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In Memoriam


JULIUS ZOLL 1931 - 2003

We were saddened to learn that Julius Zoll had passed away during last Summer. As many of you know, Julius Zoll was an eminent figure in computing at CERN and many of his programs are still in use today. His friends and colleagues, Hansjoerg Klein, Rudy Bock, Rene Brun, Jean-Pierre Porte, Werner Jank, Alan Norton, to mention only a few, have suggested to include in the Computer NewsLetter the article that was published in the Weekly Bulletin (31/2003) in memory of Julius Zoll.

One of the early pioneers of using computers for High Energy Physics has left us. Julius joined CERN from Cambridge University in 1964, at a time when bubble chambers were in their heyday, producing new exciting physics every month, generating the first large-scale international physics collaborations, and continually pushing the frontiers of data processing. He was a leading figure in the development of the programs that found their way from CERN into all the numerous laboratories, small and large, at which the photographs were analyzed, and this at a time when the terms `computer science' and `informatics' had not even been coined. Many of the ideas which he produced in those years were taken up and reshaped subsequently by computer professionals, many of them are still contained in active components of CERN's program library, and some of his programs survive unchanged in other laboratories.

Not only a meticulous and untiring producer of software tools and totally committed to serving their users, he was also actively involved as a physicist in several experiments. Beyond work, he was an erudite lover of flowers and insects, and very literate in history. All those who came into contact with Julius held him in high esteem for his gentlemanly approach and his human warmth. We will miss him!

His many friends at CERN


On a personal note,

Before I came to CERN in 1988, being a doctoral student at LAPP in Annecy, Julius Zoll was one of the first CERN members I met. One of our tasks was to port his well-known software PATCHY on a new Unix workstation provided by a small French company. Julius did not hesitate to go to Annecy in order to help us achieve this task and explain the code he had written. This was our chance to meet the author in person who was very helpful and did not hesitate to share his knowlege with young students.

Nicole Cremel
CNL Editor.


STEVE O'NEALE 1948 - 2003

Shortly before the publication of this NewsLetter we learned with great sadness of the sudden death of Steve O'Neale on November 25th. The following are a few words about Steve written by his colleagues and friends in IT division.

We would like to make this tribute to Steve O'Neale from his colleagues and friends in the IT division which, when Steve started his involvement, would have been called the Data Handling Division (DD). His work as production manager for Opal and later with Atlas brought him into contact with many levels of the division from technical to managerial. He gained a wide familiarity with the CERN Program Library through his work and made valuable contributions to the code and organisation through contributing his ideas. This benefited us in the period when LEP computing was running down and that for LHC building up when he joined the Cernlib team to work as assistant librarian and, in particular, build the library on the Opal computing platforms. He understood very well the difficulties that experiments were having in their run down phase as the community switched to new programming languages. He volunteered himself to help with continuity for both Opal and other experiments. Last week he was working closely with us to extend the useful life of one of the bookeeping packages used by LEP and fixed target experiments.

He also made a major contribution to LHC computing when he joined the team testing the Geant4 Monte-Carlo package and applied his wide experience of experiment requirements and real life computing and his practical no-nonsense approach to this work.

In his various roles Steve experienced almost every service IT offered over the years. Many times he would rather say he suffered from one of our services but there was always a glint of humour in his eye and a genuine issue behind. He would not, however, just criticise - he would give you as much evidence as he could to demonstrate what was happening, how it affected the work of his experiment or the user community in general and give his ideas, often several, on how to improve. This covered issues from the day-to-day to strategic, and Steve was an energetic member of some of the committees which performed vital liason roles between the physics experiments and the IT management notably the computer resource allocation committee, cocotime, and the Forum for computer users, Focus. Steve always found something relevant to say at Focus meetings though he would sometimes admit quite cheerfully that he was stirring something up because it needed stirring up !

In all of his relations with IT Steve had a practical approach motivated by the needs of physics computing and always with complete honesty and openess. He was always full of energy, drive and enthusiasm and we enjoyed and appreciated working with him.

His colleagues and friends in the IT division.



For matters related to this article please contact the author.


Cnl.Editor@cern.ch
CERN-CNL-2003-003
Vol. XXXVIII, issue no 3


Last Updated on Mon Dec 15 12:10:16 CET 2003.
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