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Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science 1st Edition
National Research Council Digital Instant Download
Author(s): National Research Council; Division on Engineering and Physical
Sciences; Board on Physics and Astronomy; Solid State Sciences Committee;
Committee on Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science
ISBN(s): 9780309548472, 0309548470
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 39.42 MB
Year: 2005
Language: english
 Committee on Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science

Solid State Sciences Committee

Board on Physics and Astronomy

Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS

Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS • 500 Fifth Street, N.W. • Washington, DC 20001

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the
National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the
committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for
appropriate balance.

This study was supported by Grant No. DMR-0318562 between the National Academy of Sciences
and the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2005924159

Cover (clockwise from left): Axial MRI scan of the human brain; decoherence of electron spins near a
quantum phase transition by a nuclear spin bath, imaged by inelastic neutron scattering as a function
of magnetic field, courtesy H.M. Ronnow, Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique at Grenoble, France;
Meissner-effect levitation of a high-temperature superconductor over a rare-earth magnet, courtesy
F. Kraehenbuehl, Cables Cortaillod S.A.; ribbon representation of a large protein complex composed
of two copies of the E. coli histidine phosphocarrier protein (in green) and two copies of subunit A of
the enzyme II mannose protein (in red and blue), courtesy M. Clore and D.C. Williams, National
Institutes of Health.

Additional copies of this report are available from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street,
N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055; (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 (in the Washington
metropolitan area); Internet, http://www.nap.edu

Copyright 2005 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished
scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and
technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by
the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government
on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the National Academy of
Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National
Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its
administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences
the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also
sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research,
and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Wm. A. Wulf is president of the National
Academy of Engineering.

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services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters
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upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V.
Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to
associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering
knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies
determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the
National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the
government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is adminis-
tered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. Wm. A.
Wulf are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

www.national-academies.org

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 1939-2004

The Committee on Opportunities in

High Magnetic Field Science dedicates
this report to a dear friend and valued
colleague, Jack E. Crow. His vision,
enthusiasm, and energy helped to move
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

high magnetic field research forward, and

his strong voice helped bring it to the
attention of the nation. The committee
was honored to hear from Jack at its
December 2003 meeting at the National
High Magnetic Field Laboratory; his
words were as wise, patient, and humorous
as always. Photo courtesy of the National
High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 COMMITTEE ON OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

PETER B. MOORE, Yale University, Chair

GABRIEL AEPPLI, University College London
MEIGAN ARONSON, University of Michigan
PAUL M. CHAIKIN, Princeton University
PAUL D. ELLIS, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
PETER F. GREEN, University of Texas at Austin
DAVID C. LARBALESTIER, University of Wisconsin at Madison
J. DAVID LITSTER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOSEPH MINERVINI, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
J. MICHAEL ROWE, National Institute of Standards and Technology
JOHN M. ROWELL, Arizona State University
MANSOUR SHAYEGAN, Princeton University
ROBERT TYCKO, National Institutes of Health
VALERII VINOKUR, Argonne National Laboratory

Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Program Officer
MAUREEN MELLODY, Program Officer (August 2003-December 2003)
DAVID B. LANG, Research Assistant
PAMELA A. LEWIS, Program Associate
VAN AN, Financial Associate
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

vi

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 SOLID STATE SCIENCES COMMITTEE

MARC A. KASTNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chair

PETER F. GREEN, University of Texas at Austin, Vice Chair
DAVID D. AWSCHALOM, University of California at Santa Barbara
ANGELA M. BELCHER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ROBERT J. CAVA, Princeton University
JOHN CLARKE, University of California at Berkeley
DUANE B. DIMOS, Sandia National Laboratories
JAMES P. EISENSTEIN, California Institute of Technology
PETER C. EKLUND, Pennsylvania State University
PATRICK D. GALLAGHER, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Center for Neutron Research
SHARON C. GLOTZER, University of Michigan
BARBARA JONES, IBM Almaden Research Center
STEVEN A. KIVELSON, Stanford University
HERWIG KOGELNIK, Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies, Inc.
ANTHONY J. LEGGETT, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M. BRIAN MAPLE, University of California at San Diego
SIDNEY R. NAGEL, University of Chicago
ARTHUR P. RAMIREZ, Lucent Technologies, Inc.
A. DOUGLAS STONE, Yale University
CHRIS G. VAN DE WALLE, University of California at Santa Barbara

Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Program Officer
DAVID B. LANG, Research Assistant
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

VAN AN, Financial Associate

vii

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 BOARD ON PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

BURTON RICHTER, Stanford University, Chair

ANNEILA L. SARGENT, California Institute of Technology, Vice Chair
ELIHU ABRAHAMS, Rutgers University
JONATHAN BAGGER, Johns Hopkins University
GORDON A. BAYM, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
RONALD C. DAVIDSON, Princeton University
WILLIAM EATON, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
RAYMOND J. FONCK, University of Wisconsin at Madison
ANDREA M. GHEZ, University of California at Los Angeles
LAURA H. GREENE, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
FRANCES HELLMAN, University of California at Berkeley
ERICH P. IPPEN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MARC A. KASTNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CHRISTOPHER F. McKEE, University of California at Berkeley
JULIA M. PHILLIPS, Sandia National Laboratories
THOMAS M. THEIS, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
C. MEGAN URRY, Yale University
CARL E. WIEMAN, JILA/University of Colorado

Staff
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
TIMOTHY I. MEYER, Program Officer
BRIAN D. DEWHURST, Senior Program Associate
DAVID B. LANG, Research Assistant
PAMELA A. LEWIS, Program Associate
VAN AN, Financial Associate
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

viii

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Acknowledgment of Reviewers

T
his report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their
diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures
approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee.
The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical com-
ments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as
possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity,
evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft
manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process.
We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

Elihu Abrahams, Rutgers University,

Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Jack Bass, Michigan State University,

W.F. Brinkman, Princeton University,
Frances Hellman, University of California at Berkeley,
Franz Himpsel, University of Wisconsin at Madison,
Gottfried Landwehr, University of Wuerzburg,
M. Brian Maple, University of California at San Diego,
Peter Schiffer, Pennsylvania State University,
Gerhard Wagner, Harvard Medical School, and
Albert Zeller, National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

ix

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 x ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF REVIEWERS

We also wish to thank the following individuals for their review of the
committee’s interim letter report:

Shirley Chiang, University of California at Davis,

Linda J. (Lee) Magid, University of Tennessee at Knoxville,
Thomas Mareci, University of Florida, and
Peter Wanderer, Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive

comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or
recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release.
The review of this report was overseen by Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Appointed by the National Research Council, she was
responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was
carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review com-
ments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report
rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Acknowledgments

T
he members of the Committee on Opportunities in High Magnetic Field
Science wish to thank the nonmembers who made formal presentations at
its meetings (their names appear in Appendix D). Their presentations and
the ensuing discussions were extremely informative and had a major impact on
the committee’s deliberations. The committee also thanks those who sent in letters
and e-mail messages in response to its public request for input from the very large
community of scientists who use high-field magnets. The committee is particularly
grateful to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee both for its
hospitality when the committee met there and for its willingness to discuss with
the committee every aspect of its operations.
It would be impossible for the members of a National Research Council com-
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

mittee to produce a useful report without the help of NRC staff. Timothy Meyer
and Donald Shapero of the Board on Physics and Astronomy guided us through
the entire process. Their wise advice helped shape our report, and their hard work
ensured its timely production.

xi

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

1 INTRODUCTION 7
The Importance of Magnetism in the Modern World, 7
The Significance of High Magnetic Field Research, 8
The Task of the Committee, 9
Definition of High Magnetic Field, 10
High-Field Magnets, 10

2 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH 14

HIGHER FIELDS
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics, 15

High-Temperature Superconductivity, 18
Heavy Fermion Systems, 28
Low-Dimensional Semiconductors, 34
Organic Conductors and Superconductors, 38
Combining High Fields with X-Ray and Neutron Scattering, 40
Future Needs, 44
High-Field Facilities for Materials Research, 46
Magnetic and Ion Cyclotron Resonance: Applications of High Fields to
Biology, Chemistry, and Materials Research, 46
Introduction to NMR, 47
The Role of Field Strength in NMR, 50

xiii

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 xiv CONTENTS

Recent Developments in Solution NMR, 52

Solid-State NMR, 53
NMR in Condensed-Matter Physics, 54
Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 56
Prospects for Improvements with Still Higher Fields, 57
Strategic Considerations for Higher Field NMR, 61
Ion Cyclotron Resonance, 62
Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, 63
Importance of Ancillary Technological Development, 64
Other Scientific Uses of High-Field Magnets, 66

3 TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR 69

DEVELOPING HIGHER FIELDS
What Is the Challenge?, 69
Resistive DC Magnets, 73
Present Status, 74
Outlook for Resistive DC Magnets, 75
Pulsed Magnets, 75
Advantages and Disadvantages, 78
The Potential for Expanding the Use of Pulsed Magnets, 81
Outlook for Pulsed Magnets, 8
Superconducting Magnets, 82
Superconductors Used for Magnet Construction, 83
Economic Considerations, 84
Additional Conductor Requirements: Hirr, 85
Critical Current Densities, 88
Existing Conductor Materials, 88
Emerging Superconducting Materials, 93
Superconducting Magnet Design, 96
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Outlook for Superconducting Magnets, 98

Hybrid Magnets, 98
Design Challenges, 100
Outlook for Hybrid Magnets, 101
Coordination of Magnet Development, 102

4 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 103

Conclusions, 103
Current State and Future Prospects, 103
U.S. High-Field Efforts in the International Context, 104

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 CONTENTS xv

Promising Multidisciplinary Areas for Research and Development, 105

Major Construction Initiatives for the Coming Decade, 106
Recommendations, 106

APPENDIXES

A Nobel Prizes for Research That Used or Significantly Affected the 115
Development of High Magnetic Fields
B High-Field Magnet Facilities Around the World 116
C Glossary 138
D Meeting Agendas 147
E Input from the Community 151
F Biographies of Committee Members and Staff 154
G Tutorial on High-Temperature Superconductivity 162
H Tutorial on Frontiers in Vortex Physics 166
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Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Executive Summary

I
n response to an informal request from the National Science Foundation, the
National Research Council convened the Committee on Opportunities in High
Magnetic Field Science in mid-2003. The committee was charged with four tasks:

• Assessment of the current state and future prospects of high-field magnet

science and technology in the United States.
• Assessment of the status of U.S. high-field efforts in the international context,
and trends in the international arena.
• Identification of particularly promising multidisciplinary areas for research
and development with respect to magnetic fields.
• Discussion and prioritization of any major new initiatives in the construc-
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

tion of high-field magnets for the coming decade.

