The Challenge of High Energy Radiation Dosimetry and Protection

What I hope I have demonstrated by these many examples is that an accelerator health physicist can make contributions in many fields of science. He can, in addition to the various operational tasks that he is charged with, support others in his laboratory. He can do this by designing shielding for new accelerators and storage rings, by consulting with experimenters on background radiation problems that they may encounter, by helping the high energy physicist select appropriate radiation sources for checking out his equipment, by providing him with low energy atomic and nuclear physics calculations, and many other ways. Most of all, he can perform and publish research using the many tools and techniques that are at his disposal at a high-energy accelerator laboratory. This he should do. I would like to end this lecture by quoting from a paper presented by Rindi at the Second International Conference on Accelerator Dosimetry and Experience that was held at Stanford University in 19698: "The health physicist working around high-energy accelerators has the advantage over identical professionals working in more conventional centers of being associated with the most advanced techniques in many scientific fields, particularly those connected with particle detection. Many of the peculiar problems they are bound to solve require the use of some of these sophisticated new techniques. Moreover, it is my opinion that it is also one of their duties to provide a linkage between the physics and the correlated technical activities that they are involved in (or look upon).