[.uk] Engines of Discovery: A Century of Particle Accelerators (ISBN 9812700714)

retirement luncheon book:
This book is basically a tribute from the good old boys to the good old boys in the inner circle of accelerator builders -- and they're all boys, and all but half a dozen of the people listed in the sidebars are over 70 (or are dead). It also emphasizes contributions other than American, which is a plus. On the other hand, there are many significant omissions. Most striking is the omission of the many contributions made by one of the authors, Andy Sessler, both as an accelerator theoretician and as director of the Berkeley lab. There is only a superficial discussion of the Los Alamos Meson Facility, with its high intensity proton and neutron beams, and its pioneering work in pion cancer therapy, and its guiding spirit and director, Louis Rosen, isn't mentioned at all. The Princeton Pennsylvania Accelerator (later, the Princeton Particle Accelerator) is not recognized as the first rapid cycling synchrotron, and the first synchrotron to accelerate relativistic heavy ions, where the first biology and physics experiments with these were performed. The director of the PPA, Milton White, had the original idea for the separated function configuration currently standard for all machines (he also wrote the first textbook on radar after working at the MIT radiation laboratory during the war). Most importantly, the book does not make good on its title. Unless you are already familiar with the field, there is no way you can appreciate why accelerators are "engines of discovery", or how, from this slim volume. I bought it based on a review in Physics Today, evidently written by someone who has no clue about this rich and important field of science and technology.