WILLY WÖLFLI (1930–2014): A NUCLEAR PHYSICIST WITH PIONEERING VISIONS

[...]period Willy Wölfli’s group gained of lot of know-how on tandem accelerator technology such as ion optics, sputter ion sources, and charge changing processes in ion-atom collisions as well as on automated measurements with real time data analysis. Hans Oeschger, who was running a conventional 14C laboratory at the university of Berne immediately recognized the advantages of direct mass spectrometric detection of long-lived radionuclides in the 1960s (Oeschger et al. 1970), and travelled with his colleagues Bernhard Stauffer and Jürg Beer to the Laboratory for Nuclear Physics in Zurich to explore the possibility to convert the accelerator facility into an AMS spectrometer. While the idea to launch such an applied project was not particularly well received by the hardcore nuclear physicists, Willy Wölfli was immediately enthusiastic and let himself be carried away by the remark: “If they have done it in the USA, we can also do it here.” [...]the Zurich-Berne axis was born and a joint application was eagerly submitted to the Swiss National Foundation with the goal to convert the Zurich EN tandem into a dedicated AMS spectrometer.