Party for Peter

25 February 2009

Peter addresses the gathering


ATLAS weeks are always a special time for the collaboration, when we see faces that aren’t always around CERN, but this last one was also a bit of a turning point. For Peter Jenni, a Spokesperson since 1992, it was the last ATLAS week he would serve in that capacity as Fabiola Gianotti will take up that mantle on the first of March.

A surprise party was organized in Restaurant 1 in his honour, to mark the occasion. Possibly more surprising, word of the party stayed quiet enough that Peter didn’t know exactly what was in store during his mysterious 18:00 engagement on February 19th.

Current CB chair Kerstin Jon-And served as Mistress of Ceremonies, remarking, “Did you know that Peter has chaired 134 Executive Board meetings, participated as Spokesperson in 61 Collaboration Board meetings – the 62nd tomorrow – and seen 9 CB chairs being elected?” She then introduced the first CB chair to work with Peter, Klaus Pretzl, who took us through the beginning of ATLAS. Fabiola Gianotti spoke of the challenge she will face, trying to fill Peter’s shoes as ATLAS begins taking LHC data.

Rather than eight speeches from the eight present CB chairs, Kerstin and Kenway Smith had arranged to get a rap written about the challenges and milestones from each two-year term. Supplied by the ATLAS Secretariat with pimpin’ hats and bling (save Jim Pilcher, who imported his own), the chairs from Klaus to upcoming Gregor Herten took the stage to perform the lyrics developed with help from Alpinekat, over beats laid down by the Large Hadron Rap’s “Mister B”, Will Barras. Only Chris Oram was missing from the stage, currently cycling across Asia.

While Peter had been moved by the ceremony until that point, the rap made it easier for him to take his turn on the mic and say a few words to the gathering that filled more than half of Restaurant 1. He reminded, with the modesty we’ve come to expect: “What we should celebrate is collective achievements,” such as the success of ATLAS on September 10th when beam splash lit up the detector.

Then, Kerstin and Markus Nordberg presented Peter with two gifts from the collaboration. The first was a thick book filled with messages from every team in ATLAS, the pages of which had been shipped around CERN and around the world for signing. The second was a glass block with a three-dimensional representation of the ATLAS detector etched inside, a Higgs event appearing in it.

After the ceremony came to a close, collaborators lingered until nearly 21:00, watching the slideshow that Ken put together, chatting, and offering Peter congratulations and well-wishes for the future.

Update 1: Rap lyrics

 

Katie McAlpine

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