Gianfalco Pozzo (1926-2010)

Gianfalco Pozzo (Gughi to his friends) passed away suddenly on 30 June. Born in Candelo near Biella in 1926, he was recruited by CERN in 1957 to set up and lead the mechanical workshop in the Physics Division, where he spent his whole career until his retirement in 1991.

 

Passionate about and tirelessly devoted to his work, he was a reserved, yet open and warm-hearted man. He had close and warm relations with those who shared his passion and interests, and demanded of his collaborators, all carefully selected by him and highly skilled, the same commitment and craftmanship that he brought to bear on his own work either at the drawing board or in the workshop.

His ingenious and straightforward solutions to problems, and his abilities in developing, organising and finally producing the required apparatus, quickly became known. With his reputation growing rapidly, even beyond CERN, he became sought after for his expertise in the most difficult and innovative techniques.

He soon began to focus on the design and execution of all types of magnets and windings, for which he created the necessary tooling and pushed insulation techniques to new limits. He was one of the first to develop superconducting cables. In 1977, he built a solenoid for the R-108 experiment at the ISR, using a cable in which the superconducting wires were stabilized by aluminium strips. It was a remarkable success. When the ISR machine closed down, the magnet was donated to the PSI Laboratory, where it is still used in the Sindrum experiment to this day. Among the numerous devices - all of them masterpieces in their own right - to come out of his workshop, particular mention should be made of the special magnets built for the secondary beams of the PS and the original magnets developed to split the PS slow-extracted proton beam, the pole-face windings for ICE, which were built in record time, the magnet windings and assembly for the NA4, UA6 and NA10 experiments at the SPS, and, above all, the large and complex coil for UA1. The UA1 magnet went on to be used by NOMAD and is still serving today in the T2K’ experiment at J-PARC in Japan.

His last masterpiece was the huge and impressive OPAL solenoid. To build it, a technique involving continuous impregnation in a dry atmosphere was developed and used for the first time. The gantry needed for the solenoid construction was so large that it entirely filled Hall 168. Gianfalco was the heart and the brain of this enterprise and spent countless hours on it, day and night, ensuring that it worked to perfection.

Active to the very end, Gianfalco was often to be seen at CERN enquiring about the progress of the experiments and the work of his former close colleagues and friends.

We are all deeply saddened by his loss. Our thoughts are with his wife, Marica, and with his children, Marco and Andrea, and their families.