Timothy Edward Toohig

Following a meeting at SLAC, Timothy Edward Toohig died of an apparent heart attack on 25 September 2001. Before his death, Tim had been working for the US Department of Energy (DOE), monitoring the program at SLAC and at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Tim was born on 17 February 1928 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Following a stint in the US Army Air Corps in 1946–47, Tim entered Boston College. There, despite a long commute from Lawrence, he made time to engage in his emerging religious interests and to participate in the local physics club. He received a BS in physics at Boston College in 1951. In 1953, Tim earned an MS degree from the University of Rochester, where he specialized in optics.

Tim began his formal studies in Roman Catholicism in 1953, becoming a novitiate at Shadowbrook Seminary in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1957, he enrolled as a graduate student in physics at Johns Hopkins University and simultaneously arranged to continue his religious studies at Woodstock College in Maryland. In due course, Tim became a member of Aihud Pevsner’s research team that was engaged in bubble chamber experiments using the Bevatron at the University of California, Berkeley. During his early 1960s stay in Berkeley, Tim also became associated with students and faculty at the Newman Center. His involvement with team members in the physics experiment along with the fellowship he found in the religious community began to set a pattern for the unusual development of Tim’s personality and influence, combining his talents as a scientist, a chaplain, a spiritual counselor, and a helpful friend to many.

A group at Berkeley during the early 1960s was beginning to consider a much larger accelerator that might be built in California, and Tim began to spend time on that project. In 1962, he received his PhD in elementary particle physics under the direction of his thesis adviser, Pevsner, from Johns Hopkins; the title of his thesis was “Existence and Production of Eta and Omega Mesons.” His attention returned to his religious studies at Woodstock College; in 1965, he was ordained a Jesuit priest.

Tim then joined the accelerator department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he assisted with the design and implementation of the slowly extracted external proton beam. He also joined a newly formed division that was created to assist experimental groups in the use of the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. Furthermore, in his “spare time,” Tim continued to work, as he had at Berkeley, on design studies for a new, higher-energy accelerator. In 1968, construction of that accelerator was authorized at a site near Batavia, Illinois. In 1970, Tim joined that project, becoming a member of the Fermilab experimental areas division.

Soon after Tim’s arrival at Fermilab, his style—bringing to life new facilities, usually ahead of schedule and under budget—caught the attention of Director Robert R. Wilson, who promptly assigned him responsibility for the design and construction of the neutrino experimental area. There his work included the design and construction of a complex target and focusing system that produced the world’s highest-energy neutrino beam at that time. Tim was an intrepid red-tape cutter and, when necessary, a consummate circumnavigator of burdensome and counterproductive rules. He even found a creative way to get Wilson his desired reflecting ponds by making them part of the Fermilab accelerator’s cooling system.

Tim was a major participant in a US-Soviet experiment on the channeling of charged particle beams, a collaboration that started at Fermilab and later moved to Dubna and Serpukhov in Russia. Tim’s extended presence in the Soviet Union to work on the experiments was a key factor in a collaboration that constituted a bright spot during the tense years of the cold war. Elements of that collaboration continue at Fermilab to this day.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, experiments at Fermilab and at its European counterpart, CERN, raised questions that could be answered only by creating particle collisions at energies far greater than existing accelerators could provide. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan endorsed an ambitious plan to build the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), which would provide proton–proton collisions with an energy of 40 TeV, compared to 2 TeV at Fermilab’s Tevatron. In 1988, DOE officials selected a site encircling Waxahachie (near Dallas), Texas. Tim joined the new laboratory to participate in the detailed design and construction of the SSC, becoming deputy director of the conventional facilities division. Then, in 1993, following an expenditure of almost $2 billion and after numerous scientists, engineers, and technicians had spent years of hard, successful work, Congress canceled the project, leaving those workers suddenly unemployed. Tim became an invaluable source of sympathy, counsel, and guidance for many of those who had committed their careers to bringing the SSC dream to fruition, only to see that dream suddenly vanish. The solace and the tangible assistance that Tim provided helped many of them through that traumatic experience.

Tim was extraordinarily skilled in planning the design and construction of accelerators and experimental facilities. But perhaps a still more important and, indeed, unique feature of Tim’s presence on any project was his ability to relate to his colleagues and create the kind of morale and spirit that make the almost impossible seem within easy grasp.

Tim’s interest and enjoyment in performing rites and services in his role as Roman Catholic priest brought joy to many and sympathy to others in time of need. Beyond the customary practice in that role, Tim could usually successfully press the appropriate authorities to waive rules too, so that he would, for example, be permitted to perform marriages not only in a church, but in a location that appealed to those people involved. Tim was available to his friends and colleagues—those of other faiths or those of no faith. All were of equal concern to Tim, if not in his formal, priestly role, then simply as a warm human being ready and able to lend his practiced ear, his sympathy, and his help. The story is told that after Tim had conducted a wedding of two friends—the groom, Roman Catholic, and the bride, Jewish—the father of the bride thanked him and told him he would make a wonderful rabbi.

Tim strongly believed that science and religion could, and should, coexist—that the one could draw strength from the other. The way he led his life was patterned after that conviction. Tim made each person who knew him feel special. Colleagues far and wide truly respected, trusted, and loved him. He was a wonderful companion in good times and bad. Those of us who knew him will always be grateful for the gift of his friendship.