ALMA Groundbreaking Ceremony Presentations

Fred K. Y. Lo, NRAO Director

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the North American (NA) Executive of the ALMA Project, I welcome you to this ground breaking ceremony. Today, we are celebrating the realization of the aspirations of many astronomers for more than twenty years to build a powerful array that can let us peer into the beginning of the Universe, galaxies, stars and planets, and perhaps even life. ALMA is truly one of the cornerstones of major ground-based telescopes in the many decades to come.

In the US, the beginning of ALMA went back to 1982 when the NSF Committee on the Future of Millimeter-wave Astronomy headed by Professor Alan Barrett of MIT recommended the building of a national millimeter-wave array, called the MMA. Over the years, I remember participating in many workshops on the development of the MMA.

As a member of the NRAO Visiting Committee, I visited the Plano de Chajnantor, Pampa la Bola and Rio Frio in 1996. They were at that time potential sites for the MMA, the Large Millimeter and Sub-millimeter Array of Japan, and the Large Southern Array of Europe. I remember distinctly thinking at that time: the rational thing was for the three very similar projects to become one, but for practical and political reasons, it would never happen. Here we are today, commemorating basically the merging of the US and European projects, and we are fully expecting the final step of merging with the Japanese project in 2004. How wrong I was, but what a triumph for astronomy and international relations!

For making the North American participation in ALMA possible, I must thank the US National Science Foundation for supporting the ALMA and the Canadian National Research Council for contributing to the project. In addition, we are very honored to have both the US Ambassador Brownfield and Canadian Ambassador Giroux joining us in this ceremony.

There are many people on the NA side to recognize for bringing ALMA into reality, but I would like to mention three names. The first is Bob Dickman at the NSF. He has been the champion of ALMA within NSF for many years and continues to play an important role by serving on the ALMA Board. Second is my predecessor, Paul vanden Bout. Without his persistence for more than 15 years to get the MMA, and later ALMA, funded, his genius of forming international alliances, and many other efforts including the selection of Chajnantor as a site, we would not have ALMA today. Last but not least, AUI President Riccardo Giacconi. As ESO Director General, he signed the key international agreement with Paul vanden Bout in 1997 that led eventually to the Bilateral ALMA that we are celebrating today. Now that he has joined the NA side, he is making sure that we do not deviate from getting ALMA built on time and on budget.

As NRAO Director, I have the heavy responsibility to ensure our Observatory will do its part to get this very complex telescope array built by 2012. Of course, much of the work is borne by the NRAO ALMA Team. There are too many to name, but I would like to recognize a few key members who are here today: our ALMA Division Head, Darrel Emerson, Project Manager Marc Rafal, Project Scientist Al Wootten, AUI Vice President Pat Donahoe, Eduardo Hardy our representative in Chile, and Simon Radford who has worked on preparing the site here for almost ten years.

Finally, I would like to thank the Chilean government at all levels, our Chilean astronomy colleagues, and the citizens of Region II, all of whom so graciously allow ALMA to be built in their beautiful country.

I look forward next to the ALMA dedication ceremony in 2012 and to making my first image with the array.

Thank you very much for joining us in this celebration.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.