Jack made a photo montage from some photos that were posted at one of SLAC's memorials on Dr. Panofsky passing in 2007.
SLAC Today has a story on the founding of SLAC, including about Edward Ginzton, the Project M Director. On the date referenced, "Fifty Years Ago in April", I was a graduating undergraduate in Stanford's Physics Department. SLAC's approval was in the news. I later retired from SLAC after three decades service. A few months ago, I wrote a page on a personal encounter with Ed Ginzton in the mid-1980s. Bob Moulton was cited in the historical review for his Personal Account of SLAC's founding. Bob was another admirable founding figure from SLAC's early years. Figures like those don't appear out of the vacuum. Some have long careers. The contribution of others is episodic. Some arise randomly out of controversy and struggle. Others surprise themselves after cohorts selectively recognize, encourage, and grow their socially constructive character traits. It's a fragile balance. Machiavellians are always in the game, sharpening up their elbows. SLAC's history of reinventing itself has been a relay race, never more creatively than now. It's nice to see things going well at SLAC in the modern era. New machine. New missions. New People. Dr. Panofsky explained how things worked in the early years: Lynch: This is an interview with Wolfgang Kurt Hermann Panofsky done in his office at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center on 2 May 1997 as part of the AIP oral history program. In the previous interview we discussed the physics done at SLAC while you were director. I would like to discuss the unique style which you had as director. One of the characteristics of you as a director was that you were always very well informed. It was very rare that someone could come into your office and surprise you. Not everybody has the faculty and I am curious how you did you do that? How did you have your fingers on the pulse of the lab? Panofsky: I don't have the slightest idea. I was just interested in many things and I did a tremendous amount of running around on the different parts of the lab, and read a lot of literature and so forth, but there was no strategy to that or anything of that kind. It was simply due to the fact that I was on speaking terms with essentially everybody in the lab. I also wanted to make it very clear when I participated in discussions, that it didn't make any difference that I was the director, namely that when I had a certain opinion it was just another guy having an opinion. When a meeting was dedicated to make decisions, that would be specifically set out up front. However when there were just casual meetings or discussions or visits or what have you, people wouldn't assume that a discussion had to be resolved in a given direction with the director making decisions. It was made very clear that the director was just one of the technical types talking either sense or nonsense as the case may be. But there was no organized strategy to do what you say. Lynch: Actually I would say that is in fact quite organized because the tone that you set in talking with people very strongly influences the feedback that you get. That was one of the things which really impressed me, was that people could talk with you so freely, it was not the questions of the "Pief up in the clouds." Panofsky: I always wanted to make it very sure that one would not make decisions at random, suddenly popping out of some discussion which was not designed to make decisions. It was sort of interesting, different people in the lab had different styles. For instance some people in the lab were extremely worried if discussions didn't stay within the organizational structure. For instance Arnold Eldridge, who did a fantastically good job in directing the manufacture of the accelerator, and was absolutely excellent in doing that and was a more old-fashioned organization person, and he was always very nervous if somebody who worked under him would talk either to Dick Neal or myself without him being present, being afraid that decisions would be made over his head. I tried to make it extremely clear that if I had a technical session on the alignment system or something with one of the engineers who formally reported to him, that we wouldn't make any decisions but we would simply try to solve problems. That worked pretty well. Lynch: Another part of the director's job is to resolve conflicts between people, and one of the things which I found quite interesting is that the parties could come to your office, there would be a lot of yelling and screaming, and a decision would be reached at the end. That's not unusual but what is unusual is that even the losing party usually came out of the meeting feeling relatively good. How did you do this? Panofsky: I don't have the slightest idea. We did indeed have lots of noisy sessions, indeed usually resolved things, and I assumed since everybody had the opportunity to really state his opinion loudly, vociferously, blow off steam, that he would not feel that he was in any way being throttled but beyond that I don't think there was any system to that madness. In fact, I remember several occasions where we had a meeting with a newly hired engineer and a senior member of the faculty and we tried to resolve something or other and the senior gentleman of the faculty said, you are out of your blah, blah, blah cotton picking mind. The engineer thought that the gentleman would get fired immediately or something like that, but the discussion just went on nicely ahead and somehow or other something got decided and nobody got fired and nobody had a heart attack and so forth. So somehow or other the fact that people could blow off without this being taken personally helps. |