Lucien Montanet (1930 - 2003)

It was with great sadness that we heard that Lucien Montanet had passed away on Thursday June 19th. Until quite recently, he had still been here among us discussing physics with his usual enthusiasm. A few weeks earlier, he had even managed to overcome his exhaustion and pay a warm and eloquent tribute to his friend Charles Peyrou.
Coming from the nuclear reactor ZOE in France, Lucien was one of the first physicists to settle at CERN, as early as 1957, even before any offices had been built on the site. He started his career as a young physicist by analysing interactions of cosmic rays (~100 GeV) on pictures taken in a Wilson chamber at the summit of Switzerland's Jungfraujoch mountain, and this work was to be the subject of his PhD.
Later he joined the CERN bubble chamber group run by Charles Peyrou and, with Raphaël Armenteros, analysed proton-antiproton annihilations on photos taken in 81-cm bubble chamber. These were among the first pictures ever taken by a bubble chamber at CERN.
He co-signed the discovery of the first meson resonance found at CERN and in Europe, the E meson. This was the start of a long career devoted to meson and baryon spectroscopy, a field in which he became one of the leading specialists. Lucien played a major role in the construction of the present scheme of elementary particles. He was a key member of the Particle Data Group, organising and leading numerous workshops and conferences on hadron spectroscopy. For many years, he was very much in demand as a rapporteur for review talks on these topics.

In his experimental activities, he initiated and coordinated several experiments of central importance at CERN.
One of the most illustrious was the EHS (European Hybrid Spectrometer), an elaborate set of particle detectors fed by a high-energy beam at the CERN SPS. The goal was to study complex hadronic final states, determine the dynamic features of strong particle interactions and study the associated weak decays. This spectrometer was the first to measure, with excellent precision, the lifetime of the charmed D meson. Among the most remarkable of the sub-detectors that made up the Hybrid Spectrometer were a rapid cycling bubble chamber and a holographic high-resolution bubble chamber. Lucien was the spokesman of that large (by the standards of the time) collaboration of institutes. He was adept at attracting young physicists and infusing them with his enthusiasm and experience. In this way, he played a major role in the development of high-energy physics in Spain which, although not yet a CERN Member State, was an important contributor to EHS.
Lucien played a similar role when, in 1985, he was appointed coordinator of the CERN-USSR (now CERN-Russia) Committee. The excellent relations between CERN and Russia are largely due to his skill and devotion to the task.
In 1990 he became a member of the Scientific Council of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) at Dubna, and played a key role in defining JINR's scientific policy.
In 1973 he became the editor of 'Physics Letters' and continued playing this role competently and efficiently even after his retirement in 1995. This enabled him to remain in close contact with the high-energy physics community and made him a well-known figure for the younger generations. It can be said that most of the publications of CERN and other European laboratories went under the expert and critical scrutiny of Lucien and his partner Klaus Winter. Up to the last moments of his life he performed this task with the same conscientiousness.
In Lucien Montanet, we lose one of the pioneers of modern high-energy physics, an inspired, generous and friendly member of our community and a true lover of science.

His colleagues and friends