The committee focused its attention on identifying the compelling scientific

opportunities the field affords and the institutional infrastructure that would be
required to realize them. Its conclusions and recommendations follow.
A magnet is “high field” if its field strength is great enough to test the limits of
the mechanical and/or the electromagnetic properties of the materials from which
it is built. High-field magnets have been—and continue to be—used for research
in many scientific disciplines, including medicine, chemistry, and condensed-matter
physics; they are also enabling for fields such as plasma science and high-energy
physics. Research that could only have been done with such magnets has produced

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 2 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

important insights in a host of areas, ranging from brain function to high-

temperature superconductivity. High magnetic fields are of great interest in areas
such as astrophysics and magnetohydrodynamics, and high-field magnets also
play an increasingly important role in industry.
The committee’s task was to identify key scientific and technological challenges
and opportunities, not to make specific programmatic recommendations. In general,
the committee found that high magnetic field science in the United States is healthy
and broadly multidisciplinary. However, there are some important opportunities
that will be missed unless attention is paid to them soon.

Conclusion. High magnetic field science and technology are thriving in the United
States today, and the prospects are bright for future gains from high-field research.

Recent accomplishments include the development of functional magnetic

resonance imaging (MRI), which is revolutionizing neuroscience; optically pumped
magnetic resonance techniques, which allow visualization of new quantum phenomena
in semiconductors; and ion cyclotron resonance mass spectroscopy, which is
becoming an important tool for exploring the chemical composition of complex
systems. High-field research has led to the discovery of new states of matter in low-
dimensional systems. It has also provided the first indications of how high-
temperature superconductors evolve into unconventional metallic alloys in the
extreme quantum limit. Outstanding work continues to be done in the area of
magnet engineering, the discipline on which all these activities depend. There is
every reason to believe that there will be new accomplishments as interesting as
those mentioned above in the decades to come, especially if magnets are built that
deliver higher fields than those available today. For instance, pulsed fields offer the
opportunity to explore the highest magnetic fields in ways that can take research in
new directions. Additionally, advances in high-speed electronics, instrumentation,
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

and miniaturization could also allow greater experimental access to higher fields.

Conclusion. The United States is a leader in many areas of high-field science and
technology, but further investment will be required to make it competitive in some
critical areas.

There are many indicators of the strength of the U.S. effort in high magnetic
field research. For example, condensed-matter physicists and materials researchers
from other parts of the world routinely travel to the National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory (NHMFL) to perform experiments that they are unable to do at home,

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3

but U.S. scientists seldom travel abroad for that reason. An important corroborat-
ing observation can be found in the European Science Foundation’s 1998 report
The Scientific Case for a European Laboratory for 100 Tesla Science, which states that
one of the prime motivations for such a facility was “to be competitive with labo-
ratories elsewhere, particularly in the United States and Japan.”1 In addition, the
superconducting magnets being installed in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at
the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), as well as those con-
templated for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER),
depend on magnet technology developed in the United States (although the
magnets are in fact being manufactured overseas), as do the magnets installed in
several other user facilities overseas.
By way of contrast, in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which is
an important component of high-field science, the United States is competitive
but not dominant. About half of the instrumentation used by NMR spectroscopists
in the United States, and virtually all of the magnets in their spectrometers, were
manufactured abroad. Further, many of the most important recent advances in
NMR have been made overseas, and, in general, European and Japanese companies
have been ahead of U.S. companies in commercializing magnet technology
advances. Finally, Europe is far ahead of the United States in equipping its
synchrotron light sources and neutron scattering centers with instruments for
studying the x-ray- and neutron-scattering properties of materials in high magnetic
fields. It also worth noting that several key facilities in Japan have made important
contributions to the development of the technologies required for the generation
of the highest steady-state and pulsed magnetic fields.

Conclusion. High-field magnet science is intrinsically multidisciplinary.

The construction of high-field magnets has always been motivated by the

Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

science that could be done with them, and in recent decades, physics, chemistry,
biology, and medicine have all benefited from advances in magnet technology.
Even the technology of high-field magnets is cross-disciplinary. Materials science
and engineering make dominant contributions, but several branches of physics
contribute as well.

1European Science Foundation, The Scientific Case for a European Laboratory for 100 Tesla Science,
ESF Studies on Large Research Facilities in Europe, 1998. Available online at http://www.esf.org/
publication/109/100T.pdf.

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 4 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

Conclusion. U.S. scientists will be unable to access a wealth of science oppor-

tunities if high magnetic field instrumentation is not provided at the Spallation
Neutron Source and at the nation’s third-generation light sources.

The scientific opportunities that are available to those able to study the neutron
and x-ray scattering properties of materials at high magnetic fields are attracting
growing attention around the world. Certain aspects of magnetism and high-
temperature superconductivity have already been elucidated overseas at scattering
center laboratories that have high-field instrumentation. Nevertheless, the United
States does not currently plan to increase the high magnetic field instrumentation
at its national radiation laboratories. Unless steps are taken to rectify this situation,
the United States is sure to lag behind in key areas of condensed-matter and
materials physics.

Conclusion. Some important issues relevant to the advancement of magnet technology

could be more efficiently addressed if the interested constituencies would interact
more strongly, communicate more fully, and coordinate their activities better.

One striking characteristic of all the sciences that use high magnetic fields is
how constrained they are by the limitations imposed by magnet technology. Never-
theless, despite a shared need to overcome the same set of fundamental problems,
each constituency has historically tended to develop the magnets it needed without
much reference to the others. The reasons are several and obvious. The communi-
ties that use high-field magnets have different missions, and the magnets they need
are specific to the mission of each. In addition, these communities are supported
by different funding agencies, each of which has had its own perspective. A coordi-
nated approach to magnet technology based on the pooling of resources and talent
would be beneficial.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Based on these conclusions, the committee has several recommendations that

it offers, with the most important first.

Recommendation. The United States should maintain a national laboratory

that gives its scientific community access to magnets operating at the highest
possible fields.

A national high-field magnet facility is essential to the vitality of many impor-

tant scientific disciplines. NHMFL has successfully fulfilled the need for high-field
magnets for about a decade, and its activities have done much to foster the leader-

National, Research Council, et al. Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science, National Academies Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5

ship position that the United States currently enjoys in many areas of magnetic
science and technology. It is important to understand that at any high-field magnet
laboratory, the capabilities of the devices available for controlling the environment
in which a sample is tested and for measuring a sample’s properties are almost as
important as the field strengths of the magnets themselves. Thus it is vital that a
national laboratory equip its magnets with the best possible supporting instru-
mentation and personnel. In addition, ways to maximize the return on capital
invested in the national laboratory should be explored, such as longer hours of
operation and flexible scheduling. The laboratory should undertake a cost-benefit
analysis to identify the optimal balance between addressing user demand and the
increased operating costs associated with longer hours of operation. For instance,
the nation’s synchrotron light sources and neutron-scattering centers provide
access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week when in full operation; this schedule allows
visiting researchers to use their time at the facility to the best advantage. The trade-
offs for expanding access to the NHMFL need to be identified and weighed care-
fully, especially in constrained budget situations.

Recommendation. New instruments for studying the neutron and x-ray scatter-
ing properties of materials in high magnetic fields should be developed in the
United States.

Nowhere in the domestic research program is the gap between the instrumen-
tation available for experimentation at zero field and that available for high-field
experimentation wider than in the areas of neutron and x-ray scattering. This gap
in capability is unfortunate, because scattering experiments provide a powerful
means for elucidating atomic and magnetic structure, as well as for determining
the nature of the spatial and dynamical correlations in materials. Development of
new high-field capabilities at x-ray- and neutron-scattering centers in the United
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

States could have an enormous scientific impact.

Recommendation. A consortium should be established to foster the development

of magnet technology.

Rather than supporting an all-out, brute-force effort to build higher-field

magnets using current technology, it makes sense to find new approaches that will
make it easier (and cheaper) to build the magnets needed for research. Essential to
this enterprise will be the development of both resistive and superconducting
materials with improved electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties. Scientists

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 6 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

and engineers from all the communities working today on magnet technology
should be brought together: the magnet engineers at the NHMFL; academic
researchers; the magnet designers in the high-energy physics and fusion commu-
nities; commercial vendors of superconducting magnets, including nuclear
magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging systems; and manufacturers
of advanced materials, such as high-strength materials and superconducting wire.
The sharing of information and resources within the larger community, which
is now fragmented into components that communicate poorly, would accelerate
the rate at which solutions are found to the fundamental problems confronted by
all. The committee proposes that the involved communities cooperate to establish
a consortium for developing the technology necessary to pursue several aggressive
goals that may have different timescales. Some groups might frame their goals in
terms of application-specific requirements for magnet performance, such as the
development of a 30-T superconducting high-resolution magnet for NMR, a 60-T DC
hybrid magnet, or a 100-T long-pulse magnet. Others, such as the high-energy
physics and fusion science communities, might focus explicitly on the materials
problems intrinsic to enabling high-volume production of quality conductors for
a variety of magnet systems.

Recommendation. Government agencies supporting high-field magnetic reso-

nance research should directly support the development of technology and instru-
mentation for magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging.

