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March 2021 ESRFnews

Infinite opportunity Helmut Dosch, the new chair of the ESRF Council, opens his mind to the breathtaking possibilities of the upgraded source.

For well over two decades, Helmut Dosch has been immersed in high- level science management: 11 years as director of the Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, then a further 12 years as chairman of the DESY board of directors in Hamburg and, in parallel, seven years as vice-president of the Helmholtz Association to name but three positions in his German homeland. That might suggest a mind geared for people and politics, but according to Dosch it actually came of his scientific curiosity. Earlier in his career, out of a desire to better understand how disorder turns to order in natural systems, the physicist and his colleagues employed X-ray scattering at DESY s synchrotron radiation facility to reveal that the rigid structure of ice always gives way to a largely disordered nanoscopic layer, namely water, on its surface, well below the melting temperature. The result proved a hypothesis made nearly 150 years earlier by the British scientist Michael Faraday, and brought Dosch to the attention of employers seeking new, confident faces for research management. It was a big splash in the community, he recalls. The slippery nature of ice is far from

Dosch s only claim to fame. Other key research contributions made in his younger career include the discovery of evanescent X-ray waves, when he spent two years at Cornell University in the US. The importance of such work has stayed with him as a guiding force. In devising new tools, ultimately vexing scientific questions are always the stimulus, he says. It would make no sense to me to develop new tools that are decoupled from a scientific challenge. Even so, as the new chair of the ESRF Council he now finds himself advising for a newly upgraded facility whose novel capabilities are not yet fully known. It is, he says, a breathtaking new

H E LM

U T D O S C H

BORN: 1955, Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany EDUCATION: Dr. rer. nat., University of Munich, Germany (1981); graduate student, Institut Laue-Langevin (1983); PhD, University of Munich (1984). CAREER: Postdoc, Cornell University, US (1984 1986); scientist, University of Munich (1986 1991); guest professor, University of Mainz, Germany (1992 1993); professor, University of Wuppertal (1993 1997); director, Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Stuttgart, and professor, University of Stuttgart (1997 1999); chairman of board of directors, DESY, Hamburg, and professor, University of Hamburg (2009 ); vice-president of the Helmholtz Association (2013 ).

The ESRF is a place where people are working independent of their nationality, religion and lifestyle, peacefully and successfully

light source that will have infinite scientific challenges within its reach for two decades or more.

A common vision As someone who once regularly used the ESRF himself, Dosch has a deep fondness for the facility and in his new role he wants to help it remain an attractive place of study for the next generation of researchers an acknowledged springboard to a strong scientific career . He also believes that the ESRF is invaluable for the European idea. The light source in Grenoble is open to the world, he says. It is a place where people are working independent of their nationality, religion and lifestyle, peacefully and successfully. It shows everyone what you can achieve together, if you have a common vision. After a year struggling to get

through a pandemic, many people have understandably put vision on hold. Not Dosch. While acknowledging the need to maintain physical scientific communities, he sees a future in which the automation and remote working that the ESRF has helped pioneer is further advanced, drawing on developments in artificial intelligence and augmented reality. This could come sooner than we think, he says. It is not so much an opportunity as a necessity, he adds: to reduce the excessive carbon footprints of travel, and to be able to maintain vital X-ray science whenever the next pandemic comes along. We have to be asking how we can safely operate facilities such as the ESRF during lockdowns. If there is anything this pandemic

has taught us, besides generally the importance of democracy and the voice of science, he adds, it is how system-relevant research facilities such as the Grenoble light source are. 

Jon Cartwright

ESRFMar21_Portrait_v4.indd 25 26/02/2021 10:49