Scientists drawn from everywhere
to FSU's standard-setting Mag Lab

By Kim MacQueen
Special to the Florida State Times

It's only five years old, but it's achieving a stature most 50-year-olds only dream of FSU's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the newest national lab yet, is competing with laboratories that have been around for decades, and is more than holding its own in magnet technology.

Magnets, powerful man-made machines designed to harness the energy in high magnetic fields, are one of the most effective tools available to scientists. Super-high magnetic fields allow researchers in many disciplines to produce amazingly intricate three-dimensional images of their subjects that they can't get anywhere else.

Biologists might use magnet technology to study the structure of a particular protein, to understand its function in the human body. Chemists can use it to see how organic materials react with each other. Physicists could use it to study the properties of superconducting materials. Engineers might use it to test the strength and agility of new materials to make, say, electrical conduits.

Scientists come from all over the world to the laboratory in Tallahassee's Innovation Park, which opened in 1993. Physicist James Brooks is one such user, a recent Boston University transplant who's studying organic superconducting metals.

Back in 1976, a colleague, Douglas Hofstadter at the University of Oregon, had predicted the amazing things such metals might do if exposed to high magnetic fields; Brooks is enjoying proving him right.

"The higher the magnetic field, the better," Brooks says. "Our group moved down a few years ago to take advantage of the facilities here, and we have not been disappointed. They are beyond what one might have imagined."

Super-high magnetic fields sound about as high-tech as you can get, until you remember that the philosophy behind the water-cooled monster magnets is thesame thinking that drives microwave radar and the magnetic resonance imagingpictures now widely used as a safe medical diagnostic tool.

Using a man-made magnet to produce fields hundreds of thousands of times higher than that of the earth's pull, scientists can manipulate the atoms inherent in all matter in order to study microscopic properties in stunning detail.

Whatever the application, FSU is arguably the place to do it. The lab won startup money from the National Science Foundation in 1990. Given the go-ahead, FSU entered a partnership with the University of Florida and the Los AlamosNational Laboratory to build the biggest magnet laboratory in the country.

Then they went after the faculty, amassing research talent that includes 1972 Nobel laureate in Physics Robert Shrieffer and Hans Schneider-Muntau, former magnet program director at the Max Planck Institute in Grenoble, France.

Geoffrey Bodenhausen, formerly of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, directs the lab's nuclear magnetic resonance arm, while Louis-Claude Brunel, who directs the electron spin resonance center, also hails from the High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the Max Planck Institute. About 250 scientists and staff round out the roster.

"We have completed Phase One--we have built a world class facility and gathered world-class faculty," says lab director Jack Crow. "We're now entering phase two, which will focus on integrating our in-house science with the hundreds of users who come here internationally."

They've been going like gangbusters since opening day. Three world-record-breaking magnets--their strength is measured in Tesla (T)-- have been built since then: The 27-T magnet was ready when Vice President Al Gore dedicated the lab in September 1994, and a 30-T was brought online in March '95.

This year will see a new magnet, with a 34-Tesla strength. The race is on: Japan's at work on a 40-T magnet, and European colleagues have their eyes on a 45-T.

"We've been challenged by the National Science Foundation and the federal government to advance magnet technology to its limits," says Janet Patten, the lab's director of public and governmental relations. "In a short period of time we have set the standards that all magnet labs internationally are trying to achieve. "

In the midst of all the world records, lab staff have gone to some trouble to carve out FSU's niche as the leader of magnet technology education, as well as research and development. Last fall, when they weren't busy preparing NSF budget requests for the next five years, Crow's staff played host to a handful of international conferences, attracting researchers the world over to come to Tallahassee and marvel at what the new lab has to offer.

Educational outreach is also a priority: internship and mentoring programs have given undergraduates access to scientists and laboratory experience.

"There is a critical national need to improve science and math skills, and we have several programs aimed at just that," says Kathy Hedick, the lab's coordinator of information and publications. "We have incredibly talented scientists who take time out on a regular basis to share their knowledge."