Without the concomitant development of ancillary technologies, the construc-

tion of higher-field magnets for magnetic resonance will not produce the scientific
dividends it should. While federal funding for the application of existing tech-
nology and methods to specific scientific problems has generally been good, federal
funding for the development of novel technology and methodology has been poor.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Magnetic resonance and MRI instrument manufacturers have done a good job of
advancing the supporting technologies for these techniques when commercial
markets for their products justified their doing so. However, there are many areas
where technological advances are sorely needed but the commercial market is not
large enough to attract the attention of instrument manufacturers. For example,
optimal coils for high-field MRI will probably not be realized unless groups out-
side the commercial sector undertake a sizable research program. Likewise, because
higher fields cause significant changes in the relative strengths of the interactions
that determine how nuclear magnetic moments evolve, pulse sequences and meth-
odologies will have to be improved if magnetic resonance research is to take full
advantage of high-field magnet advances.

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 1
Introduction

THE IMPORTANCE OF MAGNETISM IN THE MODERN WORLD

B
ecause humans do not sense magnetic fields, it took a long time for the
importance of magnetism in the natural world to be appreciated. The first
magnetic device to come into wide use was the magnetic compass. It is
believed to have been invented in China around 200 B.C., but it was not fully
understood until the 19th century, when systematic investigation of magnetic
phenomena began. In 1819, H.C. Oersted discovered that electric currents engender
magnetic fields, and a few years later, M. Faraday discovered how to use magnetism
to interconvert mechanical and electrical energy—that is, how to build electric
motors and dynamos. These advances and others related to magnetism had a
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

profound impact on society.

Magnetic devices are now so deeply integrated into everyday life that the
average citizen takes most of them for granted. It is assumed that when a light
switch is turned on, a generator at some unknown location will deliver electric
power to the appropriate lightbulb. It is assumed that when the ignition switch of
an automobile is turned, an electric motor will start the car. It is assumed that
when the appropriate sequence of key strokes is made on a computer keyboard,
information will be recorded faithfully on a (magnetic) disc. About the only time
people are likely to be aware of having encountered magnet technology is when
they go to the hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Even so, they
are unlikely to realize that the drug used to treat the disease diagnosed by MRI is
itself the product of research that relied heavily on magnet technology.

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 8 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

Magnetic devices are even more important in the scientific world than they are
in everyday life. Instruments that take advantage of magnetic phenomena or that
use magnets to produce electromagnetic radiation are used in many fields, the
most spectacular being the accelerators employed in high-energy physics to study
the structure of subatomic particles. High-field magnets are used to control particle
trajectories in accelerators, and over the years, the interest of the high-energy
physics community in increasing the energies at which accelerators operate has
been a powerful driver of magnet technology.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD RESEARCH

Most of the magnetic devices important to the public do not generate high
fields, MRI being the exception. Thus it is reasonable to ask why the nation should
support high magnetic field science and technology. Before this question can be
answered, some background information must be supplied. The committee starts
by reminding the reader that there are two kinds of magnets: permanent magnets
and electromagnets.
Permanent magnets are made of substances like iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), and
nickel (Ni), the atoms of which have large magnetic moments. When those sub-
stances are in their unmagnetized states, the magnetic moments of their atoms are
randomly oriented. Magnetization is achieved by making the magnetic moments
of their constituent atoms point in the same direction, which can be done by
exposing the substances to an external magnetic field. What distinguishes a mag-
netizable substance from another substance that contains atoms with magnetic
moments is that once the magnetic moments of its atoms have become aligned,
they remain that way. Thus, a piece of iron that has been exposed briefly to a
magnetic field emerges with a net magnetic moment that persists; it has become a
permanent magnet. A compass needle is a permanent magnet, and permanent
magnets can produce fields up to about 2 T. Permanent magnets have many
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

practical uses, and the search for magnetizable materials with improved properties is
ongoing; its goals include increasing the efficiency of electrical motors and generators.
Electromagnets can be made of any material that conducts electricity, regard-
less of the magnetic properties of its atoms, and they produce magnetic fields via
the Oersted effect whenever an electric current flows through them. Electromagnets
are commonly made from coils of an electrical conductor. Since the field contributed
by each turn in a coil adds to that of its neighbors, and the field per turn increases
with electric current, the more turns in the coil and the greater the current put
through it, the stronger the magnetic field that results. All high-field magnets—
that is, magnets that generate fields substantially greater than 2 T (the limit of
permanent magnetization for iron)—are electromagnets.

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 INTRODUCTION 9

Scientists have been building electromagnets that deliver fields of ever-

increasing strength since the 19th century. Two issues have had to be confronted at
every step of the way. First, the field of an energized electromagnet exerts forces on
its own structure that increase as the square of the field strength and that will
destroy it if not contained. Second, if the electrical conductor of which the magnet
is made is resistive, as was always the case before 1960 or so, heating may also cause
it to fail. Thus, the construction of magnets that operate at high fields is, and has
always been, an engineering challenge.
The justification for building ever more powerful magnets remains today what
it was at the outset—namely, the scientific and, ultimately, the social benefits of
research done using more powerful magnets. Over the years, advances in magnet
technology have paid huge dividends, not only to those interested in the science
made accessible by increases in field strength but also to the much larger commu-
nity able to work at lower fields. The technological advances that have made it
possible to build magnets that push the field strength envelope have often made
it easier and cheaper to build magnets that produce less extreme fields.
There is every reason to believe that advances in magnet technology will be as
rewarding in the future as they were in the past. Research on the magnetic properties
of materials, particularly those that are superconducting (e.g., high-Tc and high-
field superconductors, advanced sensors), and on magnet design and construction
can have substantial economic payoffs. Electric motors and generators will operate
with improved efficiency. More efficient ways will be found to transmit electric
power over long distances. Better information storage devices will be made. On the
scientific side, improvements in magnet technology will lead to better instrumen-
tation for studying the structure and properties of materials of all kinds, at all
length scales. The benefits to the public of most of the scientific advances will be
less direct but no less real. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation support high
magnetic field research and that the state of high magnetic field science and tech-
nology in the United States be assessed periodically.1
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

THE TASK OF THE COMMITTEE

In the summer of 2003, the National Research Council established the Com-
mittee on Opportunities in High Magnetic Field Science in response to an informal
request from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The committee was charged
with (1) assessing the current state and future prospects of high-field magnetic

1 See, for example, National Research Council, High-Magnetic-Field Research and Facilities,
Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1979; and National Science Foundation, Final Report of
NSF Panel on Large Magnetic Fields, Arlington, Va., National Science Foundation, 1988.

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 10 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

science and technology in the United States, (2) assessing the current status of U.S.
high-field efforts in the international context, (3) identifying particularly promis-
ing multidisciplinary areas for research and development, and (4) reviewing major
initiatives in the construction of new high-field magnets and setting priorities for
the coming decade. In its deliberations, the committee took as its purview both the
disciplines relevant to the generation of high magnetic fields and those that would
benefit if higher fields could be generated.

DEFINITION OF HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD

The field a magnet produces is “high” if it tests the limits of the mechanical
and/or electromagnetic properties of the materials of which the magnet is made.
In many instances, the quantity that determines whether a magnet is high field is
the amount of energy stored in its field, which is proportional to the integral of the
square of its field strength over the volume affected. Thus, a magnet having a
maximum field strength around 8 T and a bore large enough to accommodate a
human being is as much a high-field magnet as the much smaller bore magnet in
a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer operating at 20 T. Some magnets
operate in a pulsed mode, which alleviates some of the constraints that limit the
fields achievable by DC magnets. “High field” in the pulsed mode is a function of
pulse duration and might be considered as starting around 60 T. (See Box 1.1 for
a list of some other magnetic field strengths.)
While this definition of high field will not help the reader decide whether a
magnet of one type operating at field x is a higher field magnet than a magnet of
anther type operating at field y, it does make clear why it is difficult to increase the
maximum field strength delivered by magnets of any given type. The materials in
a high-field magnet of any given type are, by definition, close to failure. One of the
objectives of this report is to identify those areas of magnet design and technology
where future developments are likely to enable raising the field strengths delivered
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

by high-field magnets, rendering today’s high-field magnets “conventional.” These

developments should make it cheaper to build magnets like the best we have today,
promoting their wider distribution.

HIGH-FIELD MAGNETS
As already noted, the construction of high-field magnets has always posed
engineering challenges. Solenoids generating fields of about 2 T were built in the
19th century using resistive conductors, and even at fields that low, both the
mechanical strength of the materials used and heating were issues. In the 1930s,
W.F. Giauque and F. Bitter built water-cooled magnets of novel design from

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 INTRODUCTION 11

BOX 1.1 SOME MAGNETIC FIELD STRENGTHS

• In outer space the magnetic flux density is between 10–10 T and 10–8 T.
• Earth’s magnetic field at latitude 50° is 2 × 10–5 T and at the equator (latitude of 0°),
3.1 × 10–5 T.
• The magnetic field of a horseshoe magnet is ~0.1 T.
• The magnets in clinical medical MRI spectrometers operate around 4 T; the current highest
field is 9.4 T.
• In a sunspot, the field is ~10 T.
• Strongest continuous magnetic field yet produced in a laboratory:
—About 20 T with a single superconducting magnet,
—25 T with a superconducting magnet that has a high-temperature superconducting magnet
insert (2003),
—35 T with a resistive magnet (2002), and
—45.2 T with a hybrid magnet (2003).
• Strongest (pulsed) magnetic field yet obtained nondestructively in the laboratory: 80 T (1997)
for ~10 ms.
• Strongest (pulsed) magnetic field ever achieved (with explosives) in the laboratory (Sarov,
Russia), 2,800 T.
• The field on a neutron star is 106 T to 108 T.
• Maximum theoretical field strength for a neutron star, and therefore for any known
phenomenon, is 1013 T.

resistive conductors that produced steady-state fields of about 10 T, a big advance.

