Polarized Antiprotons - The Quest For A Missing Tool

After termination of the LEAR facility in 1996 and the restriction of the CERN antiproton program to Trap experiments, stored antiprotons at low and medium energies are no longer available for experiments. FAIR at GSI (Darmstadt) will provide intense stored antiproton beams in less than a decade from now. This has renewed the interest in polarized antiprotons originally proposed for LEAR. In August 2007, an International Workshop was organized at the Cockcroft Institute (Daresbury) and methods to polarize stored antiprotons were discussed. In June 2008, a Heraeus Seminar at the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef dealing with the same subject took place. The results of these workshops will be presented with some historical remarks and an account of the recent developments.