Jay
Marx
This month’s interview is of Jay
Marx. Jay has been an integral part of STAR from its inception. Jay grew up in
the
Jay’s “spouse-equivalent” is Christine Celata, an accelerator and plasma physicist who is the Deputy Head of the fusion program at LBNL. Jay has two daughters and a son. His daughter Elena is 24 and was just accepted in the graduate American studies program at Harvard. His son, Danny, is 14 and will begin high school next year and his step daughter, Rayna, is also 14 and a freshman in high school. Aside from spending time with his family, Jay enjoys jogging, reading history and political thrillers and playing with his dog.
In the following interview, Jay describes his career in physics, shares his thoughts on the future of the field, and pays homage to the great Walt Disney and George Gamov.
SNL: Who/what was the
greatest influence on your work in physics?
Walt Disney and George Gamov. When I was very young I read a book based on a Disney TV show called “Our Friend the Atom” that was so interesting that I told my parents that I wanted to be a physicist. Of course, I had no idea what a physicist was or did. Then as an early teenager, Gamov’s book “One, Two ,Three Infinity” really convinced me that it was possible to understand things about the big questions….what was in the universe, where did it come from and what will be its fate. I was hooked. I decided that this was what I wanted to study and pursue in my life.
SNL: What positions
have you held in physics?
At Yale I started out as an instructor and was an Associate Professor when I was awarded a Yale Faculty Fellowship. With the chance to spend a year on “sabbatical” I went to Berkeley to work with Dave Nygren who had just developed the TPC concept. Dave had worked on my thesis experiment as a post-doc. I never returned to Yale and I have been at LBNL ever since.
I was a Division Fellow in the Physics Division (I believe that Dave was the very first in the history of the lab and I was the second) and I am now a Senior Scientist in the Nuclear Science Division.
While in the Physics Division I worked on the PEP-4 experiment- the first experiment utilizing a TPC. PEP-4 did physics at the PEP electron-positron collider at SLAC. I was the Project Director for PEP-4 and served as Deputy Spokesman and then Spokesman for the PEP-4 collaboration. During my career at LBNL I have worked in three different Divisions—Physics; Accelerator and Fusion; and Nuclear Science.
I also spent a year at DOE in the
early 1980’s where I helped get the SSC started and then worked on the SCC at
Berkeley where I headed LBL’s SCC program before becoming Deputy Director of
the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division. After directing the design and construction of the Advanced Light
Source I moved to the Nuclear Science Division to direct the construction of
STAR.
SNL: Which
experiments have you worked on?
Following my thesis experiment I worked with the Yale group on both the first
hyperon beam and associated experiments at the AGS and then small angle elastic scattering of mesons on protons and nuclei at Fermilab. At Berkeley I did experiments at SLAC’s PEP collider before working on the SSC, the Advanced Light Source. And then STAR
SNL: Which projects
have you directed?
The three projects that I’ve directed are: the PEP-4 project which was the first detector based on a TPC and one of the largest particle physics experiments of its time, The Advanced Light Source which was the world’s first synchrotron light source to be designed to be optimized for using undulators, and of course, STAR.
The PEP-4 project was a real learning experience with many problems and lots of on-the-job training for me. I was young and inexperienced, but what I learned made a big difference in the later projects.
SNL: Having been the
Project Director, Deputy Spokesperson and Council Chair of STAR, which position
did you find the most challenging?
That’s easy. The job of project
director is by far the most challenging. It involves dealing with complex
technical, political and physics challenges on a sustained basis, all mixed
together with lots of “people problems” to solve. And the sense of
responsibility can be daunting with hundreds of colleagues, many institutions
and the funding agencies counting on success. The challenge, stress and
responsibility is comparable to being the Spokesman of the collaboration.
SNL: Is the STAR of today what you had
envisioned as Project Director?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The experiment is almost up to our expectations from those days. Once the calorimeter is complete and the time-of-flight is funded, constructed and installed, STAR will look a lot like the detector in our proposal.
The collaboration has grown and evolved along the lines that are typical for such collaborations in particle physics, so I guess that I’m not surprised by where we are given my background.
And the physics is still exciting with many hints of new phenomena but no clear underlying explanation yet. There are still important puzzles to solve.
SNL: In your opinion, how does STAR stack up
against the other RHIC experiments?
Of course I’m prejudiced, but I think that STAR is the experiment with the right driving philosophy and so it is the best of the RHIC experiments. From the beginning I have believed that the complexity of the phenomena at RHIC puts a premium of seeing as much of the final state as possible. I’ve always believed that limited solid angle leads to too much extrapolation and model dependence. It’s hard to really understand what you don’t see and I believe that sensitivity over large correlation lengths is important. Perhaps I’m influenced by the experience of the ISR where large numbers of J/Psi’s were produced but not discovered because of the limited solid angle of the initial detectors. That seminal discover was made later by experiments at SLAC and Brookhaven that had relatively solid angle coverage.
SNL: What were some
of the more important decisions made by the Council during your tenure?
There are several that I consider important in terms of their influence on how the Council functions. Of these, the most important happened at the same time as my election so I wasn’t in any way responsible.
This was the change in the Collaboration’s bylaws to require election of a Council chair who is not the spokesperson and for single 2 year term for the Chair. As a result, the Council established its independence. With the Spokesperson as an ex-officio member of the Council, a very constructive relationship between and independent Council and the Spokesman was encouraged. I like to think that the cooperative relationship that Tim Hallman and I have maintained will be a model for Spokespersons and Council Chairs in the future.
