World-class researcher tapped to head Magnetic Field Laboratory

February 6, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A world-class leader in magnetic field research has been named as the new director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is operated for the National Science Foundation by a consortium that includes the University of Florida, Florida State University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Greg Boebinger, who currently is the division leader of the materials science and technology division at Los Alamos, will head the lab, which develops and operates the most powerful magnets ever built. Scientists in various fields use the extraordinarily high fields to probe the properties of materials ranging from superconducting compounds to living tissue. Headquartered in Tallahassee, it is the only facility of its kind in the United States and one of only nine in the world. In Gainesville, the lab operates two facilities: one where studies are conducted on the physics of materials at ultra-low temperatures and high magnetic fields, and another where magnetic resonance is used to study biological systems.

Boebinger will succeed Jack Crow, the lab’s founding director, who is stepping down after heading it since 1992. Crow’s vision has led the facility to break all records in the field of magnet technology and has resulted in the lab supplying advanced magnets to other labs around the world.

Boebinger is scheduled to assume the role in August, but he is expected to be in place as early as April. In addition to his administrative duties, he will hold faculty appointments in the physics departments at UF and FSU.

A distinguished experimental condensed matter scientist, Boebinger completed his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986 after earning three bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering, philosophy and physics from Purdue University and completing postgraduate work at Cambridge University in England. Boebinger worked as a staff physicist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., before he joined Los Alamos in 1998 as the director of the pulsed magnet facility.

Since 1995, one of Boebinger’s major collaborators has been Neil Sullivan, a UF professor of physics and dean of UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Sullivan also is one of the original architects of the proposal to bring the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, or NHMFL, to Florida, and he still serves as the co-principal investigator representing UF.

“Greg Boebinger has the insight and in-depth understanding of the impact of magnetic field research from physics to biology to the earth sciences,” Sullivan said. “We are confident he will take the NHMFL to even higher levels of science and technology, and open new frontiers of research in collaboration with other major national and international facilities.”

In 1990, a consortium of scientists from UF, FSU and Los Alamos out-competed a number of universities vying to house the national lab’s new headquarters, then based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The new lab opened in 1994 and operates through a grant from the National Science Foundation.

“We regard this as a superb appointment,” said Hugh Van Horn, the NSF’s program director for national facilities in the division of materials research. “Greg has a real vision for the future of science and technology involving high magnetic fields. He is an outstanding scientist and has already demonstrated great leadership capabilities.”