Programme

The symposium was sponsored by the Institut Laue Langevin to honour Dr. Francis TASSET who retired in July 2007.

Francis started playing with polarised neutrons in 1966 on the diffractometer DN2 of the CEA-Grenoble. After convincing M. Maier-Leibnitz to build a polarised neutron three-axis spectrometer at ILL, he met P.J. Brown and J.B. Forsyth also interested by polarised neutron techniques. In 1975-76, he worked on superconducting materials and met W.C. Koehler. After his return to ILL, he decided to exploit the Meissner effect and built a prototype of the Cryoflipper. From the successful results, he started to built a prototype of Cryopad with the help of S. Pujol. After solving many problems, he finally succeeded just before the long shutdown in 1990. The Spherical Neutron Polarimetry technique was born. In parallel, he carried with Tim Chupp the first neutrons spin filter test at ILL, making his mind on this challenging development.

A few years later, thanks to a steadfast motivation, he built a second-generation Cryopad at ILL and a first polarised 3He filling station at Mainz University. In 1998, the Spherical Neutron Polarimetry was adopted and people started speaking about 3He spin filters. In 2000-02, he built the filling station which is now the reference worldwide. The programme of the symposium will present the scientific impact of his life-long contributions to polarised neutron scattering.

All scientists, students, and staff were invited to attend Friday, March 6, 2009 in the Chadwick amphitheater but priority were given to the 83 registered participants.