The establishment of the Advisory Board is also very important. It provides a forum for the Spokesman to seek advice about scientific, technical, political and sociological issues.
Finally, there is the establishment of Council committees to consider publication policies on one hand and service work on the other.
SNL: Do you feel that
the council was effective in implementing policies?
Actually, it is not the Council’s responsibility to implement policy, but rather to make policy. The Spokesman’s office, as the executive arm of the collaboration is where policy is implemented.
As far as policy making goes, I’m
happy with the role played by the Council. We have not fallen into the trap of
making too much policy and so constraining the collaboration. When policy needs
to be reconsidered or new situations arise, the Council has given such matters
careful consideration.
SNL: There were over
half a dozen R&D proposals presented to the RHIC Detector Advisory
Committee, covering a wide range of issues. Are there any other R&D issues
that need to be addressed?
I’m sure that there are and as we learn more they needs will become clear. I’m not smart enough to know at this point. The one area that I do believe will limit us in the future if we take large data sets may be the issue of data access, mining and retrieval. I know that there’s lots of effort in the computing community, but I’d like to see more effort on the part of the RHIC community to understand the limitations that we may hit and to work on concepts, algorithms and the like which would be tailored to solve our future problems. We shouldn’t just count on the LHC community to do it all (I do realize that some of us are working hard on these issues).
SNL: What do you
think is the highest priority for the RHIC program now?
In my opinion the highest priority is develop data sets at a range of collision energies and nuclear species. I can’t help thinking that the key to understanding what is going on is to vary those parameters that we can control… the energy and size of the colliding systems. I want to see the observed phenomena show some unexpected sensitivity to the conditions. This will take lots of stable running of RHIC for years and so it will be a big challenge… technically and politically.
SNL: How would you
describe the outlook for the field of heavy ion physics, both in the near term
and after LHC?
I have real concerns. Perhaps it is my particle physics background, but I wonder where the field goes after we answer the question of whether nature makes a QGP.
I know we talk about “characterizing the quark gluon plasma,” but I’m not sure that can become a crisp scientific question that will motivate expensive experiments and facilities, let alone motivate the next generation of young scientists to devote their lives to this aspect of the science. Remember, we are dealing with a complex, dynamic system with a large, but quite finite number of constituents. What will we really learn by trying to explorer the details beyond what we will learn at RHIC and LHC? Of course, I would love to be wrong and hopefully someone is already looking at the problem from a new and fruitful perspective. I probably just not smart enough to see ahead.
SNL: What has
surprised you the most during your career?
Frankly, when I was a student I never really believed that I could actually contribute to the field of physics. Everyone around me was so smart, knew so much and had accomplished so much. I’m still surprised at whatever success I’ve had and I’m especially surprised that I’ve been able to lead projects. I really do think of myself as shy and introverted and as someone who is a klutz with equipment.
SNL: Congratulations
on your new position at LBL. Could you describe what your new job entails?
The title is “General Sciences Deputy for Project Management.” The reality is that my job is to nurture new projects in LBNL’s General Sciences Divisions (Physics Division, Nuclear Sciences Division, and Accelerator and Fusion Research Division) and to keep ongoing projects on track and out of trouble.
Much of what I do is to work with the project leaders to help projects get started with the right initial vector… quality science and realistic expectations on the part of DOE, the lab and the scientific community as to the cost, schedule and technical risks. Much of this involves mentoring project leaders and helping them to understand what I have learned over the years and how to avoid the most usual mistakes associated with state-of-the-art science-driven projects.
The projects that I’m involved with range from SNAP, a satellite to study dark energy, to ICECUBE, the neutrino telescope at the South Pole to GRETINA, a forefront gamma-ray array for nuclear structure physics, to LUX, a concept for a novel x-ray laser facility with beams having femto-second time resolution matched to the times scales of molecular processes. And there are many more. So as you can see, I have a real challenge to keep up with many fields of science, many technologies, both accelerator and detector, and lots of politics, reviews, and especially lots of challenging people issues.
SNL: What do you hope
to be doing in 10 years?
In ten years I hope to be retired from LBNL, living with Chris near a beach in a warm climate, and teaching physics in a high school with motivated students. Having grandchildren to visit would be great.
SNL: Any advice for
the junior members?
I imagine the biggest issue for junior members are the related concerns of how to have your contributions recognized in such a large collaboration and the prospects for a permanent position in science.
In my opinion, for a large collaboration STAR is a relatively good environment to work in for younger physicists. Many senior people in STAR work very hard to provide junior colleagues with opportunities to be recognized and feel a strong responsibility to help junior colleagues find appropriate jobs at the right time. However, it is important for junior collaborators to do their share beyond doing quality physics.
They should, to the extent possible, participate actively in meetings, in informal discussions and the like, both within the collaboration and their home institutions, and in the wider scientific community. People are always keeping their eye out for young physicists who are excited about their work and about the science. For example, being at Brookhaven is an important opportunity for visibility. Attending seminars and asking good questions is an example of a way to become known. As part of this advice I’d urge junior members to avoid getting so buried in hardware or software that you lose contact with the physics. It sometimes takes a conscious effort and extra time to keep the balance, but it is important if you want to look ahead to a scientific career.
If you would like to have someone
interviewed, or would like to contribute an interview, please contact me at
ETYamamoto@lbl.gov.