This award will provide participant support for early career scientists and graduate students to participate in the "Centenary Symposium 2012: Discovery of Cosmic Rays" to be held on June 26-28, 2012 on the campus of the University of Denver, Denver, CO. 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of the discovery of highly penetrating radiation from outside the Earth by Viktor F. Hess in 1912. We now know this radiation as cosmic rays. This symposium will be held to celebrate this anniversary, to summarize the current status in this field, and to look forward to the new scientific questions to be asked and answered.
For Broader Impacts, it has a particular focus on early career scientists and graduate students. In addition, all sessions will be open to the interested public and there will be at least one evening session in which a public lecture with a title something like "The Origin of Cosmic Rays: A 100 Year Perspective" will be given by one of the participants.
Public report for NSF grant PHY-1205245 supporting CR2012 Period of performance: 3/15/12 – 2/28/13 Report prepared July 25, 2012, updated March 29, 2013, finalized July 8, 2013 The organizers would like to thank the NSF for their support of the Centenary Symposium 2012: Discovery of Cosmic Rays held at the Univ. of Denver, 2012. By all reports the meeting was deemed a great success. Many of the presentations are posted at http://portfolio.du.edu/CR2012 . We had 96 fully registered participants (19 of whom were accompanied by their wives). We supported the attendance (registration fees and travel expenses) of 17 students ranging from one who will enter college this fall to two first year post docs. This group included students from Harvard, Penn State and the Univ. of Chicago, and two from Florida A&M University, an HBCU. We received a small supplementary grant from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University to help with the travel of these students to the meeting. The proceedings of the conference have been published by the American Institute of Physics; see Centenary Symposium 2012: Discovery of Cosmic Rays. AIP Conference Proceedings #1516. An on line copy of the proceedings can be found by going to the following link: http://proceedings.aip.org/resource/2/apcpcs/1516/1 Once there you either click on a 'PDF' link or the 'Order' link. A blue page with a login screen will appear. username: ormes12 password: denver12 A bound hard copy was mailed to Dr. James Whitmore, program manager at the National Science Foundation, to serve as a detailed record of the meeting. Many people commented at the meeting that they liked the format of having some history mixed in with the current status talks and the future directions. Here are a few of the unsolicited comments received after the meeting: Rodger Blandford: "Thanks for organizing the conference.I too learned a lot, which I am still digesting." Martin Israel: "Thank you for organizing a splendid conference." Olivier Ravel (France): "It was really a real pleasure to participate at this conference, thanks again". Rob Petre:"Thanks very much for inviting me to give a talk. The conference was one of the best I've ever attended." Vladimir Ptuskin: "Thank you again for the fantastic conference we had in Denver."
