This Month In SLAC History: October 2002

Nobelists Burt Richter, Martin Perl, and Dick Taylor on October 11, 1995 at the SLAC celebration in honor of Martin Perl’s Nobel Prize in Physics. (Photo courtesy of SLAC Archives)

By Jean Deken, SLAC Archivist

38 years ago, October 2, 1964: Paleoparadoxia discovered during excavation of End Station B.

37 years ago, October 1 – 2, 1965: First "Users Conference" held at SLAC, with 150 people in attendance.

36 years ago, October 17, 1966: Interlaced beams of different energies are delivered to the beam switchyard, and experiments with the beam begin.

34 years ago, October, 1968: Feynman gives his first public talk—at Stanford—on his parton theory.

26 years ago, October 18, 1976: Burton Richter (SLAC) and Samuel Ting (MIT) awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of the J/Y  particle.

23 years ago, October, 1979: SPEAR becomes a 50-50 shared facility between SLAC and SSRL. During the 50 percent time when SPEAR operation is dedicated to synchrotron radiation, the ring is filled only with electrons, and no colliding-beam work is done.

21 years ago, October 21, 1981: Fang-Yi, Vice-Premier of the People’s Republic of China, visits SLAC.

19 years ago, October 31, 1983: SLAC Linear Collider (SLC) groundbreaking ceremony.

14 years ago, October 25, 1988: Michael Riordan of SLAC awarded the 1988 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for The Hunting of the Quark (1987: Simon & Schuster).

12 years ago, October 4, 1990: SPEAR becomes a dedicated synchrotron radiation facility with an independent injector.

October 17, 1990: Nobel Prize shared by Richard Taylor (SLAC), Jerome E. Friedman (MIT), and Henry W. Kendall (MIT) for their work in the development of the quark model.

11 years ago, October 7, 1991: DOE "Tiger Team" arrives at SLAC for a four-week stay.

10 years ago, October, 1992: SSRL becomes a division of SLAC.

9 years ago, October 1, 1993: Last paper issue of Preprints in Particles and Fields produced.

October 4, 1993: President Clinton announces that SLAC was the preferred site for the construction of the B Factory, after a prolonged analysis comparing SLAC with a site at Cornell University.

7 years ago, October 11, 1995: Nobel Prize in Physics shared by Martin Perl (SLAC) (for the discovery of the tau lepton) and Frederick Reines (UC Irvine) (for the detection of the neutrino).

5 years ago, October 27-31, 1997: SLD records more than 10,000 Z-zero particles, for the first time since it began operations in 1991. B-Factory Project completes installation of the electron High Energy Ring—five months early—and Positron Injection System Ready.

4 years ago, October 26, 1998: B-Factory (PEP-II) dedication.