Sir John Adams (1920 to 1984) acquired an unrivalled reputation for his leading part in the design and development of the PS machine at CERN in the 1950s. For most of the following decade he was director of the fusion laboratory at CULHAM in the UK, before returning to CERN as Director-General of what was then called Lab II, responsible for the design and construction of the SPS accelerator. From 1976 to 1980 he was executive Director-General of CERN where he layed the groundwork for the SPS proton-antiproton collider which led to the discovery of the intermediate vector bosons, as well as being instrumental in securing the approval of the LEP collider.
At the time of his untimely death in 1984 he had built Europe’s two largest proton accelerators and was prominent in securing the future of the next generation machines.
In 1985 the CERN Accelerator School launched a series of lectures in memory of Sir John. This series continued with a lecture every year until 2014.
| Year | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Accelerator Based Neutrino Physics, Past, Present and Future | Kenneth Long, Imperial College |
| 2013 | 120 Years of Accelerators that Heal | Ugo Amaldi, Technische Universität Munchen and TERA Foundation |
| 2012 | Lucio Rossi, Fermilab | |
| 2011 | LHC - Bold Beginning | Mike Lamont, CERN |
| 2010 | Accelerator Breakthroughs, Achievements and Lessons from the Tevatron Collider | Vladimir Shiltsev, Fermilab |
| 2009 | Sir John Adams – His Legacy to the World of Particle Accelerators | Edmund Wilson, CERN |
| 2008 | New Concepts for the Interaction Regions of Colliders | Pantaleo Raimondi, INFN-LNF |
| 2007 | Plasma Acceleration | Chan Joshi, University of California Los Angeles |
| 2006 | The Spallation Neutron Source | Norbert Holtkamp, ITER |
| 2005 | Accelerator Design Issues in Cancer Therapy | Philip Bryant, CERN |
| 2004 | Recent Advances in e+e- Colliders | John Seeman, SLAC |
| 2003 | Prospects of ISOLDE –High Energy Radioactive Beams | Mats Lindroos, CERN |
| 2002 | The Development of Synchrotron Light Sources up to the SLS and Beyond | Albin Wrulich, PSI |
| 2001 | CLIC Test Facility II – An Experimental Accelerator to Develop Technologies for Multi TeV e+e- colliders | Hans Braun, CERN |
| 2000 | The TESLA Test Facility and the First FEL for the Vacuum Ultraviolet | Jörg Rossbach, DESY |
| 1999 | Wigglers and Undulators – Recent Developments | Pascal Elleaume, ESRF |
| 1998 | DAPHNE Sets Sails | Catarina Biscari, LNF-INFN |
| 1997 | Superconducting RF Systems for the CERN Accelerators | Daniel Boussard, CERN |
| 1996 | 50 Years of Synchrotrons | John Lawson, RAL Giorgio Brianti, CERN |
| 1995 | Light- and Heavy-Ion Acceleration at CERN | Helmut Haseroth, CERN |
| 1994 | Electron Spin Polarisation at HERA - Recent Results and Future Plans | Reinhard Brinkmann, DESY |
| 1993 | Crystal Channelling | Soren Pape Møller, Aarhus University |
| 1992 | The Status of the ESRF | Jean-Louis Laclare, ESRF |
| 1991 | HERA - A Status Report | Bjørn Wiik, DESY |
| 1990 | The LEP Collider, from Design to Approval and Commissioning | Stephen Myers, CERN |
| 1989 | Making Beams Collide at the SLC | Roger Erickson, SLAC |
| 1988 | Beam Mode Observation | Flemming Pederson, CERN |
| 1987 | The Proton Antiproton Collider | Lyndon Evans, CERN |
| 1986 | Accelerators and Superconductivity: A Marriage of Convenience | Martin Wilson, Oxford Instruments Ltd |
| 1985 | John Adams and His Times | Edoardo Amaldi, Università La Sapienza |