The Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) was a collaboration between 15 universities with the goal of designing and building a

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle ...

for the

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

. It existed between 1953–1967, but could not achieve its goal in this time and lost funding. It was thought that President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

would have supported the MURA machine, while one of President

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

's first actions was the shutdown of the MURA machine and laboratory. mura ring

In its formative years,

Donald Kerst Donald William Kerst (November 1, 1911 – August 19, 1993) was an American physicist who worked on advanced particle accelerator concepts (accelerator physics) and plasma physics. He is most notable for his development of the betatron, a novel ...

was the director of MURA. At this institution,

Keith Symon Keith Randolph Symon (March 25, 1920 – December 16, 2013) was an American physicist working in the fields of accelerator physics and plasma physics. Symon graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard in 1942 with a BA in Philosophy a ...

invented the

FFAG accelerator A Fixed-Field alternating gradient Accelerator (FFA; also abbreviated FFAG) is a circular particle accelerator concept that can be characterized by its time-independent magnetic fields (''fixed-field'', like in a cyclotron) and the use of alternat ...

, independently to

Tihiro Ohkawa was a Japanese people, Japanese physicist whose field of work was in Plasma (physics), plasma physics and fusion power. He was a pioneer in developing ways to generate electricity by nuclear fusion when he worked at General Atomics. Ohkawa died S ...

, which combines several concepts of

cyclotron A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Janu ...

s and

synchrotron A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed p ...

s. FFAG concepts were extensively developed in MURA. The proposed MURA accelerators were scaling FFAG synchrotrons, meaning that orbits of any momentum are photographic enlargements of those of any other momentum. The concept of FFAG acceleration was revived in the early 1980s,Martin, S.; Wüstefeld, G. (ed.) (1983). ''Seminar on Fixed Field Alternating Gradient accelerators (FFAG)'', held at

Jülich Research Centre Jülich (; in old spellings also known as ''Guelich'' or ''Gülich'', nl, Gulik, french: Juliers, Ripuarian: ''Jöllesch'') is a town in the district of Düren, in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. As a border region betwe ...

. informal collection of contributed talks. KFA report SNQ 2 MZ / BS 001 and gained interest up to the present day, see e.g.

EMMA (accelerator) The electron machine with many applications or electron model for many applications (EMMA) is a linear non-scaling FFAG (fixed-field alternating-gradient) particle accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory in the UK that can accelerate electrons from ...

References

Further reading