Tribute to Tom Devlin
10 April 2008
Lee Pondrom
I am trying to remember how we first met. It must have been at the Princeton-Penn Accelerator. In the early ‘60’s I was at Columbia, and drove down to Princeton often. I have a group photograph somewhere, which I can’t find, of the attendees at a workshop on K decays at the PPA during that time. Everybody sure looked young. I’ll bet you are in it.
I have done some digging on the origins of the neutral hyperon beam program at NAL, which was the high water mark of my career. I found an agreement signed by me and Jim Sanford, dated Nov 29, 1971, stating that you and I are members of the Neutral Hyperon Experiment, that Wisconsin will supply the multiwire proportional chambers, and that Rutgers will supply the lead glass. It is interesting to read over the original proposal, with knowledge of what worked and what did not. The abstract says that we will measure the fluxes of neutrals produced near zero mrad by 200 GeV protons. I think we started out with 300 GeV protons, and never dropped lower. The detector will be sensitive to polarization of hyperons. That turned out to be true! The same apparatus will search for Ξo->pπ- . That was tough. And the apparatus will measure the Ltotal cross section, an exercise which was much more difficult than we thought at the time. In 1972 you submitted a proposal to measure the So lifetime via the Primakoff effect, something we achieved about 10 years later.
In the meantime, the hyperon polarization turned into a fruitful program, which kept us busy for a decade running and analyzing ten separate numbered and approved experiments, publishing about 50 papers, and graduating countless students. The group was never larger than 16 people, counting students, post-docs, and faculty. I used to say that we could all fit in one high rise elevator. Group dynamics were on the whole friendly. There was plenty of success to go around, and most people felt fulfilled. I cannot recall any real serious animosity. I have you to thank for that.
It is interesting that the sociology of our field changed during our glorious decade. When it was all over, I felt like Rip Van Winkle waking from a long nap. Experimental groups had more than 100 people, and individual control over the program was much diminished. Time scales for everything were stretched, and budgets kept getting smaller. The last 20 years have been interesting, but not the same as the old hyperon beam. We are fortunate to have had a golden age.
And so here we are. I regret that I am not able to attend your retirement luncheon. I salute you, Thomas Devlin, and wish you Godspeed in your retirement. I could not have found a better colleague.