Centenary Herwig Schopper receives the Heisenberg Medal. Credit: C Fernandez/CERN-PHOTO-202403-048-31″>
From his birth in Bohemia in 1924, Herwig Schopper was a prisoner of war, an experimentalist with pioneering contributions to nuclear, accelerator and detector physics, director general (DG) of DESY and then CERN during the golden age of physics. particles, and a celebrated scientific diplomat. Shortly after his centenary, his colleagues, family and friends gathered on March 1 to celebrate the life of the first DG of any institution to reach 100 years of age.
“He is a restless person,” observed Albrecht Wagner (DESY), who presented a tour of Schopper’s 35 years of work in Germany, following his childhood in Bohemia. Whether in Hamburg, Erlangen, Mainz or Karlsruhe, he never missed the opportunity to discover new places – whilst always maintaining the Austrian diet to which his children attribute their longevity. On one occasion, Schopper took a sabbatical to work with Lise Meitner at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. At the time, the great physicist was carrying out the first nuclear physics studies in the keV range, Wagner said, and he directed Schopper to measure the absorption rate of beta-decay electrons in various materials using radioactive sources and a Geiger-Müller counter. Schopper is one of the last surviving physicists who worked with her, Wagner noted.
Schopper’s scientific contributions included playing an important role in the world’s first polarized proton source, Europe’s first R&D program for superconducting accelerators, and the development of hadronic calorimeters as precision instruments, explained Christian Fabjan (TU Vienna/HEPHY ). Schopper dubbed the latter the sampling total absorption calorimeter, or STAC, playing on the detector’s stacked design, but the name didn’t stick. In recognition of his contributions, hadronic calorimeters can now be renamed Schopper total absorption calorimeters, joked Fabjan.
As DG of CERN from 1981 to 1988, Schopper oversaw most of the construction of the LEP before it began operations in July 1989. To achieve this, he did not shy away from risks, budget cuts or unpopular opinions when the situation called for it. . hence, said Chris Llewellyn Smith, who would serve as DG from 1994 to 1998. Llewelyn Smith credited Schopper with making decisions that would benefit not only the LEP but also the LHC. “Watching Herwig deal with these assessments was a wonderful learning experience, during which I learned a lot about the management of CERN,” he recalled.
After handing over leadership of CERN to Carlo Rubbia, Schopper became a full-time science diplomat, notably including 20 years in senior roles at UNESCO between 1997 and 2017, and significant contributions to SESAME, the synchrotron light for experimental science and applications in the Middle East (see CERN Mail January/February 2023, p28). Khaled Toukan of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, CERN Board Chairman Eliezer Rabinovici and Maciej Nałecz (Polish Academy of Sciences, formerly UNESCO) spoke of Schopper’s ability to help develop SESAME as a model for science for peace and development. “Herwig likes to build rings,” Toukan said fondly.
As with any good birthday party, Herwig received gifts: a first copy of his biography, a NASA sweatshirt emblazoned with “Failure is Not an Option” by Sam Ting (MIT), who has been closely associated with Schopper since time who passed DESY together, and the Heisenberg medal. “You were even in contact with the man himself,” noted Heisenberg Society president Johannes Blümer, referring to several occasions when Schopper met Heisenberg at conferences and even once discussed politics with him.
Schopper continues to advise DGs to this day – and not just in physics. Confessing that he occasionally feels intimidated by his life’s achievements, CERN DG Fabiola Gianotti hinted that they often discuss music. “Herwig likes all composers, but not the Baroque ones. For him, they are very rational and intellectual.” For this, he will always have physics.
