Lynch, Harvey
Oral history interview with Harvey Lynch, 2020 September 24.
In this interview, Harvey Lynch, retired and formerly Assistant Director in the Research Division of SLAC is interviewed by David Zierler. He recounts his upbringing in California and his early interests in science, and he describes his undergraduate experience at MIT, where David Frisch proved to be a formative influence for his work in particle physics. Lynch discusses his work at the Cherenkov light ring, and he explains his decision to pursue graduate work at Stanford to work with David Ritson on inelastic electron-proton scattering. He describes the origins of SLAC, and he cites the mysteries surrounding quarks and SU3 symmetries as among the most important research questions in the field at that time. Lynch discusses his motivation to do postdoctoral research at CERN, where he worked with Carlo Rubbia on CP violation, and he recounts Burt Richters offer to join SLAC in 1968. He describes his early work on planar spark chambers and his longtime involvement in the SPEAR project which aimed to take a new approach to elementary particle physics. Lynch details the operational and technical challenges to get SPEAR up and running, and how it epitomized SLACs independence in making internal decisions without DOE approval in the early days of the Lab. He describes witnessing the November Revolution of 1974 and what this meant for SLAC and particle physics generally. Lynch explains his decision to join the PETRA collaboration and the TASSO detector at DESY. He describes his reasons to return to the U.S., first at UC Santa Barbara until he was recruited back to SLAC, where he witnessed significant changes as a result of Burt Richter succeeding Wolfgang Pief Panofsky as director. Lynch discusses his concurrent work on PEP physics, SLC design work, and the proposal for the international SLD project. He explains his work with the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford and his involvement with the SDI defense initiative, and he describes his involvement in the design phase of the SSC project. Lynch offers a post-mortem on the SSC cancellation, and expresses relief that he was able to return to SLAC, where he joined the BaBar project and served as chairman of the Radiation Safety Committee. He describes his last seven years at SLAC during which he worked exclusively on administrative matters, and at the end of the interview, Lynch discusses his work for the National Academy of Science to study boost-phase missile defense.
Harvey Lynch received a Ph.D in Physics from Stanford University in 1966, specializing in particle physics. After serving as an NSF Fellow at CERN for two years, he joined the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), where he spent the majority of his career.
Lynch, Harvey
Panofsky, Wolfgang K. H. (Wolfgang Kurt Hermann), 1919-2007
Richter, Burton, 1931-
Ritson, David M.
Rubbia, Carlo, 1934-
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (Center)
European Organization for Nuclear Research
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Cherenkov radiation.
CP violation (Nuclear physics)
Inelastic scattering.
Quarks.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA