Bjørn Håvard Wiik (born 13 February 1957 in Bruvik,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

; died 26 February 1999 in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

) was a Norwegian

elementary particle In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include electrons, the fundamental fermions ( quarks, leptons, an ...

physicist, noted for his role on the experiment that produced the first experimental evidence for

gluons A gluon ( ) is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. Gluons bind qu ...

and for his influential role on later accelerator projects. Wiik was director of

DESY The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English ''German Electron Synchrotron''), commonly referred to by the abbreviation DESY, is a national research center in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matt ...

, in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, from 1993 until his death.

Biography

Bjørn Wiik lived in his home town Bruvik until he finished his physics studies at Germany's

Technische Universität Darmstadt The Technische Universität Darmstadt (official English name Technical University of Darmstadt, sometimes also referred to as Darmstadt University of Technology), commonly known as TU Darmstadt, is a research university in the city of Darmstadt ...

. In 1965, he got his doctorate degree there. Two years later he began working at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...

. In 1972, Wiik returned to Germany, to the German Electron Synchrotron (

) in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

where, four years later, he was appointed lead scientist. In 1978, Wiik and his collaborators finished using DESY's newly commissioned PETRA electron–positron storage ring to look for hard-gluon

bremsstrahlung ''Bremsstrahlung'' (), from "to brake" and "radiation"; i.e., "braking radiation" or "deceleration radiation", is electromagnetic radiation produced by the deceleration of a charged particle when deflected by another charged particle, typicall ...

events that would provide experimental support for the existence and role of gluons in mediating strong interactions among

quarks A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...

. Wiik and his team soon observed and reported a type of event never described before: three particle-jets whose momenta lay in a plane. These results, widely believed to represent the after-effects of two quarks plus a gluon, were soon confirmed by many other groups. In 1995, the

European Physical Society The European Physical Society (EPS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote physics and physicists in Europe through methods such as physics outreach. Formally established in 1968, its membership includes the national physical so ...

awarded its Prize for High Energy and Particle Physics to four physicists representing the TASSO collaboration (

Paul Söding Paul Heinrich Söding (born 20 February 1933 in Dresden, Germany) is a German physicist. He is best known for his work in particle physics and as former director of research of the German particle physics lab DESY. Career Paul Söding studied ...

, Bjørn Wiik,

Günter Wolf Günter Wolf (born 27 September 1949) is a German water polo player. He competed at the 1972 Summer Olympics and the 1976 Summer Olympics Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Righ ...

, and

Sau Lan Wu Sau Lan Wu (Chinese: 吳秀蘭; born Hong Kong in the early 1940s) is a Chinese American particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important contributions towards t ...

) for demonstrating the existence of the gluon. Already during his stay at SLAC, Wiik had not a new type of particle accelerator, which would be based on colliding a beam of

protons A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...

with a beam of

electrons The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no ...

. In 1980, this idea took concrete form with the creation at DESY of the hadron-electron ring facility HERA). Wiik was also responsible for proposing and overseeing the implementation of a superconducting linear accelerator for Tera-electronvolt energies, TESLA. Wiik was chairman of the

Super Proton Synchrotron The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland. History The SPS was de ...

Experiments Committee (SPSC) at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

from 1979-80. He was elected a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

in 1989 ''"for his contributions to the realization of the large electron-proton colliding beam facility, HERA, at the Deutches Electron Synschotron Laboratory in Hamburg, West Germany"''

References

External links

*
Nachruf Press release with biographical material

A tribute to Bjørn Wiik
from the

-COURIER
Eclipse of a visionary
from the CERN-COURIER {{DEFAULTSORT:Wiik, Bjoern 1937 births 1999 deaths People from Vaksdal Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Norwegian physicists Accelerator physicists People associated with CERN Fellows of the American Physical Society