On Wednesday March 10th, on the occasion of Ned Goldwasser's
birthday (March 9 as we learned during the talks)
the Lab organized a mini-symposium
on the first days of Fermilab and Goldwasser's role.
Norman Ransey, Richie Orr, William Fowler, Yoshio Yamaguchi,
Dave Jackson and Ned Goldwasser gave accounts of the events
and people that led to Fermilab's becoming.
The stories were captivating and so
was it watching the attendands, a lot of them coming from afar,
some of them with liquid eyes at the reminiscences.
For the most part the events that took place
before and during the building of the laboratory
as well as the people that made things happen,
was news to me and I was glad
to see that the symposium was videotaped.
To my shere enjoyment I learned that the founder of the "Wine and Cheese"
Friday Seminar (today's Joint Experimental Theoretical Physics
Seminar) was no other but John David Jackson of Classical
Electrodynamics -- he was then the head of the Theoretical Physics
Department at Fermilab. As a matter of fact he personally paid the first year's Fridays' 15 minutes of wine (six dollars a gallon) and cheese and bread which
he suggested as an intellectual lure to the poor experimentalists
who were digging pits and tunnels out in the mud.
And was it not indeed for the past 25 years? The lab
took up on the seminar which grew to a tradition. A couple
of years ago the tradition had to change to "apple juice
and crackers and sometimes cheese" Friday seminar because of
some sort of a regulation or another.
J. D. Jackson not only commented on this but
he went on to propose the reactivation
of the wine.
If a few more of the wine-and-cheese goers
were attending the symposium I am sure there would have been
a hearty applause at this point alone (and if the wine ever comes back
don't forget to drink to Jackson.)