On 15 April 2004, Professor Koichiro Matsuura, Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), awarded UNESCO's Albert Einstein Gold Medal to Professor Herwig Schopper, the President of the SESAME Council. The award was given in the presence of the SESAME Beamlines and Scientific Committees and UNESCO representatives of countries involved in the project.Professor Matsuura said that Professor Schopper is an outstanding scientist who has published extensively and has made remarkable contributions to the advancement of science in such cutting-edge fields as nuclear and particle physics as well as other areas of advanced scientic research. (see PDF file below for full text of JSR article)

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Gaetano Vignola, well known in the synchrotron radiation accelerator community, joined SESAME as the Technical director.He began his career in accelerator physics in 1967 when he joined the ADONE group in Frascati National Laboratories, where he was involved also in the commissioning of a 2 T wiggler and in freeelectron laser experiments. In 1983 he moved to the NSLS at Brookhaven, where he participated actively in the commissioning of the facility. In 1990 he went back to Frascati where he proposed and successfully led the construction of the DAFNE F-factory, a highluminosity high-current 1 GeV collider.

Journal of Synchrotron Radiation,Current-Events Editor: s.hasnain@dl.ac.uk