Malcolm Derrick
Malcolm Derrick, a longtime leader in Argonne’s High Energy Physics Division, passed away Oct. 31, 2017, after a long illness. Born in 1933 in Hull, United Kingdom, Malcolm received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Birmingham. After serving as an instructor at Carnegie Tech, in 1962 he moved to the Nuclear Physics Department at Oxford University to help establish a bubble chamber group working at CERN.
In 1963 he moved to Argonne to work with Tom Fields on the 12 GeV Zero Gradient Synchrotron (ZGS) then under construction. While working on several bubble chamber experiments, Derrick’s main interest was in doing muon-neutrino physics using the 12-foot bubble chamber then being built. He was spokesman for the first experiment using the deuterium-filled chamber which produced several important results, the most important being the first measurement of the axial vector form factor in muon neutrino-neutron quasi-elastic scattering. This result was verified by later experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab.
Derrick was appointed Argonne’s High Energy Physics Division Director in 1980. While director, he supported a collaboration with the University of Minnesota to build an underground laboratory in Minnesota’s Soudan Mine to study proton decay. This later resulted in a rich program of neutrino physics with the Minos detector, extending over many years with the use of neutrino beams from Fermilab. After the closure of the ZGS program, using the advantages of a multi-disciplinary lab and the strength of university collaboration, Derrick initiated Argonne participation in two important experiments, starting with the high resolution spectrometer (HRS) experiment at the PEP collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He proposed using the 12-foot bubble chamber superconducting magnet as the solenoid for the HRS, which proved to be a success. Derrick was very active in the HRS program for several years, and after this finished in the late 1980s, he led a collaboration that involved Argonne as well as a number of universities to join the ZEUS experiment at HERA (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)). The U.S. collaboration’s contribution to ZEUS was the barrel calorimeter which used uranium as the absorber material. The expertise of Argonne provided considerable help in handling this material.
Derrick took sabbatical leave at University College London and later at DESY, where he served as physics chairman. A gifted speaker, he was recognized as a good presenter of physics, served on several review committees, was a High Energy Physics Advisory Panel member and an active participant in the Snowmass Conferences. Derrick retired in 1995, but continued his contributions to Argonne’s high energy physics program as a special term appointee. In 2006, he was named senior physicist emeritus.
Besides being a brilliant physicist, Derrick had a unique knack for entertaining his guests with stories about his life and endless anecdotes about history and philosophy. His spare time was spent reading good books, fine dining and listening to classical music, opera in particular. Derrick leaves behind his wife Eva and his children and grandchildren.