normal.)
I started as an engineering physicist in the Neutrino Department, learning how fixed-target beams are delivered. The Magnet Factory borrowed me to help test hundreds of superconducting Tevatron magnets. Then for a decade I worked shifts in beamline operations; during long shutdowns, I was loaned out to work on a database for Tevatron construction projects, and again to be a technical writer, editor, and programmer for a new beamline control system. When someone was needed to work on shielding analysis, I moved into radiation safety, where I have remained.
Once, at the end of a fixed-target run, I was invited to Lab F in the Neutrino Area. Experimenters had been operating a small Freon-filled bubble chamber for months. The beam intensity was extremely low, so low that it was safe for people to occupy Lab F. On this, the final night, they had removed the cameras, exposing the bubble chamber’s windows. One could mount a low set of steps, and peer into a window. A flash of light would fire each time a pulse passed through I have seen many photos of bubble chamber tracks, but that night, for the first and only time in my life, I saw the delicate, fairy-like traces of the tiny bubbles with my
own eyes. Invisible particles had left a visible trail in their wake—a trail that vanished immediately, after the flash, as the chamber cycled to be ready for the next pulse. It was a magical night.
(See page 15 of this document for a photo of tracks in the Tohoku 1-meter bubble chamber. It doesn’t do justice to what I saw, though.)
During my retirement, I plan to continue my public speaking, giving talks on astronomy, spaceflight, physics and the history of science. I hope to get more nonfiction writing done. And travel far and wide. And I hope to get better at playing the baritone ukulele, or, failing that, at least to learn some more songs.
it's a new adventure now
K.
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Congratulations!
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Congratulations; I hope your retirement is everything you want it to be.
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