Don Fleming's memories of Ken Crowe

I first met Ken Crowe in the spring of 1972, if memory serves. I had just joined the the UBC Chemistry Dept. in July 1971, drawn by the construction then underway of the TRIUMF cyclotron. I arrived from the Niels Bohr Institute with an interest in nuclear reactions and nuclear structure physics, the subject also of my PhD thesis in Nuclear Chemistry from UC Berkeley. A chance phone call from my former PhD supervisor (Joe Cerny) caused me to radically change direction.

Joe told me that he had just attended a seminar given by Ken Crowe on the subject of "Muonium Chemistry". It sounded intriguing so I called Ken and went down to meet him. I was ushered into his office by the comely Corrine. That was my first impression of Ken, good taste in secretaries! My next one was that he was used to being in charge but at the same time I found his enthusiasm about this developing new field of muonium chemistry and his high praise for his grad student who was carrying the ball at the time, Jess Brewer, infectious. I "signed on" for the long haul. Jess was putting literally half-liter Mylar buckets of solutions of different reagents in the backward muon beam at the old 184" and measuring muon spin relaxation rates in order to determine chemical rate constants for Mu, the lightest H atom; it was a bit crude but it was a start, and led to some early papers in the field, co-authored with Fredy Gygax, who was a PDF (from "SIN") in Ken’s group at the time.

After his PhD, Jess spent a year or so as a PDF with Ted Bowen, Burt Pifer and the Arizona group, developing "Arizona muons" (later called "surface muons"). As an item of historical graffiti, we all did the last non-medical experiments at the old 184", the first studies of Mu reactivity in low pressure gases.

Jess then came to UBC, first to the Chemistry Dept., drawn both by TRIUMF and the steelhead fishing in BC, and he, I and my first grad student, Dave Garner (who also contributed at the 184") got µSR started at TRIUMF on the old (and recently dismantled) M20 beam line. Money was tight (it still is) and we had to beg and borrow what we needed to get operational. Ken Crowe once again entered the picture and played a huge role in lending a helping hand. He procured about 25 (yellow) quads for us from the decay (Anderson?) muon channel of the old Chicago synchrocyclotron (some of which are still in use on the M15 beam line), a bending magnet from Cal Tech (the first bender was a dipole magnet "Patty Jane" from Harvard, which David Measday of UBC Physics arranged for us) and two huge old (selenium rectifier) power supplies from the Bevatron at Berkeley. It all arrived at TRIUMF one summer day in 1974 and two years later we were operational, with help from Toshi Yamazaki and Ken Nagamine as well, who were spending time at TRIUMF then.

The first µSR spectrum taken in Canada was recorded (on polaroid!) in July 1976. Today µSR at TRIUMF is an integral part of the new "CMMS" (Centre for Molecular and Materials Science), along with beta-NMR at ISAC, but likely neither would have come to pass without Ken Crowe's initial interest and the huge help he provided. It may sound inadequate but does bear repeating: "Thanks, Ken!" in gratitude. Until we meet again.

First µSR histogram in Canada: 11 July 1975 with Don Fleming, Toshi Yamazaki, Ken Nagamine and Jess Brewer