Rede zur Eröffnung der Experimentierhallen "FLASH" im DESY (englisch)

Mr Dosch,
State Secretary Lönn,
Dr. Vierkorn-Rudolph,
dear Family Siegbahn,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I don’t need to say much about Albert Einstein. He conceived the world’s most famous formula, and that formula even found its way onto a postage stamp: Energy equals mass multiplied by the velocity of light squared”. And it was he who discovered light particles photons and thus the photoelectric effect”. When metal plates are irradiated with light, electrons may be emitted from the metal and become skyline pigeons”: they fly up and away.

The pioneer of physics and Nobel Prize winner Kai Siegbahn, born in Sweden in 1918, did trailblazing work on his specialist field of electron spectroscopy. His ESKA method makes it possible as we could see in the presentation to analyze the smallest building blocks of matter very precisely.

I’m very glad to be here with you today to celebrate the official opening and naming of the new experimental halls Albert Einstein” and Kai Siegbahn”.

It doesn’t often happen that central research institutions are named after foreign scientists; in this case we should also regard it as a symbol of European cooperation, which cannot be confined by boundaries in the sciences, especially.
Mr. Dosch has already spoken on the subject of partnership with Sweden from the point of view of DESY.

And I’m very pleased also on behalf of the Senate and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg that Anders Lönn, Swedish State Secretary to the Minister for Higher Education and Research; Lars Börjesson, Vice-President of Göteborg’s Chalmers University of Technology; and Hans Siegbahn, son of the name-giver and also a physicist, have come to take part in this naming ceremony.

By the way, Albert Einstein, typically, was a citizen of several states: Württemberg, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia and the USA. So this naming ceremony is a symbol of international cooperation in a number of ways, and especially with our Swedish partners.

And we are not only celebrating a name-giving; we are celebrating a milestone in technology, too. Here at DESY, Hamburg has the first free-electron laser to offer two simultaneous laser pathways that can be controlled independently of each other. That makes it possible to more than double the capacity of FLASH for its user community and meet the considerable international demand.

And that has been done without building a completely new accelerator, which would have been much more costly than just enlarging the existing one. So besides celebrating scientific progress today, we are celebrating financial efficiency too.

In this connection I wish to thank the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, that bore the brunt of the costs, and the Helmholtz Community that made the project possible. And of course DESY. Once again, the accelerator centre has shown that it can handle major projects and realize them within a reasonable time and at reasonable cost.

FLASH will offer researchers totally new possibilities; we shall hear more about the details in the next hour.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The dual FLASH represents a further stage reached in building up the DESY Bahrenfeld campus jointly to create one of the world’s leading institutions for what we call, here goes: structural research. It’s probably true that there are no other sites in Germany or abroad that are developing so dynamically.

There are reasons for that. One is that the research infrastructure at DESY has constantly been modernized and enlarged: with Petra III, FLASH and the three-kilometre long European XFEL accelerator that is due to be commissioned in 2017 we have radiation sources that are unique in the world.

The second reason is that Hamburg University has stepped up its activities on the Bahrenfeld campus. This close cooperation between DESY and the university helped to form the basis of our success in the Federal Initiative for Excellence, with the cluster The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging”.

Thirdly and this is an extremely important aspect a number of new research institutions with all manner of different stakeholders have recently been established around DESY.
Let me give you just two examples:

the newly founded Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, and

the Centre for Structural Systems Biology the latter being an outstanding example of the illustrious institutions represented on the campus.

Besides a diversity of universities and research institutes, the German government, the states of Hamburg and Lower Saxony and now Schleswig-Holstein too are involved in the project. The CSSB is clear proof that the DESY facility is far more than just a centre for physics; with the life sciences it now accommodates yet another focus of research in Hamburg.

Fourthly: in December 2014, Hamburg’s parliament approved the construction costs of an Innovation Centre on the Bahrenfeld campus. DESY, Hamburg University and Hamburg’s government will operate it jointly and create a nucleus around which young, start-up enterprises can establish themselves here on the campus. In the longer term, this nucleus will evolve into a research and innovation zone in the neighbouring district of Lurup.

DESY coordinates cooperation between Sweden and North Germany in the Röntgen Ångström cluster, which has set itself the task of building the region up into a scientifically outstanding cluster for research into synchrotron radiation and neutrons.

Parallel to this, the Hamburg Senate has started an international initiative with the working title Baltic Science Network”, aimed at creating a new network structure for science policy in the Baltic Sea region. The governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein have already followed this lead. The common objective is to position and develop the Baltic Sea states as one of the world’s most competitive and innovative scientific regions.

With the Baltic Science Network”, Hamburg is making efforts to establish a macroregional science policy in the Baltic Sea region, for example to institute a joint, transnational strategy of research around the excellent radiation sources in Hamburg, Lund and St. Petersburg, irrespective of national frontiers. We hope it will allow us to make optimum, strategic use of these first-class, if expensive infrastructures in the interests of regional development.

Moreover, DESY collaborates closely with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California. Without international cooperation, DESY would not be what it is today, but all those involved reap the benefits.

Together with the other large machines here at DESY, FLASH is the locomotive of innovation and the research infrastructure. DESY develops machines like FLASH itself.

That means: the equipment is the result of continuous basic research in the realm of physics, and it creates numerous jobs all along the production chain. Not least, companies from the region are commissioned to carry out some aspects of the construction of a large installation like FLASH, PETRA III or European XFEL.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Over a hundred years ago the physicist Ernest Rutherford bombarded an extremely thin gold foil with radioactive radiation and discovered that although nearly all the radiation passed through it, some particles were diverted and a very few bounced back. In this experiment, which has become one of the most famous in the world of physics, Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus. In the meantime we have learned a lot more about whatever holds the world together in its inmost folds” trusting that the nations will hold together peacefully thanks not least to the excellent research conducted here at DESY.

I wish you every success for the future and continued fruitful international cooperation. Thank you.

Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.