Marek Moszynski receiving congratulations from Glenn Knoll while Ed Hoffman (extreme left), NPSS Vice President, applauds.
2000 IEEE NPSS MERIT AWARD
Marek Moszynski
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Marek Moszynski receiving congratulations from Glenn Knoll while Ed Hoffman (extreme left), NPSS Vice President, applauds. |
The 2000 Merit Award of the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society was presented to Marek Moszynski from the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies at Swierk, Poland on 18 October at the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium held in Lyon, France. The citation reads: “For outstanding contributions to the modern scintillation detector and its application in physics experiments, medicine and other fields of use”.
Marek has been at Swierk since 1961, first working at the Institute of Nuclear Research and, starting in 1983, at the Soltan Institute. From the beginning he was involved in studies of scintillation detectors, particularly, fast timing. Working with Bengt Bengtson from Aarhus University in Denmark, he twice achieved a “world record” time resolution (80 ps at FWHM for 60Co g-rays). They determined experimentally the mechanism that leads to the finite time resolution of scintillation detectors. In 1989 they proposed the so called “dynode timing”, which has considerably improved the time resolutions attainable. They contributed significantly to the development of the modern single photon method used to study light pulse shapes from scintillators.
For a two-year period starting in 1980, Marek was at CENG-LETI in Grenoble, France. There he took part in the development of the first time-of-flight positron tomograph. Sophisticated timing measurements were used for the first time in the field of nuclear medicine. Marek and his French colleagues, mainly Roger Allemand, Michel Laval and Jacques Vacher from LETI, rediscovered the CsF scintillator and, later, the famous fast component of the BaF2 crystal. For the first time the nuclear medicine and physics communities were able to use fast inorganic scintillators which gave time resolutions comparable to those previously obtained only with plastic scintillators. This work led to the first TOF PET being installed at the Joliot-Curie Hospital in Paris. Marek, together with the group from LETI, received the George Von Hevesy Prize in Nuclear Medicine at Third World Congress of Nuclear Medicine and Biology in Paris, in 1982. The citation was for “Contribution of the time-of-flight information to the positron tomographic imaging”.
In 1987, Marek started a collaboration with Rick Casten’s group at Brookhaven National Laboratory on the development of a method for picosecond lifetime measurements of nuclear states in neutron rich nuclei. The method developed together with Henryk Mach and Ron Gill allowed life-times to be measured down to 3-4 ps. BaF2 crystals and dynode timing were the keys to the success of the method. A number of papers were published in Phys. Rev. Lett., Phys. Rev., Nucl. Phys. and the method was adopted by a number of laboratories (Juelich, Germany; Studsvik, Sweden; ISOLDA, CERN). The method is still in use by the group from Studsvik, in different experiments in Europe, and it is proposed to be implemented for large Ge-detector arrays.
Since the middle eighties Marek has been involved in collaboration with a number of projects involving large detection systems for nuclear structure physics in Europe, the Scandinavian NORDBALL, the French–Belgian DEMON and, at present, the EUROBALL. This work is mainly in the area of fast neutron detection and n-g discrimination using liquid scintillation detectors. Marek was responsible, together with physicists from many countries, for the development of the neutron detectors. Their quality was confirmed by the excellent performance of the neutron wall for EUROBALL. He and his group at Ðwierk, mainly Darek Wolski, have developed the best n-g discriminators used in many laboratories in Europe.
Marek is at present a professor and deputy director at the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies in Swierk, Poland. He and his group (Marcin Balcerzyk, Maciek Kapusta), are involved in the study of new scintillation techniques using new inorganic scintillators, such as LSO, YAP, LuAP and others, and avalanche photodiodes. He is also studying aspects of the fundamentals of the scintillation detection process such as the absolute light output of scintillators and their energy resolution.
His group has obtained one of the best energy resolutions of 4.3% as measured with a YAP crystal for 662 keV g-rays from a 137Cs source. A study of the timing properties of new Ce-doped crystals showed an excellent time resolution, particularly with LSO and LuAP. The possibility of a new TOF PET based on LSO crystal, was recently demonstrated by Bill Moses et al.
A systematic study of the advantages and limitations of Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) in scintillation detection leads to the conclusion that the energy resolution of scintillation detectors measured with APD light readout is better or comparable to that observed using photomultipliers. A time resolution of 570 ps for 60Co g-rays, obtained with the detector based on LSO crystal coupled to a Large Area APD, is not far from that measured with standard photomultipliers. Direct collaboration with Marek Szawlowski from Advanced Photonix, Inc. in this study of APDs was of crucial importance.
Although the main line of Marek’s activity is associated with scintillation detection, he was also active in the study of semiconductor detectors. His PhD thesis, which dealt with the charge collection process in Si(Li) detectors with inhomogeneous distribution of electric field, is still presented in Glenn Knoll’s monograph “Radiation Detection and Measurements”. The pulse shape selection method, proposed with Bengt Bengtson, for Ge(Li) detectors allows the measurement of nanosecond half-lives by the slope method and improves the time spectra from Ge-detectors. Recently Marek was involved in the design of the RoSiB, a silicon ball for detection of light charged particles in EUROBALL. Marek and Guntram Pausch from FZR Rossendorf in Germany have developed a new method for charged particle and heavy ion identification by a pulse shape discrimination method with “reversed” Si-detectors, which is used in the RoSiB.
Marek has published more than 120 papers, mainly in Nuclear Instruments and Methods A and in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. He has also received a few patents in nuclear electronics. Starting this year he is the Member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A.
Marek Moszynski is a member of NPSS and can be reached at the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies, PL 05-400 Ðwierk-Otwock, Poland; Phone +48 22 718 0586; Fax: +48 22 779 3481; E-mail: marek@ipj.gov.pl.