Williams, Stephen H.
Oral history interview with Stephen H. Williams, 2021 April 19.
Interview with Stephen Williams, formerly Assistant Research Director of SLAC. Williams describes his connections with SLAC since his retirement in 2011, and he recounts his childhood in Michigan and his early fascination with electronics. He explains his reasons for attending the University of Michigan, where he majored in physics and where he determined he would go to UC Berkeley for graduate school to work with Victor Perez-Mendez on magneto-strictive readouts for wire spark chambers. Williams discusses his postdoctoral work at SLAC working with David Leith, and his subsequent research on head coils and software in nuclear medicine at UCSF. He describes the research mission of Group B at SLAC and the Cherenkov technique, and the opportunities that led him his management position as director of engineering and as an engineering manager for Diasonics. Williams describes the change in leadership from Burt Richter to Jonathan Dorfan, and the circumstances of becoming as Acting Research Director. He discusses the safety protocols that needed to be improved in consultation with the DOE, and at the end of the interview, Williams reflects on the ways SLAC has stayed true to Panofskys original vision.
Stephen Williams is formerly the Assistant Research Director at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Williams completed his graduate studies at UC Berkeley and a postdoctoral appointment at SLAC. He also conducted research at UC San Francisco and was the Director of Engineering at medical imaging company, Diasonics.
Kaufman, Leon
Leith, David W. G. S.
Panofsky, Wolfgang K. H. (Wolfgang Kurt Hermann), 1919-2007
Perez-Mendez, Victor
Richter, Burton, 1931-
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
United States. Department of Energy
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, San Francisco
Cherenkov radiation.
Computer science
Diagnostic imaging
Nuclear engineering.
Nuclear medicine.
Spark chambers.
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