Fermilab leader during search for top quark dies
John Peoples was asked in the mid-1990s about the value of doing pure scientific research — that which has no predetermined benefit.
“Knowledge is a form of wealth,” he replied. “It is an investment.”
Peoples was the director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at the time, charged with overseeing spending hundreds of millions of dollars researching particle physics. It was just after the Batavia-based laboratory was receiving worldwide acclaim for its role in discovering the top quark.
He died June 25, at age 92, according to an announcement from Fermilab.
Peoples was the laboratory’s third director, serving from 1989 to 1999.
He came to the young lab in 1971 on a sabbatical from Columbia University to work on a photoproduction experiment. In 1973, the founding director, Robert Wilson, appointed him head of the proton beamline, and in 1975, he officially joined the lab as head of its research division.
He led the design and construction of an antiproton source that collected and stored more antiprotons than any other facility in the world. In 1987, he became deputy lab director, serving under Leon Lederman.
Peoples was a leader during the run of the legendary Tevatron accelerator, which contributed to the discovery of the top quark in March 1995. He also started an astrophysics program.
“Achieving great science requires great leadership, and John Peoples was that. His passion and dedication to physics and astrophysics led to significant contributions in Fermilab’s history,” Young-Kee Kim, interim lab director, said in the news release. “He worked continually to maintain support from local, state and federal levels for Fermilab, helping secure funding for the Main Injector upgrade, which was significant to the lab's rich science program since the 2000s.”
“John was a great leader,” said former Fermilab scientist Steve Holmes. “He was director during a very critical period, when the Tevatron accelerator really came to the forefront.”
Holmes also credited Peoples for realizing the Tevatron program would end (it did, in 2011) and that the Main Injector “would become the future of the lab. If not for this insight, Fermilab and the U.S. would not have an accelerator-based high-energy physics program today,” Holmes said.
Peoples was awarded the Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators from the American Physical Society in 2010 for his “critical and enduring efforts in making the Tevatron collider the outstanding high-energy physics accelerator of the last two decades.”
In his retirement, Peoples made many visits back to Fermilab, checking on the status of projects like the Dark Energy Survey and talking to scientists about experiments.