Jim Pilcher is making the transition to “Professor Emeritus” this year. And although this step is clearly “emeritization” rather than “retirement”, his colleagues and former students are holding a special all-day PilcherFest Symposium to celebrate his career and accomplishments over the last four decades.

This may be an especially auspicious year to celebrate a career that has covered almost the entire evolution and experimental verification of the “Standard Model”, and has taken major steps in measuring and establishing the quark substructure of hadrons, electroweak physics, the couplings of the W and Z bosons, quantum chromodynamics, and beyond. Jim’s group has always been at the forefront of experimental high energy physics -- from the fixed-target experiments of Fermilab, to the e+e- collisions at LEP I and LEP II, to the highest energy pp collisions at the LHC.

We invite all of Jim’s former students, postdocs, and colleagues to join us in reviewing and celebrating these many accomplishments.

Kelby Anderson (Chicago)
Ed Blucher (Chicago)
Henry Frisch (Chicago)
Frank Merritt (Chicago)
Mark Oreglia (Chicago)
Mel Shochet (Chicago)