Bitter magnets are still used today. Modern versions produce fields of 30-35 T.
While they are relatively inexpensive to build (tens of thousands of dollars), they
are costly to operate because of the power they consume and the cooling they
require. At fields in this range the energies stored in a magnet of useful size are so
large that mechanical failure can have dangerous consequences.
In 1911, H.K. Onnes discovered that many metals become superconducting at
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

temperatures close to 0 K. For magnet designers, superconductivity looked like a

godsend. The flow of current through the coils of a superconducting electromagnet
generates no heat because there is no resistance, so no cooling is required beyond
that needed to maintain its coils in the superconducting state. In addition, once
energized, superconducting magnets consume no power and do not have to be
connected permanently to a power supply. However, it was soon discovered that
no matter how cold they are, the metals in which superconductivity was first
demonstrated become resistive when exposed to magnetic fields much lower than
those generated by the resistive electromagnets of the day. The quenching of the
superconducting state by external magnetic fields occurs in all superconducting
materials, not just the metals studied by Onnes. What varies from one super-

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 12 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

conductor to the next is the field strength at which quenching occurs—i.e., the
critical field—and consequently the highest field the material can deliver when it is
formed into a magnet.
Only in 1961 were materials discovered that remain superconducting in fields
high enough to be interesting to magnet designers, and the use of these materials
for magnet fabrication has exploded since then. The number of superconducting
magnets operating in instruments in laboratories and hospitals around the world
is hard to estimate, but the committee was told by an industry representative that
every year manufacturers sell about 2,000 MRI instruments and roughly 500 NMR
spectrometers. These instruments contain superconducting magnets collectively
worth billions of dollars. Other arenas in which superconducting magnets are used
on a large scale are high-energy physics and fusion research. The demand for
superconducting wire suitable for high-performance magnets increased enor-
mously in response to the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at
CERN and will increase even more as construction of the International Thermo-
nuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) gets under way.
As is explained in the body of this report, the construction of magnets from
superconducting wire is a complex art. The performance of all such magnets is
limited by the properties of the superconductors from which they are made, espe-
cially their critical fields. Mechanical strength and fabricability are also vital issues.
These challenges notwithstanding, the maximum strengths of the fields produced
by superconducting magnets have gradually increased to about 25 T. Hybrid
magnets, which consist of a resistive solenoid inside a superconducting solenoid,
can deliver substantially higher DC magnetic fields (about 45 T), but of course
they continuously consume power and generate heat in their normal conducting
sections.
In 1986, materials were discovered that superconduct at temperatures up to
130 K, much higher than the highest temperature achieved by previously known
superconducting materials (about 23 K). These high-temperature superconductors
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are ceramic copper oxides, which suffer from intrinsically weak links at internal
grain boundaries, making the fabrication of magnets from them extremely difficult.
They are very interesting to magnet designers, however, because their critical fields
are far higher than those of any of the superconductors now routinely used for
magnet fabrication. The technical challenges they pose are being overcome, so the
field strengths that can be obtained from superconducting magnets are likely to
increase significantly in the next few years.
Resistive magnets can generate fields with strengths greater than about 45 T,
but only for short times. The NHMFL has magnets that generate fields of about
60 T for tenths of a second, 65 T for hundredths of a second, or about 200 T for
milliseconds. If partial or total instrument destruction can be tolerated, fields well

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 INTRODUCTION 13

above 300 T can be generated for microseconds. As the duration of the field pulse
a magnet delivers declines, however, so too does its utility as a tool for scientific
research. Consequently, the committee took the view that both the technologies
and the science associated with fields of very short duration (less than a few milli-
seconds) lie outside the scope of its inquiry.2
This report has been written for readers who have a technical background and
at least some familiarity with high magnetic field science. The committee’s deci-
sion to write at this level was made following discussions with the NSF. The body
of this report begins with an overview of the science that is being done using high-
field magnets and the science opportunities and challenges that might open up if
higher-field magnets were developed. It closes with a discussion of magnet tech-
nology that explains why the fields generated by today’s most powerful DC magnets
are less than two orders of magnitude stronger than those available to scientists in
the 19th century, and points out the opportunities that now exist for developing
more powerful magnets. This report includes several appendixes the readers may
find useful, such as descriptions of selected high-field facilities around the globe,
tutorials on advanced topics, and a glossary of common terms.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

2Most pulsed magnet techniques offering high fields of duration less than 1 ms are of the destruc-
tive variety, where the magnet is designed to explode with each use. For instance, single-turn coil
magnet devices driven by a capacitor can generate fields of 100-250 T for 4-8 µs.

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 2
Scientific Challenges and
Opportunities with Higher Fields

M
agnetic fields are powerful tools for studying the properties of matter
because they couple directly to the electronic charge and magnetic
moments of the protons, neutrons, and electrons of which matter is
made up. The properties of most materials are only weakly dependent on the
strengths of the magnetic fields to which they are exposed, and for these sub-
stances, magnetic fields can be used analytically to determine fundamental proper-
ties such as their characteristic electronic energy scales and the band structures of
metals and insulators, the placement of atoms in molecules, or even the internal
structure and dynamics of living creatures. On the other hand, in some materials
the magnetic field couples strongly and dramatically influences their properties:
for example, in quantum Hall devices, magnetic materials, and superconductors.
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

For these substances, magnetic field strength is as important a thermodynamic

parameter as temperature or pressure. Included in this category are many materials
important for the production, control, and measurement of high magnetic fields
such as high transition temperature (Tc) superconductors. As the committee argues
elsewhere, improved understanding of these superconducting materials, which
will derive in part from experiments done using state-of-the-art high-field magnets,
will lead to the construction of better magnets.
Research using high-field magnets has been remarkably fruitful in the past.1

1For additional historical context, see National Research Council, High-Magnetic-Field Research
and Facilities, Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1979; National Science Foundation, Final

14

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 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH HIGHER FIELDS 15

(See Appendix A for a list of Nobel prizes awarded for research that used or
significantly affected the development of high magnetic fields.) There is every
reason to believe that it will continue to be so, especially if the field strengths of the
magnets available to the scientific community continue to increase. In this con-
nection, it is important to note that charged particles move in circular orbits in a
magnetic field, the radius of which shrinks as the magnetic field strength increases.
Similarly, the smallest size resolved by magnetic moment or spin probes shrinks
with increasing field strength. Thus the need to study and characterize ever smaller
objects, both those that exist in nature and those fabricated artificially, will not be
satisfied unless magnets are fabricated that deliver fields of ever increasing strength
and instrumentation is developed that supports their effective use.
Paralleling the distinction made above, this chapter is divided into three
sections. It begins with a discussion of high magnetic field research in condensed-
matter and materials physics that emphasizes new phenomena that are likely to be
revealed and known phenomena that would be better understood if higher fields
were available. The chapter continues with a discussion of the impact of high-field
magnets on the disciplines of biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and physiology as
a result of their use in instruments that exploit nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
In particular, the committee highlights the impact high magnetic fields have had,
and continue to have, on the study of the solution structures of biological macro-
molecules by NMR, on solid-state NMR of biological and inorganic materials, and
on electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) of metal centers in proteins and catalysts.
The committee discusses the impact high magnetic fields have had on two forms of
magnetic resonance spectroscopy that have developed since the Richardson
report—namely, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ion cyclotron resonance
(ICR) mass spectroscopy. In all these areas, magnets that operate at higher fields
than those available today would yield large scientific dividends.

CONDENSED-MATTER AND MATERIALS PHYSICS

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High-field research in materials science is intrinsically multidisciplinary, merging

ideas from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, and integrating both
theory and experiment. It is pursued predominantly by condensed-matter physi-
cists, the largest subfield within physics today. Materials science, the dominant
activity at the world’s high magnetic field laboratories, utilizes techniques as diverse
as thermal and electrical transport, thermodynamic characterization, magnetiza-
tion, optical spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance. Many classes of materials are

Report of NSF Panel on Large Magnetic Fields, Arlington, Va., National Science Foundation, 1988
(also known as the Richardson report).

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 16 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

investigated, and measurements are done over a wide range of temperatures,

pressures, and magnetic fields.
In the 1920s, when high magnetic fields first became available in Europe, they
were used initially to investigate simple metals and, later, semiconductors. This
work resulted in the first experimental determinations of how individual electrons
behave in solids and was extremely influential in the development of the theory of
solids between 1930 and 1950. Among the many successes of this synergistic enter-
prise must be counted the first microscopic explanations of how electrical and
thermal transport occur in metals and insulators, and why certain metals become
magnetic. This work led ultimately to the development of the science that enabled
invention of the first solid-state electronic device, the semiconductor transistor.2 It
would be hard to overstate the impact of these developments on the economies of
the industrialized nations in the second half of the 20th century.
Electronic correlations are at the intellectual heart of modern condensed-
matter physics. Interactions within populations of electrons lead to emergent
collective properties that transcend those of individual electrons, such as super-
conductivity, magnetic order, and even the formation of the electronic gaps that
distinguish metals from insulators. These properties reflect a balance of interactions
among the electrons in a population and are strongly affected by differences in
dimensionality, crystal symmetry, the spin of constituent atoms, and chemical
bonding. Research on correlated-electron systems deals with issues ranging from
the most fundamental (e.g., determination of the mechanism responsible for high-
transition-temperature superconductivity in copper oxide layered compounds) to
the most highly applied (e.g., learning how to control the microstructure of
materials so that high-Tc superconductors with the highest possible critical fields
can be produced for superconducting magnet construction).
Historically, this field has been constantly refreshed and reinvigorated by the
discovery of new materials, such as copper oxide superconductors, heavy fermion
magnets and superconductors, organic conductors, and nanoscopic materials such
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

as fullerenes. It has also benefited tremendously from the availability of low-

dimensional semiconductor structures of improved quality and purity. As was the
case for the noninteracting electron science of the early 1900s, experimental dis-
coveries in this field have had a significant impact on the development of theoretical
understanding, which in turn has led to fruitful suggestions about new directions
to pursue in materials development. In the past three decades, eight Nobel prizes
have been awarded for work in this field (2003, 1998, 1996, 1987, 1985, 1977, 1972,

2Indeed, it was a combination of cyclotron resonance and the Hall and de Haas–van Alphen
effects that helped characterize the electron transport properties of solids that enabled these inventions.

