The Surface Muon Beam

JUL 01, 1985

One of the inventors of an intense, completely polarized muon beam that every ‘meson factory’ now provides discusses the bittersweet history of the invention and some of the recent experiments that it made possible.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881018

Theodore Bowen

Long ago, shortly before World War II, when I was but 13 years of age, I was excited by an article in Popular Mechanics magazine that described Ernest O. Lawrence’s project to construct the world’s greatest atom smasher, a 184‐inch cyclotron, on a hill overlooking the Berkeley campus of the University of California. From that point on, my career goal was to become a physicist. While the 184‐inch‐cyclotron project has always symbolized to me the beauty and excitement of unlocking the mysteries of nature, I never suspected, even for many years into my career as a high‐energy and cosmic‐ray physicist, that I would have a rendezvous with destiny involving the 184‐inch cyclotron: using it in its waning years to make my most significant contribution to the progress of science.

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More about the authors

Theodore Bowen, University of Arizona, Tucson.