Decision of DESY’s Administrative Council

Rolf-Dieter Heuer New Research Director High-Energy Physics, Further Terms of Office for Jochen R. Schneider, Research Director Synchrotron Radiation, and Dieter Trines, Head of the Accelerator Division

The terms of office of three members of the DESY Board of Directors will end in December this year. Professor Dr. Robert Klanner, Research Director High-Energy Physics, decided to dedicate himself to teaching and research again. His successor will be Professor Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer. In its meeting on October 1, 2004, DESY’s Administrative Council decided to extend the terms of office of Professor Dr. Jochen R. Schneider, Research Director Synchrotron Radiation, and Dr. Dieter Trines, Head of the Accelerator Division, by another period.

Prof. Heuer

Prof. Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer

The particle physicist Rolf-Dieter Heuer (56) studied physics at the University of Stuttgart. He then obtained his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg in the group of Professor Joachim Heintze, who worked on an experiment at the electron-positron storage ring DORIS at DESY. Heuer investigated the neutral decay modes of a new particle made up of charm quarks, the so-called psi-prime resonance, which had been discovered shortly before. He then went on to work as a post-doc at the JADE experiment at the electron-positron storage ring PETRA at DESY. In 1984, he moved to the European particle physics center CERN in Geneva. Here, he worked at the experiment OPAL, of which he later was the spokesperson for many years.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer returned to DESY in 1998, having been offered a professorship for experimental physics at the University of Hamburg. A central point of his work was to establish the new research group “Research at Lepton Colliders”, whose large number of young physicists reflects the big interest of the scientific offspring. This group plays a leading role today in the European and worldwide research effort towards the physics potential of the future international electron-positron linear collider (ILC), and the development of the required complex precision measuring instruments. Rolf Heuer always held a leading role in various projects both on the scientific and the organizational level, and he is a member of several German and international scientific committees. He will take up his office on 1 December, 2004.