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 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH HIGHER FIELDS 17

1970), most recently in 2003 to A. Abrikosov, V. Ginzburg, and A. Leggett for their
work on superconductivity and superfluidity. High magnetic field research in
advanced semiconductor structures in particular led to the discovery of the integer
and fractional quantum Hall effects, resulting in the physics Nobel prizes awarded
to K. von Klitzing in 1985 and to R. Laughlin, H. Stormer, and D. Tsui in 1998.
In addition to its intellectual importance, research in correlated-electron sys-
tems has already led to numerous technological advances, such as improvements
in the sensitivity of the magnetic read heads used for information storage, which
depend on the giant magnetoresistance of hybrid magnetic/metallic systems, and
the improvements in communication that have resulted from the superior signal-
to-noise ratios and interference rejection of high-Tc superconductor filters. The
economic promise of this research area is enormous. Improvement in the proper-
ties of permanent magnets would impact both the efficiency of electric motors and
the density and reliability of magnetic storage media. The quest to understand
materials that become superconducting at high temperatures and to discover new
materials that superconduct at even higher temperatures has already had important
practical results. Improvements in magnetic field sensors and in key electronic
components have resulted, as well as the development of high-field inserts for
superconducting magnets, which will soon be used for research but may also have
bioimaging applications. While currently only at the demonstration stage, super-
conducting power cables could have a huge economic and environmental impact
by reducing power losses in electric transmission networks. Finally, electronic
correlations induced by the collapse of metallic screening and finite size effects
become increasingly important as the size of electronic components decreases.
The trend toward miniaturization has naturally led to an increased interest in
nanoscale devices that have novel electronic properties because the devices
combine superconducting and magnetic components with more conventional
semiconducting components.3 In every case, progress will be linked to the discovery of
materials with improved collective properties.
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Understanding how electronic correlations are manifested in the macroscopic

behavior of correlated-electron materials is key to the rational design of future
generations of advanced materials. This task will require the skills of both experi-
mentalists and theorists from a broad range of disciplines and will need the most
advanced tools and techniques. The next section outlines the most important
classes of correlated-electron materials and highlights the role high-field measure-

3Parallel advances in the speed and miniaturization of electronics have allowed greater exploita-
tion of high fields by enabling experiments in the compact, transient environments offered by
pulsed-field magnets.

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 18 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

ments play in developing our understanding of them at both the fundamental and
the technological level.
Superconductors, heavy fermion compounds, and organic molecular metals
are classes of complex materials in which magnetic, electronic, and structural
properties are strongly related. When temperature, pressure, and doping are varied,
the existence of multiple phases is often revealed. Paramagnetic, long-range,
magnetically ordered, and superconducting phases are seen, which sometimes
coexist. In high-Tc superconductors, the reference scale is the transition tempera-
ture Tc. In heavy fermion systems, it is the single-impurity Kondo temperature
that competes with intersite magnetic couplings, while in organic conductors it is
the coupling between chains or planes that often governs other properties.

High-Temperature Superconductivity
The discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in La2-xBaxCuO4
ceramics by J. Bednorz and K. Muller in 1986 inaugurated a new era in solid-state
physics. Within the next 6 years, the family of high-temperature superconductors
had expanded to include Y-, Bi-, Tl-, and Hg-based systems with maximum Tc
ranging from 90 to 130 K, respectively, and more than 10,000 scientific papers had
been published. Thus in the last decade of the 20th century, high-temperature
superconductivity emerged as a major area in physics. Experiments done at high
magnetic fields have contributed much to the characterization and elucidation of
high-temperature superconductivity and indeed have revealed many of its more
remarkable features.
Why is high-temperature superconductivity so important, or, more precisely,
why do so many condensed-matter physicists choose to work on this subject? Both
fundamental and practical considerations come into play. On the fundamental
side, the essence of the challenge is to solve the strong correlation problem. What
happens when the electrons in a metal can no longer be described using the
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

noninteracting electron paradigm, L.D. Landau’s theory of Fermi liquids? How do

electron-electron interactions change a half-filled band, which Landau’s Fermi
liquid theory indicates should make an excellent metal, into an insulating anti-
ferromagnet?
Nevertheless, the great theoretical challenges presented by the strong correla-
tion problem do not in themselves explain the high level of international activity in
this area. There is an additional ingredient—namely, the prospect that we might
someday be able to make superconductors that work at room temperature and
above. The idea of practical, room-temperature superconductors, with their dis-
tinctly quantum mechanical properties, such as the Meissner and Josephson effects,
is tantalizing. What we now know about the mechanism of superconductivity in

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 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH HIGHER FIELDS 19

the materials being investigated, which necessarily arises from Coulomb interactions
and quantum statistics, suggests that transition temperatures of several hundred
kelvin might be possible. It is this combination of fundamental theoretical impor-
tance and exciting practical potential that drives the field.

Avenues of Research
All high-temperature superconductors share a key feature that appears to be
responsible for their high-temperature superconductivity: the presence of planes
containing Cu and O atoms separated by bridging materials that act as charge
reservoirs for those planes. These materials become superconducting at tempera-
tures significantly higher than those of the previously known highest-Tc com-
pounds, which are now called low-temperature superconductors: Nb compounds,
for instance, have a maximum Tc around 23 K. High-Tc materials also have
extraordinarily high upper critical magnetic fields (Hc2)—for example, 170 T for
the widely studied YBCO and maybe 500 T for bismuth- and thallium-based com-
pounds. On the one hand, the high critical fields of these materials make them
attractive as conductors for use in high-field magnets, but on the other, their high
critical fields are a serious barrier to their full characterization. The critical fields of
many of these materials are so high that their normal (nonsuperconducting) states
cannot be studied using even the most powerful magnets available today.4
Superconductivity in conventional materials is explained by a theory proposed
by J. Bardeen, L. Cooper, and R. Schrieffer (BCS theory) and is understood to
result from an interaction between electrons and phonons that causes an effective
attraction between the electrons, allowing them to pair up. When a conventional
superconductor becomes superconducting, the transition to this new, paired state
causes a reduction in the potential energy of its charge carriers and a slight increase
in their kinetic energy. The net amount of energy released is defined as the con-
densation energy. In many materials, the electron pairs that result have a fully
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

symmetric internal symmetry, which is a natural consequence of phonon-mediated

pairing. In the cuprate high transition temperature superconductors, condensed
pairs have a different symmetry, which is indicative of an entirely different pairing
mechanism.5 Thus models for superconductivity in these materials propose a dif-
ferent “glue” for binding carriers together.

4That is, studies of the normal state at relatively low temperature; even the HTS materials available
today with the highest Tc are not superconducting at room temperature.
5The working fluid of superconductors consists of pairs of electrons (or pairs of the holes left
behind in a crystal when an electron moves somewhere else). These Cooper pairs form a coherent
state with specific symmetry properties.

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 20 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

There are several reasons for the extraordinary focus on high-temperature

superconducting (HTS) materials in recent years: their intrinsic scientific interest;
the cross-disciplinary nature of the field, which reaches across boundaries that
often divide materials scientists and chemists from experimental and theoretical
physicists; the potential applications of materials that superconduct at tempera-
tures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K); and, finally, the possibility
of finding a superconductor that has a critical temperature above room tempera-
ture. Applications for HTS materials include filters for cellular phone systems;
superconducting transmission lines, generators, motors, transformers, and fault
current limiters; higher field MRI instruments and NMR spectrometers; micro-
wave systems; and (of course) magnetically levitated transportation systems.
The scientific challenge posed by HTS materials is more fundamental than
simply understanding why they superconduct. The oxide high-Tc superconductors
are a family of materials in which even the properties of the normal state are not as
well understood as they are for metals like aluminum, lead, or niobium. The
identities of the carriers of charge and spin—that is, the HTS equivalents of the
electrons and holes in metals, semiconductors, and low-temperature super-
conductors—are still being debated. Thus one of the key challenges posed by these
materials is understanding the physics of their normal states, either at tempera-
tures above Tc or at fields high enough to quench their superconducting states.
Since the low-temperature/high-field regime is inaccessible for many of these com-
pounds because current magnets do not deliver fields high enough, most measure-
ments of the HTS normal state have been done above Tc. This approach is often
unsatisfactory because thermal energies are so large at those temperatures that the
details of the physical phenomena of interest are obscured by thermal fluctuations.6
The competing phases of magnetism and superconductivity that exist in HTS
materials are illustrated in the phase diagram provided in Figure 2.1. As the carrier
doping (number of holes) is increased in these materials (usually by raising the
oxygen content), they are transformed from an antiferromagnetic insulator into a
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

metallic superconductor that has a Tc that is also dependent on carrier concentra-

tion and peaks at a level termed “optimal doping.” While this behavior has been
understood for some time now, more recently a pseudo-gap regime has been
added to the phase diagram. It is believed that in this range of doping and

6Note that transition temperature is not the only driving parameter. One might think that research
in the low-temperature/high-field limit might best be done with HTS materials that have low transi-
tion temperatures. This is not necessarily so, because these materials are often less amenable to
analysis using techniques such as photoemission and optical spectroscopy. Finally, sample purities
for the different families of cuprate HTS compounds can vary widely.

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 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH HIGHER FIELDS 21

non-Fermi liquid
Temperature

antiferromagnetic

pseudogap

Fermi liquid
Tc

superconducting

0 0.2
Degree of doping

FIGURE 2.1 Generic phase diagram for CuO2 (cuprate) superconductors, showing temperature ver-
sus doping concentration (the latter variable maps onto the order parameter for the material). The
properties of the cuprates vary with temperature (y axis) and the doping per unit cell of CuO2 (x axis).
Theorists are unable to explain why the superconducting transition temperature (thick black line) is so
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

high in the cuprates. However, if they could understand the behavior of the cuprates in the pseudogap
region (blue), they might be able to explain high-temperature superconductivity.

temperature (above Tc), the carriers are paired but the pairs do not yet form a
superconducting state.
As described in greater detail below, research using high magnetic fields has
been critical to uncovering the secrets of high-temperature superconductivity. It is
expected that high magnetic fields will continue to be essential as understanding of
this phenomenon grows and potential applications are realized.

