COURANT REPLIES: In the talk Blewett gave in 1993 on receiving the Wilson prize, he stated:
About this time Ed McMillan himself appeared in Schenectady to ask for advice on how to construct the laminated magnet for his proposed 300-MeV synchrotron. Westendorp and I, with several others, spent a good deal of time with him…. Then he went home and we began to think about our skill in building machines…. Herb Pollock, Bob Langmuir and I, with several of our associates, said to ourselves, “Suppose we put together a machine for, say 70 MeV? We could be the first in the world to produce an operating synchrotron.” And, indeed, that is what we did. Our machine operated in 1947….
He went on to describe the first visual observation of what is now called synchrotron radiation, even though, as he recalled in his talk—and as I mentioned—he had left GE for Brookhaven before the machine was finished, so he did not personally see that first light.
Clearly Blewett did play a role in the 70-MeV synchrotron, although perhaps I could have made it clearer than I did that he was not the only—and possibly not the main—initiator of that project.
