MILLS, Frederick Eugene

Vistoso Funeral Home, Oro Valley, Arizona Frederick Eugene Mills November 12, 1928 - June 21, 2013 Dr. Mills was an internationally recognized expert in the field of charged-particle accelerator physics. His seminal contributions enabled many of today’s accelerators, which range from the first synchrotron light source, to the proton-therapy cancer treatment facility at Loma Linda Hospital in Riverside, CA, and to high-energy colliding-beam storage rings like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland. Respectively, they have contributed to the science of modern super-materials, cured thousands of cancer patients, and led to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons, the charm, bottom, and top quarks, the tau lepton, and neutrino oscillations. His professional passions included electron storage rings, anti-proton beam cooling techniques, high-energy colliding beams, and the application of accelerators to medicine. Dr. Mills received his B.S. (1949) and Ph.D. (1955) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked with Professor Donald Kerst, the inventor of the Betatron, and became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa organization. His first job was as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in their Laboratory for Nuclear Sciences under the late Robert R. Wilson where he worked on electron synchrotrons. Pursuing his interest in accelerator research he relocated to Madison, Wisconsin in 1957, where he researched FFAGs and colliding beam accelerators at Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) in Stoughton, Wisconsin. After a sabbatical at the Centre des Etudes Nucleaire de Saclay, France during 1961, he eventually became director of MURA from 1965-1967, and afterward the first director of the University of Wisconsin’s (UW) Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL). He secured funding for, and oversaw, the construction the first dedicated electron storage ring, synchrotron light source. That device, soon named Tantalus-I, became the seed for the Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SRL) at UW, now a major national facility. While teaching physics as a Professor of Physics and Nuclear Engineering at UW, was asked to became Chairman of the Accelerator Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1970 to 1973. He was soon pulled back to the Midwest in 1973, to the newly formed National Accelerator Laboratory (NAL), which was at the time led by his old colleague R. R. Wilson. He remained at NAL, soon to be renamed Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL or Fermilab), from 1973 until he retired in 1993, where he applied his keen insight into accelerator physics to the development of Fermilab’s burgeoning accelerator complex. His 19 years of research at Fermilab culminated with the giant Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, which eventually discovered the “top” quark. He took leave from Fermilab twice to work at Argonne National Laboratory, once to develop a conceptual design of large tokomak fusion reactors with the University of Wisconsin’s Nuclear Engineering Department, and once as a University of Chicago Argonne Fellow 1990-1992 to help commission the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, the nation’s premiere synchrotron light source for materials research. He never forgot his professorial days and, for many years, continued to teach courses on accelerator physics at both the University of Wisconsin and University of Illinois as an adjunct professor, and spawned new generations of fellow “atom smasher” builders. Following retirement in from Fermilab and Argonne in 1993 he worked as a consultant on ion storage rings, muon accelerators and colliders, proton driver accelerators, antiproton collectors, and medical accelerators. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and authored more than 175 scientific publications from over a period of 60 years from1957 until 2012. As a youth he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, and he loved camping, fishing, and canoeing in northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Canada. He was a skilled handyman, a skier, a hiker, a biker, and enjoyed a game of golf. In retirement, at Sun City, Oro Valley, he was president of the Astronomy Club and organized a number of star parties, he also taught courses on energy and energy sources for Institute for Learning in Retirement, was the treasurer of the Democratic Club, and was an avid bridge player.