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 22 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

Although the primary goal of HTS research is to understand the origin of the
superconducting state in materials with the highest transition temperatures, much
can be learned from the study of HTS materials with lower transition tempera-
tures, because there is every reason to believe that the underlying physics is the
same in all of them. The most promising material of this kind is YBa2Cu3O7-x
(x ≈ 0.5, Tc ~60 K). It has approximately the same transition width, and the same
level of intrinsic disorder as optimally doped YBa2Cu3O7-x (x ≈ 0.05, Tc ~92 K).
The lower-Tc form has a lower carrier concentration, which should make it an
easier material in which to observe quantum oscillations and cyclotron resonance.
These phenomena can be used to characterize the shape of the Fermi surface in the
normal state and to yield the effective masses of the carriers at the Fermi energy.
Experiments with YBa2Cu3O6.5 in the normal state have additional advantages; the
temperature can be stabilized using liquid nitrogen (~77 K).
It is fundamentally important to understand the behavior of the upper critical
field, Hc2, of HTS materials as a function of temperature, which is why determination
of the Hc2 of HTS materials at low temperatures has become an important issue in
HTS research. So far most studies have been limited to fields less than 20 T, which are
well below the zero-temperature values of Hc2 (~100 T). In addition, high magnetic
fields may prove invaluable in revealing the nature of the pseudo gap in high-
temperature superconductivity, a potential key to understanding the microscopic
mechanism of the HTS state. These experiments will require very high magnetic
fields—around 100 T—and at lower temperatures, even higher fields may be required.
High magnetic fields (>35-40 T) are a requirement for studying the H-T (magnetic
field and temperature) phase diagram of the recently discovered two-gap super-
conductor MgB2. (For more discussion of MgB2, please see the section “Emerging
Superconducting Materials” in Chapter 3.) The superconducting energy gap is
essentially the energy needed to break the Cooper pairs apart: It also determines
the thermodynamic properties of the material and is directly related to the super-
conducting transition temperature. Most superconductors have just one energy
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

gap, but experiments suggest that magnesium diboride (MgB2) has two. The gaps
correspond to transition temperatures of 15 K and 45 K and combine to give an
overall transition temperature of 39 K. A spectacular increase in the upper critical
field of MgB2 was achieved recently by selective alloying of s and p bands with
nonmagnetic impurities. Hc2(0) values have increased tenfold: from 3 to 5 T for
single crystals to 35 T for H||c and to 50 T for H||ab for dirty MgB2 samples. These
advances offer an exciting opportunity for studying the novel physics of two-gap
superconductivity, nonequilibrium interband phase textures, and vortex dynamics
and pinning at high magnetic fields greater than 50 T. Because such studies require
sweeps of magnetic field strength, extended averaging times for sensitive measure-
ments, and carefully controlled conditions so that samples can be compared,
steady-state fields are generally required.

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 SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH HIGHER FIELDS 23

Opportunities in Vortex Physics

Work on the mechanisms of superconductivity, particularly high-temperature
superconductivity, has revealed a rich new scientific landscape. One of the impor-
tant areas opened up by these activities, vortex physics, is described here in some
detail because of its intellectual vitality.
There are two classes of superconducting materials: Type I and Type II. Type I
superconductors correspond loosely to the pure element low-temperature super-
conducting (LTS) materials Hg, Sn, and Pb, in which superconductivity was first
discovered. External magnetic fields are fully excluded from the bulk of Type I
superconductors by surface currents flowing within the London penetration depth,
and the critical fields at which superconductivity is lost (quenched) are very low,
less than 0.1 T, which is why Type I superconductors have few commercial appli-
cations. Type II materials have much higher critical fields because they enter a
mixed state at a lower critical field Hc1 of ~0.01 T (see Figure 2.2). Above Hc1,
Abrikosov vortices form, which consist of flux tubes containing a quantum of flux
φ0 = 2 × 10–15 Wb. Each field filament is encircled by a supercurrent flowing to a
depth equal to the London penetration depth. The centers of these vortices can be
viewed as normal cores where the superconducting order parameter is suppressed.
When a current is driven through the material, the flux lines experience a Lorentz
force that tends to push them perpendicular to the current. If they so move, the
process is dissipative and introduces resistance. This phenomenon is well under-
stood, but exactly how magnetic fields penetrate into superconductors, how the
flux lines move, and how they interact with defects in the material are not well
known. The flux lines can also repel each other, so flux flow is a complex, many-
body effect. We are now coming to understand that flux flow is like other dissipative
effects such as earthquakes and avalanches, and the physics of vortex motion has
many parallels to other areas of physics.
This quantized flux-tube state was first conceived of by A. Abrikosov to
describe the situation that occurs when the superconducting coherence length ξ is
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

much shorter than the penetration depth λ. He found that the vortex state was
both quantized and characterized by a lattice structure, the existence of which was
subsequently confirmed by neutron diffraction, magnetic decoration, and
magneto-optical and transmission electron microscopy experiments. A particular
curiosity of Type II superconductors is that the interface energy between their
normal and superconducting regions is negative, making fine-scale subdivision of
the vortex state energetically favorable. The vortex density depends on magnetic
field as (φ0/B)0.5. Bulk superconductivity is destroyed when the normal cores of the
flux tubes in a material overlap, which occurs at a field Hc2 of φ0/2πξ2. Hc2 values
can be remarkably high. For LTS materials such as Nb-Ti or Nb3Sn, the values are

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 24 OPPORTUNITIES IN HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD SCIENCE

NORMAL STATE

Hc2
Magnetic Field

MIXED STATE

Hc1

MEISSNER STATE

Temperature Tc
Copyright © 2005. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

FIGURE 2.2 Phase diagram for penetration of the magnetic field into a Type II superconductor. The
green mixed-state region is where Abrikosov vortices are formed and vortex physics comes into play.

about 15 T and 30 T, respectively, but for cuprate superconductors with high Tc,
Hc2 can exceed 100 T.
LTS and HTS Type II superconductors differ in the degree of interaction
among the vortices with each other and with defects in the material; HTS materials
offer a much richer spectrum of physics. In the essentially isotropic LTS (Type II)
metallic superconductors, vortices are line objects with significant line tension and
are thus effectively pinned by even dilute microstructural defect arrays, provided

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Exploring the Variety of Random
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holy water, and victory was assured. If all assaults of the devil were
so straightforward and so vincible, the path to Heaven were broad
and smooth indeed.
It was, perhaps, the popular sense of victorious ability against her
spells which protected the witch, _per se_, against over-severe
persecution until towards the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Absolute confidence in the power to suppress an evil diminishes the
urgency for its suppression. Here and there a witch was executed,
local persecutions of inconsiderable extent occurred, but for general
holocausts we must wait until the more enlightened times of a James
I. or a Louis XIV. The witch of the Dark Ages might count upon a life
of comparative security, sweetened by the offerings of those who,
pining for present joys, acted upon the advice of Omar Khayyam
rather than following that of their ghostly advisers. Meanwhile,
however, a mass of tradition and precedent was growing up, to be
put to deadly purpose in the animadversions of learned sixteenth
and seventeenth century writers upon the vile and damnable sin of
witchcraft.
By the eleventh century the witch was firmly identified, in the popular
as well as the ecclesiastical mind, as a woman who had entered
upon a compact with Satan for the overthrowing of Christ's kingdom.
The popular conception of her personality had also undergone a
change. By the twelfth century there was no more question of her as
a fair enchantress—she was grown older and uglier, poorer and
meaner, showing none of the advantages her compact with the Evil
One might have been expected to bring in its train.
The increasing tendency towards dabbling in things forbidden
brought about greater severity in its repression, but it was not until
the days of Innocent VIII., when witchcraft was officially identified
with heresy, that the period of cruel persecution may be said really to
have begun. Sorcery in itself was bad enough; associated with
heresy no crime was so pernicious and no punishment too condign,
especially when inflicted by the Holy Inquisition. The inquisitorial
power was frequently misused; the fact that the possessions of the
accused became forfeit to her judges when tried in an ecclesiastical
court may seem to the sceptic to provide ample reason why the
ecclesiastical authorities undertook so many more prosecutions than
did the civil. But of the absolute sincerity with which all classes set
themselves to stamp out so dreadful a crime, the portentous and
voluminous writings of the period leave no doubt whatever. Catholic
and, after the Reformation, Protestant, rich and poor, patriot and
philanthropist alike, vied with each other in the enthusiasm with
which they scented out their prey, and the pious satisfaction with
which they tortured helpless old women to the last extremity in the
name of the All-Merciful.
From the fourteenth century onwards the type of recognised witch
varies only in detail. Though not invariably she is commonly the
conventional hag. If young, she has been led astray by a senior, or
taken to the Sabbath in childhood under constraint—which was not,
however, regarded as a valid defence in time of trial. Many such
were executed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in many
cases mere children. But it was the toothless hag whose mumblings
held the public ear and became acknowledged as the truest type.
Even when men ceased to fear her she lost nothing of her grotesque
hideousness to the childish mind, and as such has become finally
enshrined in the nursery lore of Europe. As such, also, I have
endeavoured to reconstruct her in her habit as she lived in the eyes
of her mediæval contemporaries elsewhere in this volume.

