What's In a Name?
As with any family name there lies a complex genealogy. The same
can be true of the named scholarships, endowed faculty chairs and research
centers of a university. The ancestry of W.M. Keck Foundation Free-Electron
Laser Center at Vanderbilt would include its founding investigators as well
as a number of significant funding sources.
The center's founding investigators are Frank E. Carroll Jr., M.D., professor
of radiology and radiological sciences and associate professor of physics;
Glenn S. Edwards, associate professor of physics and director of the Keck
Free-Electron Laser Center; Sidney Fleischer, professor of molecular biology;
Richard F. Haglund Jr., professor of physics; Robert H. Ossoff, M.D., Guy
M. Maness Professor of Otolaryngology and chairman of the department and
professor of hearing and speech sciences; and Norman H. Tolk, professor
of physics, director of the Center for Molecular and Atomic Studies at Surfaces,
and professor of radiology and radiological sciences. Charles A. Brau,
professor of physics, guided the center in the development of the FEL and
its first years of use.
The center was renamed in honor of a 1993 grant of $3.7 million from the
W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles to expand Vanderbilt's facilities.
Established in 1954 by the founder of the Superior Oil Company, the Keck
Foundation is best known for funding the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
The FEL grant was the foundation's second to Vanderbilt. In 1988 the foundation
awarded the Department of Physics and Astronomy $480,000 to construct state-of-the-art
laboratories for the Living State Physics program. Program Vice President
Dr. Sandra A. Glass and Keck Foundation Director C. William Verity Jr. conducted
a site visit of the FEL in 1993 prior to inviting Vanderbilt to submit a
preliminary proposal for the expansion of the FEL Center.
Throughout its first decade, the center has benefited from the steadfast
commitment of the College of Arts and Science - initially under Dean Jacque
Voegeli; then by acting dean, now Associate Provost John H. Venable; and
more recently the late Dean Madeleine J. Goodman. The College, with the
approval of Chancellor Joe B. Wyatt and then Provost Charles Kiesler, provided
the funds for the initial construction of the FEL building and for a portion
of the second stage construction.
The center would not have been possible without the funding of the Office
of Naval Research's Medical FEL Program. To date, the ONR has invested approximately
$37 million, mostly recent grants of $2.4 million and $127,000 to enhance
the reliability of the FEL for medical use, to help support related personnel
and to equip the expansion. In October the center was awarded a $7.45 million
ONR grant; its fourth consecutive center grant.
A recent addition to the corps of FEL funders is the Whitaker Foundation
of Virginia. The foundation has awarded the School of Engineering's Department
of Biomedical Engineering $1 million to support two faculty positions in
biomedical optics. These faculty will help to develop FEL beam delivery
systems for patient care.
- Kurt Brobeck
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This document created November 18, 1996