Nan Phinney | |
---|---|
Born | Nanette Cecile Phinney 1945 (age 78–79) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Alma mater | State University of New York at Stonybrook |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | SLAC CERN University of Oxford |
Thesis | Trident Production in Coulomb Field (1972) |
Doctoral advisor | John (Jack) Smith, SUNY, Stonybrook |
Nan Phinney (born 1945) is a retired American accelerator physicist at SLAC. She was program coordinator for the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC), the world's first linear collider. Her research interests are high energy colliders and linear colliders. She became an American Physical Society Fellow in 1993. Her last job title at SLAC was "Distinguished Staff Scientist".
Born in Chicago in 1945, Nan Phinney is the daughter of Thomas Ward Phinney, who trained as an electrical engineer, and Martha Louise (née Lawrence) Phinney. [1] [2] She is a granddaughter of photographer George R. Lawrence. [1]
The family lived on the north side of Chicago, where she attended Catholic grammar school and Catholic girls' high school. [2]
Phinney completed a Bachelor of Science in physics and astronomy in 1966 at Michigan State University. [3] She earned an M.S. in 1968, and a Ph.D. in 1972, both degrees in High Energy Physics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. [3] [4] Her dissertation was Trident Production in Coulomb Field, advised by John (Jack) Smith. [2] [5]
From 1972 through 1980, Phinney held post-doc positions from École Polytechnique and the University of Oxford, working at CERN on high-energy particle physics experiments. [3] [6] Initially she worked on the hyperon experiment on the Proton Synchrotron, [2] but for most of her time at CERN she worked with the CERN, Columbia, Oxford, Rockefeller group in IR-1 of the Intersecting Storage Rings. The group studied wide-angle scattering, and Phinney's work was primarily data acquisition. [2]
"I thought [the linear collider] was really bold and imaginative and exciting. Anyone could build a storage ring, but this was going to be fun."
— Nan Phinney [6]
In 1981 Phinney was one of the first physicists hired to work on the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC), the world's first linear collider. [6] With technical expertise and leadership qualities, she became SLC program coordinator from 1990 to 1998. She led the effort "to make the accelerator perform — an enormous challenge that took constant effort", according to Burt Richter. [6] Prof. David Burke said she "became an international spokesperson for the new technology as a result of her scientific expertise as well as her ability to talk to audiences ranging from scientists to government officials". [6]
In 2004 Phinney was elected chair of the Division of the Physics of Beams executive committee of the American Physical Society. [7] She has served on the second International Linear Collider Technical Review Committee as well as the U.S. Linear Collider Steering Group Accelerator Task Force and the United Kingdom Linear Collider Machine Advisory Committee. [6] According to Richter, she has brought "her hard-won wisdom and experience on linear colliders to the worldwide linear collider design efforts". [6]
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 24 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.
A linear particle accelerator is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beamline. The principles for such machines were proposed by Gustav Ising in 1924, while the first machine that worked was constructed by Rolf Widerøe in 1928 at the RWTH Aachen University. Linacs have many applications: they generate X-rays and high energy electrons for medicinal purposes in radiation therapy, serve as particle injectors for higher-energy accelerators, and are used directly to achieve the highest kinetic energy for light particles for particle physics.
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An energy recovery linac (ERL) is a type of linear particle accelerator that provides a beam of electrons used to produce x-rays by synchrotron radiation. First proposed in 1965 the idea gained interest since the early 2000s.
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