GC3M540 Harwell site puzzle cache 2 (Unknown Cache) in Southern England, United Kingdom created by look-sharp

GC3M540 ▼

A cache by look-sharp Message this owner

Hidden : 5/27/2012

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Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

The cache is not at the listed coordinates. The cache is not at the listed coordinates. The cache is not at the listed coordinates.

This is an account of a little-known scientific meeting, held to commemorate the half centenary of the AERE Harwell site. As the first work on the site was minor in nature, to begin the process of converting it from an RAF station, and took place in early winter, the commemorative meeting actually took place fifty one years from this date. An impressive line-up of distinguished scientists made presentations and the programme listed eighteen speakers plus seventeen invited VIPs. A total of 968 delegates, made up of former and current workers on the site, attended to hear the presentations.

The meeting was chaired by Dr Walter Marshall, who made the formal opening speech, including a remark that he was most impressed to see such a distinguished group of scientists gathered together in one place.

The technical presentations were started by Sir John Cockcroft. He was the first director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), having been given the job of setting up the site and creating a British capability in nuclear science and engineering. His account of the first 18 years of the site was entertaining and instructive. Dr Arthur Vick followed and told the audience about his quite different approach to running the site, being an administrator rather than a scientist. He contrasted the experience with his later time at Queen’s University, Belfast. The last speaker in the session was Dr Robert Spence, whose discourse covered the life and times of the chemist, Otto Hahn, for whom he wrote an obituary memoir for the Royal Society.

The second session was opened by Lewis Roberts with a fascinating presentation on the physical chemistry of the rare-earth metal samarium (symbol Sm, atomic number 62). Next, Spence relived the story of the transfer of his work on plutonium separation from Chalk River to Harwell in the late 1940s. The third of the session’s talks was given by Cockcroft, in the form of a light-hearted retrospective on many of the scientists, engineers and characters who made Harwell such a famous centre of nuclear physics creativity and excellence in the second half of the twentieth century.

After lunch, Cockcroft was chairman for the afternoon session and began it by describing his experiments using high energy particles to investigate atomic nuclei. Cockcroft shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for this work. The accelerator he invented, jointly named with his co-laureate, Ernest Walton, was a ground breaking machine of its time, capable of producing very high voltages for physics experiments and the forerunner of today’s machines for medical radiation therapy and particle physics research.

Peter Iredale was the next speaker and brought the meeting up to date with a summary of the recent commercialisation of much of the research done on the site and its transfer from the public sector to numerous specialised, private companies and organisations. Sir Basil Schönland gave a discourse covering his famous work on atmospheric physics and investigations into electric fields in storm clouds. The practical demonstration of lightning effects was much appreciated by the audience. The closing talk was by Graeme Low, who gave a well received presentation on recent developments in the field of solid state physics, including the use of modern tools such as the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. The coordinates listed for this cache are near the centre of this accelerator.

At the end of the meeting, Cockcroft himself summed up, thanking firstly all the speakers for contributing and then the delegates for attending in such numbers. All agreed that the day was a fitting tribute to the tireless and historical work done at Harwell during its days as AERE and continued by the many organisations that are presently based on the site.