James (Jim) Griffin (-2010)

GRIFFIN

Posted By: Ames Tribune
Date: 9/4/2010 at 10:48:32

THE AMES TRIBUNE, Ames, Story County, Iowa, Monday, August 30, 2010.

James (Jim) Griffin, 84, former Ames resident, died unexpectedly July 17, 2010, in Geneva, Ill. Griffin was an assistant professor and associate physicist with Iowa State University Department of Physics and Ames Laboratory from 1963 to 1969. Private services were held in July in their home.

In the 1950s, Griffin helped pioneer the building of key ISU Physics Department instrumentation for the study of nuclear forces within atoms, working with physicist L. Jackson Laslett to build an electron accelerator, or synchrotron, in Ames.

Griffin earned his Ph.D. at ISU in 1963. In 1969, he joined Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., then the world’s largest accelerator laboratory under construction. There, Griffin’s synchrotron engineering knowledge provided the basis for his first project, the design and construction of systems needed to accelerate protons and antiprotons to 200 GeV in a ring with radius 1 km, which helped Fermilab scientists discover new nuclear forces including the elusive “weak force.”

Former Fermilab director John Peoples, who led the laboratory’s Antiproton Source to completion in the ’70s and ’80s, called Griffin one of the “heroes” of the Antiproton Source. “In the late 1970s, Jim’s ideas for magically shaping the proton beams with the RF techniques he knew so well guided us to the two-ring Antiproton Source that we chose in 1982,” Peoples said in the Aug. 4 issue of “Fermilab Today.” “His ideas are the core of today’s Antiproton Source RF systems.”

According to Peoples, “Jim was very skilled at turning his ideas into systems that he could build … Jim carried himself quietly, but his ideas spoke very clearly.”

Jim and his wife, Marilyn, enjoyed folk dancing at ISU and carried their love of dance to Fermilab, where they established an International Folk Dancing group.

Jim also loved fishing and canoeing in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, a passion he shared with this wife, children, grandchildren, and many ISU and Fermilab friends. Flying was another passion; he kept a Mooney at the Ames Municipal Airport.

Griffin is survived by his wife, Marilyn; their children, Meg, Jeanne, Rose, Ellen and Michael; and eight grandchildren.

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