Obituary: Jean Teillac

Jean Teillac, nuclear physicist: born Marcillac-La-Croisille, Correze 6 September 1920; Commissioner for Atomic Energy for France 1975-93; President, Joint European Torus (JET), Culham 1976-85; President of Council, CERN, Geneva 1978-81; married; died Paris 10 March 1994.

AN OUTSTANDING physicist, Jean Teillac was also a scientific statesman and administrator who took on a series of key roles in the scientific collaborations which have given Europe a leading position in fundamental research.

Teillac started his career as a research scientist at the prestigious Institut du Radium in Paris, where he completed his thesis on the structure of the nucleus under the aegis of Irene Joliot-Curie. He had a distinguished career in nuclear physics research and accepted the Pierre Curie Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris in 1959. His career as a scientific administrator began when he held the posts of Director of both the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Orsay and the Institut du Radium from 1959 to 1970.

Asked to co-ordinate the activities of a number of physics laboratories at that stage dependent on the Department of Education, Teillac created in 1971 the French National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3). In 1975 he was appointed to the extremely important function of Commissioner for Atomic Energy for France, a post which he occupied until last September. His responsibilities included chairing the scientific council of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), as well as the national agency for the management of nuclear waste (ANDRA). He was also in charge of security for France's nuclear power stations, nuclear weapons and testing sites.

Teillac made important contributions to the success of Europe's principal scientific collaborations. He was elected President of the CERN Council, the governing body of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, in June 1978. His presidency saw a major change in CERN's profile. As well as the experimental programme at the then new SPS proton synchrotron coming to fruition, Teillac's historic mandate covered the launching, approval and final commissioning of the ambitious programme to convert the SPS into the first proton-antiproton collider. This was a calculated risk which was amply repaid by the subsequent discovery in 1983 of the W and Z bosons for which Professor Carlo Rubbia and Simon Van Der Meer were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1984.

Finally in 1981, under his presidency, the CERN Council voted the construction of the LEP electron-positron collider the world's largest particle accelerator. CERN remains indebted to him for his wisdom and farsightedness during this key period. From 1976 to 1985 Teillac was also President of Euratom's Joint European Torus (JET), the European thermonuclear fusion laboratory in Culham in Oxfordshire which has made notable progress in the quest to harness the energy of nuclear fusion.

Teillac's outstanding energy can be judged by the fact he was at one period concurrently President of the CERN Council, Director of JET and French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. His exceptional ability and administrative skill were crucial to the present high standing of French and European physics research.

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