Hercules XX

On 25 and 26 March, a special symposium at Minatec celebrated the 20th anniversary of Hercules, the Higher European Research Course for Users of Large Experimental Systems. The event brought together many past Hercules participants along with several dozen participants at the Hercules session 2010 who had been in Grenoble since 12 February 2010.

Grenoble is home to the most intense neutron source in the world, the ILL and the world’s premier photon source, the ESRF. In view of making these two world-leading facilities available for students training, Jean-René Regnard and Claire Schlenker from the Grenoble science and engineers universities (UJF and INP) proposed in 1989 to establish a school for young European Scientists and researchers in both neutron and photon science : the first HERCULES course took place in 1991."

The traditional Hercules symposium on the last two days of each session offers lectures on the breakthroughs and future prospects of neutron and photon science to a wider audience from the research and academic institutions in Grenoble. In 2010, the symposium speakers included Nobel Prize laureate and long-time Hercules lecturer Ada Yonath, along with close to twenty former Hercules course participants, the directors general of ILL, of the X-Ray Laser Project XFEL and of the European Spallation Source ESS projects, and Bill Stirling.

Hercules course director José Baruchel reminded everybody that twenty Hercules annual sessions have been held between 1991 and 2010, attended by 1600 young scientists (selected out of 2400 applicants), mainly from European countries but also from Brazil, USA, Taiwan or Australia. The vast majority of these (78 %) were PhDs students, along with 15 % post-docs and 7% scientists. It should be noted that 30 % of participants were female. Over 20 years, Hercules has become an internationally recognised post-graduate training institution, time to reflect on a possible evolution to ensure a bright future for the next two decades!