Peter Standley 1924 – 2003

Peter Standley was one of the very early members of CERN staff. He joined CERN nearly 50 years ago and retired 20 years ago.
Peter had been reading physics at Oxford University; that made him, in times of the second world war, an obvious candidate to work on the newly invented radar techniques and, as radar officer, he became a member of the Royal Navy.
After demobilisation, he was attracted, like many of those working in the radar field, by the construction of particle accelerators, preparing his thesis on the 125 MeV electron synchrotron at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford. There he became involved in a fantastic, at that time almost unimaginable emerging project, for a European Laboratory, later to be called CERN.
In 1954, he was nominated linkman between CERN and the company (Metropolitan Vickers), which had obtained the contract for the construction of the linear accelerator for the proton synchrotron, the PS, which was the first large project and "raison d'être" of the new laboratory.
Thanks to his personality, he maintained excellent "triangular relations" between the CERN group, the company and Harwell Laboratory, where some of the essential technical developments were done. One of the senior people involved in the Linac construction vividly recalls Peter's personality: always straightforward, honest, perfectly reliable and inspiring confidence - characteristics which were appreciated by everybody during his career at CERN, and he did not forget where he came from; the Linac had, of course, to be painted navy blue.
Peter became a CERN staff member in 1954 and was put in charge, in 1958, of the Linac and later PS operations as deputy to the Division Leader, Pierre Germain. In spite of his dislike of administrative duties and the show of hierarchical status, he became Division Leader of the PS Division in 1965. In 1973, he resigned from that post and went back to being a member of the Linac Group, his first job at CERN. There he felt at home and soon was the first to dive into the underground works of the machine after a memorable flood in the mid-seventies.
He resigned from CERN in 1983, 20 years ago, of which he was ill for nearly ten - a rare disease, badly understood even today, which diminished his physical strength day after day, while his mind stayed alert. He fought the disease with determination and patience, but as his forces weakened, caretaking became an enormous load on his wife, Christiane, who faced all this for a very long time with tremendous courage.
Peter was appreciated by everyone for his technical competence and his love of the smallest detail. He was known in the sixties as the only one in the division who could single-handedly start and run this complex of intricate machines. He was economical, even parsimonious with his division's funds, as much as with words: his instructions and conclusions sometimes were extremely concise, much to the despair of his colleagues of non-English background. Peter may at times have found it hard to come to decisions, but once decided, he meant it - during all his life and until his very last days.