Accelerators and I

During the academic year 1952–1953 a famous paper by Courant, Livingston, Snyder and Blewett was published on how to strongly focus particle beams. I was fascinated by their brilliant idea and had tried to get into this area of research. It soon led me into the KAM theory which was deep, interesting but difficult. Nothing came out of this effort of mine, which I once described as a flirtation, but it led to my life-long respect for accelerator design. It also led to my advising my graduate students to go into this field of research. Several of them did listen to me, and have in time become important members of the international accelerator design community. I think I can be excused for claiming some credit in having given them good early advice…