Things I Learned From William Sampson

Bill Sampson made a succession of pivotal contributions in the multidisciplinary adventure to develop superconductors for a host of magnet applications. He contributed to the understanding of how the nano-scale supercurrents interact with the magnetic field of windings and devices, and how to control those interactions to extend the performance of magnets. His contributions included enhancements to the structure of multi-filament wires; understanding and optimizing tape-geometry conductors for high-field magnets, improved properties for AC loss and magnetization effects; methods to stabilize and protect against quenches; and coil configurations with unique benefits for the high-field magnets used in particle accelerators. Many of Sampson's contributions blazed the way for others to make innovations for hadron colliders, for medical imaging and spectroscopy, and for energy storage and transmission lines. Those causal threads are traced in the paper.