In Memoriam: Gilles Sauvage (1939 - 2010)

12 May 2010


It is with great sorrow that we learnt of the sudden death of our friend and colleague Gilles Sauvage.

Gilles Sauvage was deeply involved in many generations of experiments at CERN as he followed the evolution of the field at the energy forefront. He started with the LAL-Orsay group in the WA2 Hyperon experiment at the SPS West Area, where he worked from 1976 to 1979. With the same group he was then a founding member of the UA2 Collaboration at the SPS p-pbar Collider, in which he was active throughout the duration of the experiment. He then moved to LAPP-Annecy in 1986 and joined first the L3 group at LEP, making important contributions to the construction, calibration, installation and commissioning of the BGO crystal calorimeter. Later, in the mid-1990s, Gilles joined ATLAS and led the LAPP-Annecy group through intense period of the assembly of one third of the ATLAS LAr barrel electromagnetic calorimeter modules at LAPP, and followed hands-on its integration and installation at CERN. He retired in 2006, but his passion for physics motivated him to remain fully active until the last day.

For those of us who worked with him, designing, constructing and testing the Electromagnetic Barrel Liquid Argon Calorimeter, Gilles was a bit like our living encyclopedia: we very often asked him about the finest details of the way the calorimeter was built and assembled.

When the barrel modules were being built at LAPP, Gilles was with them day and night. He then led the assembly of the modules into two half-barrel cylinders and the insertion into the cryostat. He also took great care of the support structure of the barrel: “les arceaux”, and he took part in all the test beam campaigns. He re-built the barrel module to be used for the 2004 combined test beam.

Gilles was an exceptional experimentalist, who set very high standards of how to work with great human qualities in a large collaboration. He always sought the most elegant technical and scientific solutions, not accepting any easy short cuts. His style? We never saw him acting as a big boss, but rather motivating junior and senior colleagues by setting the example of working hard on the floor over many years.

Having a coffee with Gilles was always a great pleasure: he would always remember a story of his past experiments, little anecdotes that only he had kept in mind. Gilles was very poetic, often referring to flowers, birds, treks in the mountains. And when Gilles described his garden it was like being there and seeing every plant grow, tasting every fruit!

His love of Morocco, where he was born and brought up, lead the Liquid Argon Group to Marrakech, a bit more than a year ago, for an unforgettable Liquid Argon week.

It is hard to imagine how to continue without him. Our deep thoughts go to his family and close friends.


This figure was made by Gilles; it is part of the “EM Barrel construction” paper (NIM A 558 (2006) 388-418)

 

Gilles’ colleagues and friends from ATLAS