Lab Hosting Workshop On Sustainable Energy

Twenty-six members of an international team studying "Transitions to Sustainable Energy" for the InterAcademy Council (IAC) are at Berkeley Lab this week in one in a series of workshops around the world addressing the global need to achieve an adequately affordable, sustainable clean energy supply. The study's co-chair, Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu, is hosting the group, which has been charged by the IAC with providing science-based consensus advice on making progress on the world energy challenge. Their meetings began yesterday in Perseverance Hall and will continue through today. This North American workshop is in part funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Science (Basic Energy Sciences). Find out more about the IAC, created by the Academies of Science of the world, here. The "Transitions to Sustainable Energy" study is described here.

Former Lab Radiation DNA Chemist Magee Dies

Magee

John Magee, who worked at Berkeley Lab from 1976 to his retirement in 1986, passed away at the age of 91 in Moraga. A memorial service is scheduled for tomorrow at Moraga Country Club. In 1943, Magee joined the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. He later condemned the use of this weapon against Japan. At the Lab, he worked as a chemist in what was then called the Biology and Medicine Department (now the Life Sciences Division). He specialized in creating theoretical models of damage occurring in DNA molecules as the result of radiation interaction. Go here to read a San Francisco Chronicle obituary on Magee, and here to read additional information on his Berkeley Lab research, written by colleague Aloke Chatterjee (Life Sciences).