CHAPTER IV
THE HALF-WAY WORLDS.
Having decided, very early in his earthly career, to acknowledge a
supernatural world, Man promptly set to work to people it after his
own image. One not providing scope for his quickening imagination,
he added another to it, supplementing the heavenly by the infernal,
good by evil—if, indeed, as is more probable, he did not rather
deduce good out of evil. But just as there are many stages between
high noon and midnight, so to the world he saw and those he
imagined he added yet others which should act as their connecting
links. Between the divine and the human he placed the semi-divine,
between the human and the infernal the half-human. He mated God
with Man and both with Devil, and dowered them with a numerous
family, God-Man, Man-Devil, God-Devil, and so on, until the
possibilities of his earlier imagination were exhausted. Each has his
own world—and the stars cannot rival them in number; each world
has its cities and its nations, differing in all things save one—that all
alike feel, act, think, after the manner of mankind. So is it, again, with
the other universe of half-way worlds, filling the space between the
human and the bestial—centaur, satyr, were-wolf, or mermaid, all
alike reflect the human imagination that has evolved them—to
nondescript bodies they unite the reflected mind of man.
Conforming to the general rule, the witch is but one dweller in a half-
way world that is thickly populated and in itself forms one of an
intricate star-group. Externally at least, its orbit nearly coincides with
that of our human world, in that its inhabitants are for the most part
of human origins acquiring those attributes which raise them above
—or degrade them below—the commonalty subsequently to their
birth. This not invariably—nothing is invariable to the imagination.
Thus the fairies, although not human beings, may yet be witches—
demons also, unless many grave and reverend authorities lie. Under
certain conditions they may even become human beings, as
mermaids may—many a man has married a fairy wife—and it is an
open question whether they have altogether lost their hope of
Heaven, as witches invariably have. As witches, they must be
regarded as belonging to the White, or beneficent, type; for although,
as Mercutio has told us, they may sometimes play unkind pranks
upon the idle or undeserving, they have always a kindly eye for the
virtuous, and frequently devote themselves altogether to good works,
as in the case of Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, and others equally difficult to
catalogue. For the more we investigate the various orbits of the half-
way worlds, the more do we find them inextricably interwoven. The
Western Fairy or Oriental Djinn may partake of half-a-hundred
different natures—may pervade half the imaginative universe—and
as does the Fairy, so does the Witch. Hecate, a goddess, was yet no
less notorious a witch than was Mother Shipton, a human being of
no elevated rank. The were-wolf, though usually of human
parentage, might yet have been born a wolf and obtained the power
of taking human shape from some subsequent external cause. The
Beast in the fairy story, though at heart a youthful Prince of
considerable attractions, once transmogrified might have remained a
Beast for good and all but for his fortunate encounter with Beauty's
father. Who shall say exactly in which world to place, how to class
beyond possibility of confusion, Circe—witch, goddess, and woman,
and the men she turned to swine—or the fairies and mermaids who
have, usually for love, divested themselves of their extra-human
attributes and become more or less permanently women—or those
human children who, stolen by the fairies, have become fairies for
good and all—or how distinguish between all of these and the ladies
with romantic names and uncertain aspirates who deal out destinies
in modern Bond Street.
Even if we agree to confine the witch to the narrowest limits, to
regard her, that is to say, as primarily a human being and only
incidentally possessed of superhuman powers and attributes, there
still remain many difficulties in the way of exact classification. Her
powers are varied, and by no means always common to every
individual. Or, again, she has the power to turn herself corporeally
into a wolf or a cat—which brings her into line with the were-wolf, just
as the cat or wolf may under certain circumstances transform
themselves, permanently or otherwise, into a human witch. She may
acquire the mind of a wolf without its body; on the other hand, many
a beautiful princess has been transformed into a white doe by
witchcraft. So with her male colleagues—sorcerer, magician, wizard,
warlock, male-witch, diviner, and the rest of the great family. We may
reach firm ground by agreeing to recognise only such as are of
human origin, though by so doing we rule out many of the most
eminent—the great Merlin himself among them. But even so, it is
impossible to dogmatise as to where the one begins, the other ends.
There have been many male-witches—more particularly in Scotland
—as distinguished from wizards. Wizard and warlock again, if it be
safe to regard them as distinct species, though differing from
magician and sorcerer, are yet very difficult of disentanglement. The
position is complicated by the fact that, just as a man may be clerk,
singer, cricketer, forger, philanthropist, and stamp-collector at one
and the same time, so might one professor of the Black Art take half
a dozen shapes at the same time or spread over his career.
There is indeed but one pinnacle of solid rock jutting out from the
great quagmire of shifting uncertainty—witch, wizard, were-wolf, or
whatsoever their sub-division—one and all unite in one great
certainty: that of inevitable damnation. Whatever their form, however
divergent their powers, to that one conclusion they must come at
last. And thus, and only thus, we may know them—posthumously.
It is true that certain arbitrary lines may be drawn to localise the
witch proper, even though the rules be chiefly made up of
exceptions. Thus she is, for the most part, feminine. The Scots male-
witch, and those elsewhere occurrent in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, might as correctly be termed wizards or
warlocks, for any absolute proof to the contrary. The witch, again,
has seldom risen to such heights in the profession as have her male
competitors. The magician belongs, as we have seen, to a later
stage of human development than does the witch, but, once evolved,
he soon left her far behind; it is true that he was able to avail himself
of the store of knowledge by her so slowly and painfully acquired.
With its aid he soon raised himself to the highest rank in the
profession—approaching it from the scientific standpoint, and leaving
her to muddle along empirically and by rule of thumb. Nor was he
content until he had made himself master of the Devil—using Satan
and all his imps for his own private ends—while the less enterprising
witch never rose to be more than the Devil's servant, or at best his
humble partner in ill-doing.
The Magician, whatsoever his own private failings, has certainly
deserved well of posterity. Just as the quack and the Bond Street
sybil are representatives of the witch in the direct line, so, from the
alchemist and the sorcerer are descended the great scientists of our
own day—an impious brood indeed, who deny that their own father
was aught but an impostor and a charlatan. The proprietor of, let us
say, "Dr. Parabole's Pellets," is own brother—illegitimate though he
be—to the discoverer of the Röntgen ray. The researches of the old-
time sorcerer into the Forbidden, whatever their immediate profit, at
least pointed out the direction for more profitable researches. Merlin,
Cornelius Agrippa, or Albertus Magnus, had they been born in our
day, would certainly have achieved the Fellowship of the Royal
Society—and with good reason. It is to the search after the
philosopher's stone and the elixir vitæ that we owe the discovery of
radium. It was only by calling in the aid of the Devil that mankind
acquired the prescience of a God.
The witch proper, on the other hand, did not trouble herself with
research work. Having attained that dominion over her fellows dear
to the heart of woman, she was content to rest upon her laurels.
Certain incantations or charms, learned by rote, the understanding of
the effect and cure of certain poisons—these were sufficient stock-in-
trade to convince her neighbours, and perhaps herself. Doubtless Dr.
Parabole, however aware in the beginning of the worthlessness of
his own pills, comes after years of strenuous advertising to believe in
them. He may stop short of taking them himself—at least he will
prescribe them to his dearest friend in absolute good faith. So with
the witch, his grandmother. Many, no doubt, of the millions offered up
as sacrifice to the All-Merciful, were guiltless even in intention; many
more allowed themselves to be convinced of their own sinfulness by
the suspicions of their neighbours or the strenuous arguments of
their judge-persecutors; many were hysterical, epileptic, or insane.
But the larger proportion, it is scarcely too much to say, only lacked
the power while cherishing the intention—witches they were in
everything but witchcraft.
We thus may briefly state the difference between the witch and the
magician as that the one professed powers in which she might
herself believe or not believe, inherited or received by her, and by
her passed on to her successors without any attempt to augment
them. The magician, on the other hand, was actually a student of the
mysteries he professed, and thus, if we leave aside his professional
hocus-pocus devilry, cannot be considered as altogether an
impostor. With the alchemist and the astrologer, more often than not
combining the three characters in his one person, he stands at the
head of the profession of which the witch—male or female—brings
up the rear. Another distinction is drawn by sixteenth-century
authorities between witches and conjurers on the one side, and
sorcerers and enchanters on the other—in that while the two first-
mentioned have personal relations with the Devil, their colleagues
deal only in medicines and charms, without, of necessity, calling up
apparitions at all. It is to be noted in this connection that the sorcerer
often leads Devil and devilkin by the nose, in more senses than one
—devils having extremely delicate noses, and being thus easily
soothed and enticed by fumigations, a peculiarity of which every
competent sorcerer avails himself. Thus, Saint Dunstan, and those
other saints of whom it is recorded that they literally led the Devil by
the nose, using red-hot pincers for the purpose, were but following
the path pointed out for them by professors of the Art Magical.
Between the witch and the conjurer a wide gulf is fixed. The conjurer
coerces the Devil, against his infernal will, by prayers and the
invocation of God's Holy Name; the witch concludes with him a
business agreement, bartering her body, soul, and obedience for
certain more or less illusory promises. The conjurer is almost
invariably beneficent, the witch usually malignant, though the White
Witch exercises her powers only for good, if sometimes with a
certain mischievousness, while the Grey Witch does good or evil as
the fancy takes her, with a certain bias towards evil. The wizard,
again, though often confused with the male-witch, is in reality a
practitioner of great distinction, possessing supernatural powers of
his own attaining, and, like the magician, constraining the Devil
rather than serving him. He also is capable of useful public service,
so much so indeed that Melton, in his "Astrologastra," published in
1620, includes what may pass as a Post Office Directory of the
wizards of London. He enumerates six of importance, some by
name, as Dr. Forman or "Young Master Olive in Turnbull Street,"
others by vaguer designations, as "the cunning man of the Bankside"
or "the chirurgeon with the bag-pipe cheek." He includes one woman
in the list, probably a White Witch.
The Diviners, or peerers into the future, form yet another sub-section
of dabblers in the supernatural—and one which numbers very many
practitioners even in our own day. Naturally enough, seeing that the
desire to influence the future is the obvious corollary to that of
knowing it, the part of diviner was more often than not doubled with
that of witch or sorcerer. Divination is an art of the most complicated,
boasting almost as many branches as medicine itself, each with its
select band of practitioners. Different nations, again, favoured
different methods of divining—thus the Hebrews placed most
confidence in Urim and Thummim; the Greeks were famous for
axinomancy, the machinery for which consisted of an axe poised
upon a slate or otherwise handled. This method was as apt for
present as for future needs, being especially potent in the discovery
of criminals. Crime detection by divination has been—and remains—
