This interview is part of a series conducted during research for the book Tunnel Visions, a history of the Superconducting Super Collider project. It mainly addresses parts of Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith’s career prior to his time as CERN Director-General, a position he held from 1994 to 1999, focusing on international perspectives surrounding the proposal and construction of large collider facilities. It covers his service as the scientific advisor to the 1984 Kendrew inquiry, which assessed UK membership in CERN, and to another inquiry, led by Anatole Abragam, which assessed CERN’s management. The interview extensively covers CERN’s preparations to build what became the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the tunnel where the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider was built, and how those preparations were influenced by the U.S. move to build the SSC and, later, by the SSC’s declining political fortunes and termination. Llewellyn Smith offers his perspectives on whether it would have been politically feasible in the 1980s to build a “world accelerator,” as well as on Japanese perceptions of U.S. plans for the SSC and the prospect that the U.S. could have secured contributions to the project from Japan. He also discusses early cost estimates for the LHC and their role in efforts to secure support for building it. The interview concludes with discussions of how CERN, the SSC, and the ITER fusion facility project were organized, and of the distinct roles of major facility directors and project managers.
Interview with Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State University and Senior Scholar at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. Thompson describes the administrative history of the Byrd Center and he surveys his current field work in ice core drilling and the role of theory in his research. He provides his perspective on how humanity should respond to climate change and why natural climate fluctuations do not explain the current climate situation. Thompson recounts his childhood in West Virginia and the opportunities that allowed him to pursue a degree in physics at Marshall University. He discusses his graduate research at Ohio State in geophysics and geology while serving in the Army Reserves, and he describes how he developed the Byrd Center. Thompson describes his field work in China and Russia and the value of drilling across the planet. He discusses his work with Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth and he conveys his feelings about winning the National Medal of Science. Thompson describes working with his wife Ellen Mosley-Thompson as his closest collaborator and what he has learned about conveying his scientific findings to the public. He reflects on the meaning of environmental heroism and the remaining field work that needs to be done after nearly 50 years of drilling. At the end of the interview, Thompson describes his current interest in finding and preserving biodiversity and why the next frontier for ice core drilling will be on Mars and beyond.
