17 Jun 1999
To All Fermilab Graduate Students:
We are looking forward to the poster presentations and program of talks that
you and your colleagues are preparing for New Perspectives 1999 in conjunction
with the Annual Users Meeting. We hope that many of you will take this
occasion to present your work to each other, to us, and to many friends of
Fermilab. Those who present posters will have the opportunity to discuss their
work with many of our colleagues at the reception on July 8, and to compete for
the first George Michail poster awards sponsored by Universities Research
Association. Those who contribute talks to New Perspectives 1999 will not only
find a receptive audience of both peers and elders, they will also have the
uncommon chance to share the program with an icon of twentieth-century physics.
Keynote speaker J. D. Jackson, the author of Classical Electrodynamics, has
molded the character of virtually every physics graduate student over the past
forty years and played a key role in establishing theoretical physics at
Fermilab. We would like to encourage all of you to consider presenting your
latest results or your work in progress at New Perspectives. Sometimes the
most stimulating talks are not about an analysis already polished for
publication, but about the challenges you encounter as you come to grips with a
problem. Our experience is that the audience enjoys most what the speaker
cares about the most. So be brave and show your colleagues what motivates you
to get out of bed in the morning and to work deep into the night!
The inauguration of a new Director provides an occasion for all of us to
consider what we want Fermilab to becomeÑwhat we want to make FermilabÑover the
years ahead. We are eager to hear your ideas, beginning with New Perspectives
1999.
Michael Witherell
Chris Quigg