1. INVENTOR OF PERMANENT-MAGNET UNDULATORS DIES

Klaus Halbach, the Berkeley Lab physicist whose idea for permanent-magnet undulators ushered in the era of third-generation synchrotrons, died on May 11, 2000, at his home in Berkeley, following a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 75. A native of Germany, Klaus received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He came to the United States in 1957 to work on nuclear magnetic resonance with 1952 Nobelist Felix Bloch at Stanford University. In 1960, he moved to Berkeley Lab where, among his many other accomplishments, he became a key figure in the design and development of the ALS.

Klaus's most famous invention, the permanent-magnet undulator, is the essential driving technology behind third-generation synchrotrons such as the ALS. Unlike electromagnets, permanent-magnet undulators require neither expensive electrical power nor space-consuming coils to produce their powerful magnetic fields. "The bottom line for the ALS--no Halbach, no undulators, no ALS," said former ALS director Jay Marx. An international authority on the design of magnetic systems, Klaus served as a consultant to many accelerator projects and synchrotron light sources around the world, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. All these machines depend upon the permanent-magnet technology now known as the Halbach Array.

"He exuded the enthusiasm of a little boy continually making new discoveries and he relived his excitement each time he was able to bring a colleague to see the beauty and simplicity in his world of the conformally-transformed plane where he habitually thought and worked," said Ross Schlueter, a Berkeley Lab engineer who helped organize a symposium on magnet technology in 1995, in honor of Klaus's 70th birthday. Brian Kincaid, co-organizer of the symposium and a former ALS director, said "In addition to having a major influence on accelerator physics worldwide, he was my friend, teacher, and mentor for eighteen years. I miss him."

Klaus taught an entire generation of scientists and engineers, not just the essential art and science of magnet design, but about a wide variety of problems in physics and mathematics. "One came with a question and came away with an education. An education given gladly and unstintingly. He showed you all the wonderful physics--and he made it fun," said David Goldberg, a Berkeley Lab accelerator scientist. Egon Hoyer, deputy group leader of the ALS Mechanical Engineering Group and a good friend of 30 years, said, "I look back and feel that I was very fortunate to have been able to work with Klaus. He had those qualities we cherish--he was very hard working, he had well thought out good ideas, he was persistent in carrying out his ideas, and he always made time to be a teacher and mentor."

Halbach is survived by his wife of 55 years, Ruth, his daughter, Terry, and three grandchildren. There will be a memorial service on June 28, 2000, at 3:00 p.m. at the Brazilian Room in Tilden Park in Berkeley. Contributions in his memory should be made to the Kaiser Oakland Hospice Program, 280 West MacArthur Blvd., Oakland CA 94611, (510) 596-6390. Contributions will be acknowledged and are tax deductible.

2. LAST CALL FOR PHYSICAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)

June 1, 2000, is the deadline for independent investigator (II) proposals in the physical sciences for the next running period, which will last from December 2000 to May 2001. Information on the proposal process and a summary of the proposal deadlines are available at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html. Data sheets describing the capabilities of the beamlines at the ALS are also on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html. The numeric rating for each II proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the Proposal Study Panel (PSP). The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html.

To request a proposal form by mail, contact
Bernie Dixon, ALS User Services Office Manager
Tel: (510) 486-6722
Fax: (510) 486-4773
Email: alsproposals@lbl.gov

3. ICESS8 CONFERENCE DRAWS MORE THAN 400 PAPERS
(Contacts: icess@lbl.gov or http://www-als.lbl.gov/icess)

As announced in previous editions of ALSNews, the Eighth International Conference on Electronic Spectroscopy and Structure (ICESS8) will be held at the Clark Kerr Campus in Berkeley on August 8-12, 2000. The organizers are pleased to report that 432 abstracts from 33 countries have been accepted for presentation. Included among these are 39 student papers in the ICESS8 Student Poster Competition. A few additional post-deadline papers on topics of exceptional novelty and interest will also be considered for acceptance.

Please note that the June 1 deadline for early registration is fast approaching. Register now to avoid a $75.00 late fee. Also, please be sure to carefully follow the directions at the ICESS8 Web site (http://www-als.lbl.gov/icess) for submitting registration and accommodation payments. Misdirected payments sent without an accompanying hard-copy form may jeopardize your early registration status. Non-U.S. citizens should check back at the Web site for information (to be posted soon) about special visa application requirements for certain scientific topics and countries. Finally, there are a limited number of very reasonably priced room and board packages available at the Clark Kerr Campus that will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Early payment of registration as well as accommodation fees is thus highly desirable.

4. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Nora Berrah
(Contact: berrah@wmich.edu)

As most of you know, the ALS apartments have been very convenient for users. For those who are not familiar with the apartments, they are located on the corner of Oxford and Hearst streets in Berkeley. Any user can book rooms by contacting Barbara Phillips at BEPhillips@lbl.gov. Because the rooms tend to fill up very fast and because they are also used for Berkeley Lab visitors, many users have not been able to reserve a room recently, and we would like to advise you to book at least three months in advance. The User Services Office staff is gathering data to justify increasing the number of rooms available. If they get your reservation sufficiently in advance, they will be better able to determine the demand for housing and can work out a better solution for us.

I also would like to remind you that a space committee composed of two users, two UEC members, and two ALS managers will evaluate requests for space in the ALS mezzanine. Please send your requests, with justifications, to Gary Krebs at GFKrebs@lbl.gov. This committee is being organized and I will give you their names as soon as I can find people willing to work on it.

5. WHO'S IN TOWN

Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.3
Mary Kauffman (Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory)
Jessica Preciado, Ralph Greif, and Boris Rubinsky (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Felicia Betancourt and Bob Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab)
Thomas Breunig (Univ. of California, San Francisco)

Beamline 3.3.2
Dean Wiberg and Beverley Eyre (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Jill Hruby and Michelle Bankert (Sandia National Laboratories)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
Hendrik Ohldag (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)

Beamline 8.0.1
Eberhard Umbach and Clemens Heske (Univ. of Würzburg, Germany)
Fred Schlachter (Berkeley Lab)
Marcello Sant'Anna (Univ. Federal Fluminense, Brazil)

Beamline 10.0.1
Carmen Cisneros and coworkers (Centro de Ciencias Fisicas UNAM, Mexico)
Z.X. Shen, Scot Kellar, and coworkers (Stanford Univ.)

Beamline 10.3.1
David Seaborg (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Sergei Ostanpenko (Univ. of South Florida)
Tom Cahill and Steve Cliff (Univ. of California, Davis)

Beamline 12.0.1.2
Sang-Hun Lee, Michael Shumway, and Chang Hyun Cho (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Mike Malinowski (Sandia National Laboratories)

6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: EJLampo@lbl.gov)

Beam reliability for the last two weeks (May 8 - 21) was 88% for user shifts. Time lost was due to problems with a bump magnet power supply and water flow-rate trips.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Gary Krebs (GFKrebs@lbl.gov, x7727) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator.