Wandering accelerators throughout my life (1)

My wanderings about accelerators started being stimulated by nuclear physics activities of the Kikuchi Laboratory in Osaka University. When the university was founded in 1931, President Nagaoka put emphasis on the nuclear physics programs and called Professor Kikuchi to establish a center of nuclear physics. Since then the laboratory successfully cultivated the new field through studies of the neutron-nucleus interactions with a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, the beta-decay study with a Cyclotron before the World-War II. Those accelerators were all home made, including the second cyclotron built after the war. Through such experimental programs, the Kikuchi Laboratory brought up many talented physicists in accelerator and nuclear science. (author)