1986 Convocation Address

Fermiiab is full of scientists and engineers who work together with the common purpose of understanding nature, meeting difficult challenges and wisely spending a very large amount of public money. As Director of the Laboratory I sleep like a baby - I wake up every two hours and cry. The dictionary says a convocation is an assembly of scholars, summoned together for some special purpose. The tradition no doubt got started in the great English universities - last week we read of the convocation at Harvard, celebrating the 350th anniversary of that great institution - and 350 is a nice round number, conveying some feeling of great tradition. Today, we are celebrating our first convocation and one is also a very significant number