13.05.2014

DESY Golden Pin of Honour for Peter Stähelin

Today, former DESY research director Peter Stähelin was awarded the DESY Golden Pin of Honour. On the occasion of his 90th birthday today, Stähelin was honoured for his great service to the research centre, and in particular for his pioneering spirit in the exploration and use of synchrotron radiation at DESY.

Peter Stähelin at the celebration of 40 years of synchrotron radiation at DESY in 2004.

“It is thanks to the pioneering spirit and vision of Peter Stähelin that DESY was one of the cradles of the global success story of research with synchrotron radiation and that we can celebrate 50 years of synchrotron radiation at DESY in 2014, the International Year of Crystallography,” said Professor Helmut Dosch, Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors.

Nuclear physicist Peter Stähelin was DESY´s first research director. From 1960 to 1967 he headed the planning and preparation of high-energy experiments and laid the foundation for the first very successful experimental particle physics programme. Under his direction, the foundation was laid for the successful collaboration between physicists, engineers and technicians from foreign institutions and DESY in instrumentation, realisation and analysis of experiments that is still as successful today.

From the beginning, Peter Stähelin did not want to use the 6-GeV electron synchrotron DESY exclusively for particle physics, but also as a source of UV, VUV and X-ray radiation. Already then, he was convinced that the synchrotron radiation promised almost unlimited opportunities for experiments. So he commissioned the young physicist Ruprecht Haensel in 1962 to explore the perspectives of the new light source in his doctoral thesis, and assured he had the necessary resources and equipment. The pioneering work led to the very first measurements with synchrotron radiation at the DESY accelerator in 1964, thus creating the basis for the extensive research with synchrotron radiation.

Even after the end of his tenure at DESY, Peter Stähelin coined Hamburg´s scientific landscape: with great commitment and success, he advanced and shaped the implementation of a computer science degree program at the University of Hamburg, and later engaged in founding the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg.

Peter Stähelin is the fifth awardee of the DESY Golden Pin of Honour. Previous winners are Ada Yonath, Gustav-Adolf Voss, Volker Soergel and Herwig Schopper.