Hungarian pioneer Ferenc Mezei joins the ESS project
The European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden, is today joined by Professor Ferenc Mezei, one of the originators of the initial ESS technical design.
The European Spallation Source will be the world’s most powerful research facility for materials and life science using neutrons. It will be built in Lund in southern Sweden. Fourteen European countries are currently partners in the project, which has now entered a Design Update phase prior to construction in 2013. Ferenc Mezei is an internationally renowned scientist, formerly the Scientific Director of ESS Hungary, the Hungarian bid to host the ESS. At the ESS Secretariat, Professor Mezei will lead the target station division. Professor Mezei is the originator of the ESS design concept, the long pulse spallation source. With long neutron pulses, more neutrons can be generated, thus providing significantly better quality scientific results and more scientific applications. Long pulses are also better suited for life sciences and soft matter than short pulses, making the ESS particularly useful for biology, pharmaceutical and medicine. - We are delighted that Professor Mezei joins the ESS team. His vast scientific and technological knowledge will be very important for the Technical Design Review, says Dr Patrik Carlsson, ESS Deputy Director, in charge of technical development at ESS. - With Professor Mezei, ESS will also strengthen scientific ties to Hungary, which will be fruitful. Hungary has a very strong scientific community, exemplified by the three Hungarian Nobel prizes in physics and five in chemistry, says Colin Carlile, Director of the ESS Secretariat. Professor Mezei is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of Academia Europaea. He is also the inventor of the neutron spin-echo spectroscopy method, which has had far-reaching implications for the understanding of polymers, proteins, glasses and magnetic materials. Mezei Is today a visiting scholar at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in USA, and he has also been the Director of the Berlin Neutron Scattering Center, today part of the Helmholtz Zentrum für Materialen und Energie. He has received several prestigious scientific awards, among others the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize and the first ever Walter Hälg Prize of the European Neutron Scattering Association.
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