Colleagues from near and far gathered in the Walton Rooms at the Cockcroft Institute (CI) on the afternoon of 15th July to wish Swapan Chattopadhyay a fond farewell at the end of his 7 year tenure as the Director of the Cockcroft Institute.

Besides CI members from the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool & Manchester and ASTeC Daresbury, the event included colleagues from STFC Swindon, the John Adams Institute, Oxford, the University of Huddersfield, Rutherford Laboratory, the University of Strathclyde and CERN.

 

Swapan Chattopadhyay and Graham Blair (Credit: DL Media Services)

The audience were treated to a fascinating series of short presentations about the diverse range of activities that the CI presently encompasses. The first speaker was Christopher Cockcroft, the son of Sir John Cockcroft, and he paid tribute to the Institute as a lasting memorial to his father's scientific legacy. Founding CI Director Professor John Dainton and former CERN accelerator division leader Dr Steve Myers both reminisced about the early days of the Institute.

Many of the speakers described the pivotal role that Swapan had played in enabling their research activities and thanked him heartily for his contribution.

 

Founding Directors of the Cockcroft Institute (Credit: DL Media Services)

At the end of the afternoon's proceedings, Acting CI Director Professor Peter Ratoff presented Swapan with several gifts, including a scale model of a compact linear accelerator and a bound volume of scientific papers written and selected by CI staff. Swapan thanked everybody for their participation in the event and talked about what had been achieved in the past 7 years. His wife Janet also gave thanks for all the support that she and her husband had received during this time.

He now looks forward to the challenges presented by his new role at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and Fermilab in the USA. However, Swapan expects to continue to have some involvement in the life of the CI and he will be a very welcome visitor. The event concluded with an evening reception at the Institute.