Kai Siegbahn exhibition opens with symposium
The Uppsala professor and Nobel prizewinner Kai Siegbahn, who would have been 90 in April, is getting his own permanent exhibition at the Ångström Laboratory. The exhibition 'Kai Siegbahn and ESCA' is opening on Wednesday 23 April with a symposium.
Kai Siegbahn (1918-2007) was one of the pioneers of electron spectroscopy, the technology that uses X-rays to expel electrons from materials to facilitate measurement of the electrons' energy. Using an advanced piece of apparatus he developed the methods used in this field, and together with his co-workers he created the ESCA (Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis) method. This work commenced a new era of photoelectron spectroscopy, and in 1981 Kai Siegbahn was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Physics.
The permanent exhibition constructed outside the Ångström Laboratory's Siegbahn Hall displays the most important instruments that Kai Siegbahn's research group designed and used, plus the first commercially available instrument of the same type. The research results that led to the Nobel Prize are presented together with an overview of the people who worked in Siegbahn's research group at the time.
"With this exhibition we wish both to explain about Kai Siegbahn's ground-breaking work and to interest visitors and students in the research currently in progress at the Ångström Laboratory," says Torbjörn Rander, a member of the working group at the Department of Physics and Materials Science who has been involved in the exhibition.
The exhibition is opening on 23 April with a mini-symposium, at which researchers who worked with Kai Siegbahn and used the techniques he developed will be providing a description of the area of research and looking to the future. The symposium is open to the general public.
Time of the symposium and venue: Wednesday 23 April 10-12am in the Siegbahn Hall, Ångström Laboratory. The exhibition is opening at about 11.45am.