At the CEC/ICMC Awards Breakfast on July 2, Ray Radebaugh received the prestigious Samuel C. Collins Award for “an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the identification and solution of cryogenic engineering problems and has…demonstrated a concern for the cryogenic community through unselfish professional service and leadership to this community.” Radebaugh recently retired from NIST, but is continuing in a consulting role with the institute.
In introducing Ray, Peter Kittel noted that the Collins Award has been given just 13 times since 1965. He noted that Radebaugh has produced 160 publications, has served on the boards of CEC and the International Cryocoolers Conference, served as CEC Chair in 1987, conducts popular and valued Short Courses, has consulted internationally, and has hosted many students and researchers in his laboratory.
Radebaugh made these comments to CSA after receiving the award:
“I want to thank the Cryogenic Engineering Conference and the Awards Committee for selecting me for this great honor. I especially want to thank Pat Kelley, awards committee chairman, and Peter Kittel of the awards committee for the kind words you have said about me. Peter Kittel was responsible for getting us started in research on pulse tube cryocoolers when he was with NASA/Ames.
“Receiving the Sam Collins Award for our work in cryogenics is certainly a real honor for me. Sam influenced me in several ways. He was a hero to me when I was developing an air liquefier as a science fair project in my senior year in high school. I had read about his work in developing a helium liquefier, which is much more difficult than an air liquefier.
“During the next couple of years at the University of Michigan I had the pleasure of operating one of the early commercial Collins helium liquefiers for the Department of Chemistry. It was an ideal student job, because the machine’s high reliability allowed me to spend at least half of my time studying while I baby sat the liquefier between times of changing helium cylinders or transferring liquid helium out of the liquefier.
“I did have the opportunity to liquefy helium in July of last year for the 100th anniversary of the first liquefaction of helium by duplicating the last stage of Kammerlingh Onnes’ helium liquefier and using a commercial Gifford-McMahon cryocooler to do the precooling instead of liquid hydrogen. Duplicating Collin’s technique of using expansion engines would have been much more difficult. But Sam Collins was able to make this expansion process very reliable by utilizing clever thinking and keeping things simple.
“I’ve spent most of my professional career starting in 1966 striving to make cryogenic refrigeration easier and more useful. I’ve worked on dilution refrigerators, Stirling cryocoolers, and pulse tube cryocoolers with the goal of making them easier to understand, more reliable, and more efficient.
“I had the pleasure of meeting Sam Collins and benefiting from helpful discussions with this humble man on refrigeration at the Naval Research and Development Laboratory in Annapolis, not long before his death in 1984. Now to receive this Award named after Sam Collins is a real pleasure and an honor. Thank you all.”