greatly favoured in the East. The Hindus, in particular, place greater
reliance upon it than upon the more usual methods of our Occidental
police, and many stories are told of the successes achieved by their
practitioners. Nor is this surprising in cases where the diviner shows
such shrewd knowledge of human nature as in that, oft-quoted,
whereby all those under suspicion of a theft are ranged in a row and
presented with mouthfuls of grain, with the assurance that the guilty
man alone will be unable to swallow it—a phenomenon which nearly
always does occur if the thief be among those present—and not
infrequently when he is not! This and similar stories, though scarcely
falling under the heading of divination proper, are so far pertinent to
the subject that they suggest the explanation of many of its more
remarkable successes. Tell a nervous man that he is destined to
commit suicide upon a certain day, and, granted that he has any faith
in your prophetic powers, the odds are that he will prove the
correctness of your prophecy. We may compare with this the
powerful influence of "tapu" upon the South Sea Island mind. Many
natives have died—as has been vouched for by hundreds of credit-
worthy witnesses—for no more tangible reason than fear at having
incurred the curse of desecrating something placed under its
protection. It may be added that the Islanders, observing that white
men do not suffer the same fate, account for it by declaring that the
White Man's Gods, being of a different persuasion from their own,
protect their own votaries.
Divination proper takes almost innumerable forms. Without entering
too closely upon a wide subject, a few examples may be profitably
quoted. Among the best known are Belomancy, or divination by the
flight of arrows, a form much favoured by the Arabs; Bibliomancy (of
which the "Sortes Virgilianæ" is the most familiar example);
Oneiromancy (or divination by dreams, honoured by Archbishop
Laud and Lord Bacon among others); Rhabdomancy (by rods or
wands. The "dowser," or water-finder, whose exploits have aroused
so much attention of recent years, is obviously akin to the
Rhabdomancist). Crystallomancy, or crystal-gazing, was first
popularised in this country by the notorious Dr. Dee, and still finds
many votaries in Bond Street and elsewhere. Hydromancy, or
divination by water, is another variety much favoured by the Bond
Street sybil, a pool of ink sometimes taking the place of the water.
Cheiromancy, or Palmistry, most popular of any, may possess some
claim to respect in its least ambitious form as a means towards
character reading. Divination by playing-cards, another popular
method, is, needless to say, of later, mediæval origin. The Roman
augurs, who, as every schoolboy knows, deduced the future from the
flight of birds, provide yet another example of this universal pastime,
perhaps the least harmful sub-section of the Black Arts.
Among the most brilliant luminaries of the half-way worlds are those
twin-stars inhabited by the Alchemist and the Astrologer. The
pseudo-science of star-reading may be supposed to date from the
first nightfall—and may thus claim a pedigree even older, if only by a
few months or years, than that of Magic proper. Alchemy, despite its
Moorish name, has a scarcely less extended history. It owes its birth
—traditionally, at any rate—to the same Egyptian Man-God who first
introduced witchcraft and magic in their regularised forms to an
expectant world. Its principles having been by him engraved in Punic
characters upon an emerald, were discovered in his tomb by no less
a person than Alexander the Great. It should perhaps be added that
doubts have been cast upon this resurrection. However that may be,
it was much practised by the later Greeks in Constantinople from the
fifth century A.D. until the Moslem conquest of the city. From them
the Arabs adopted it, gave it the name by which it has ever since
been known, and became the most successful of its practitioners.
To attempt any close study of the great alchemists were foreign to
my present purpose, and would entail more space than is at my
disposal. At the same time, so close was their connection, in the
eyes of the vulgar, so intimate their actual relationship with
witchcraft, that it is impossible altogether to ignore them. What is
more, they lend to the witch a reflected respectability such as she
can by no means afford to forgo. They held, in fact, in their own day,
much the same position as do the great inventors and scientists of
to-day. Mr. Edison and Mr. Marconi, had they been born ten
centuries since, would certainly have taken exalted rank as
alchemists or magicians. As it is, in ten centuries a whole world of
magical romance will have been very likely woven about their
names, even if they have not been actually exalted to divinity or
inextricably confused with Lucifer and Prometheus. While some of
their predecessors may have actually claimed power over the
supernatural—either in self-deception or for self-aggrandisement—
the great majority undoubtedly had such claims thrust upon them,
either by their contemporaries or by posterity, and would have
themselves claimed nothing higher than to be considered students of
the unknown. The Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir Vitæ may have
served indeed as the ideal goal of their researches, much as they do
under their modern form of the Secret of Life in our own time; but
their actual discoveries, accidental and incidental though they may
have been, were none the less valuable. After such a lapse of time it
is as difficult to draw the line between the alchemist-scientist and the
charlatan as it will be a century hence to distinguish the false from
the true among the "inventors" and "scientists" of to-day, so
absolutely do the mists of tradition obscure the face of history.
Leaving out of the question such purely legendary figures as Merlin,
we may class them under three headings, and briefly consider one
example under each. In the first may be placed the more or less
mythical figures of Gebir and Albertus Magnus, both of whom, so far
as it is now possible to judge, owe their ambiguous reputations
entirely to the superstitions of their posterity.
Such a personage as the great Arabian physician Gebir, otherwise
Abou Moussah Djafar, surnamed Al Sofi, or the Wise, living in the
eighth century, was certain to gain the reputation of possessing
supernatural power, even had he not busied himself in the discovery
of the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir. Though he found neither,
he yet in seeking them made other discoveries little less valuable,
and it is scarcely too much to say, made their discovery possible in
later centuries. Thus, in default of the means of making gold, he
gave us such useful chemicals as nitric acid, nitrate of silver, and
oxide of copper. Incidentally he wrote several hundred treatises on
his two "subjects," an English translation of one, the "Summæ
Perfectionis," having been published in 1686 by Richard Russell,
himself an alchemist of respectable attainments.
Albertus Magnus, again, gave every excuse to the vulgar for
regarding him as infernally inspired. That is to say, he was a scholar
of great attainments in a day when scholars were chiefly remarkable
for their dense ignorance, and fully deserved some less ambiguous
sobriquet than that bestowed upon him by some writers of "Founder
of the Schoolmen." A Dominican, he held the chair of Theology at
Padua in 1222 while still a young man. Grown weary of a sedentary
life, he resigned his professorship and taught in many of the chief
European cities, and more particularly in Paris, where he lived for
three years in company with his illustrious pupil, Thomas Aquinas.
He was at one time appointed Bishop of Regensburg, but very soon
resigned, finding his episcopal duties interfere with his studies. Of
the twenty-five folios from his pen, one is devoted to alchemy, and
he was a magician of the first class—so, at least, succeeding
generations averred, though he himself very likely had no suspicions
thereof. Among other of his possessions was a brazen statue with
the gift of speech, a gift exercised with such assiduity as to exhaust
the patience even of the saintly Thomas Aquinas himself, so that he
was constrained to shatter it to pieces.
Roger Bacon, inventor and owner of an even more famous brazen
head, was no less illustrious a scholar, and as fully deserved his
admiring nickname "The Admirable Doctor," even though he were
not in actual fact the inventor of gunpowder and the telescope, as
asserted by his admirers. A native of Somerset, and born,
traditionally, the year before the signing of Magna Charta, he might
have ranked among the greatest Englishmen had not his reputation
as a magician given him the suggestion of being a myth altogether.
Something of a heretic he was, although in orders, and his writings
brought down upon him the suspicions of the General of the
Franciscan Order, to which he belonged. Pope Clement IV. extended
protection to him for a time, even to the extent of studying his works,
and more particularly his "Magnum Opus," but later the Franciscan
General condemned his writings, and he spent fourteen years in
prison, being released only two years before his death. But his
historical achievements were as nothing to his legendary
possession, in partnership with Friar Bungay, of the Talking Head.
Less garrulous than Albertus' statue, it emitted only three sentences:
"Time is. Time was. Time is past." Its last dictum, having
unfortunately for all audience a foolish servant, and being by him
held up to ridicule, it fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces,
thus depriving its inventor of his cherished scheme—by its help to
surround England with a brazen rampart no whit less efficacious
against the assaults of the King's enemies than are our present-day
ironclads.
Friar Bacon was not undeserving of the posthumous popularity he
achieved in song and story, for he it was who made magic and
alchemy really popular pursuits in this country. So numerous were
his imitators that rather more than a century after his death—in 1434
—the alchemical manufacture of gold and silver was declared a
felony. Twenty-one years later Henry VI., being, as he usually was, in
urgent need of ready money, saw reason to modify the
Governmental attitude, and granted a number of patents—to
ecclesiastics as well as laymen—for seeking after the Philosopher's
Stone, with the declared purpose of paying the Royal debts out of
the proceeds. In which design he was, it is to be feared,
disappointed.
Dr. Dee, the friend and gossip of Queen Elizabeth, may be taken as
marking the point at which the alchemist ceases to be an inhabitant
of any half-way world and becomes altogether human. A Londoner
by birth, he was born in 1527, became a B.A. of Cambridge
University and Rector of Upton-upon-Severn. His ecclesiastical
duties could not contain his energies, and so well versed did he
become in arts magical that, upon a waxen effigy of Queen Elizabeth
being found in Lincoln's Inn Fields—and a waxen effigy had only one
meaning in Elizabeth's time—he was employed to counteract the evil
spells contained in it, which he did with such conspicuous success
that the Royal Person suffered no ill-effects whatever. Unfortunately
for himself, Dr. Dee acquired in course of time a disciple, one
Edward Kelly. Kelly proved an apt daunter of demons, but he was
totally lacking in the innocent credulity so noticeable in the character
of his reverend mentor. At his prompting Dr. Dee undertook a
Continental tour, which resulted in disaster of the most overwhelming
and the total loss of Dr. Dee's good name. It is true that he may be
considered to have deserved his fate, for so absolute was his belief
in his disciple that when that _chevalier d'industrie_ received a
message from a demoniacal familiar that it was essential for the
success of their alchemical enterprises that they should exchange
wives—Mrs. Dee being as well-favoured as Mrs. Kelly was the
reverse—the doctor accepted the situation with implicit faith, and
agreed to all that the spirits desired.
Among other seekers after the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir
Vitæ who may be briefly referred to were Alain de l'Isle, otherwise
Alanus de Insulis, notable in that he actually discovered the elixir, if
his contemporaries may be believed, and who so far lived up to his
reputation as to defer his death, which occurred in 1298, until his
110th year; Raymond Lully, who, visiting England in or about 1312,
was provided with a laboratory within the precincts of Westminster
Abbey, where many years later a supply of gold-dust was found;
Nicholas Flamel, who died in 1419, and who gained most of his
occult knowledge from a volume written in Latin by the Patriarch
Abraham; and, to come to later years, William Lilly, a famous English
practitioner of the seventeenth century, and an adept in the use of
the divining rod, with which he sought for hidden treasures in
Westminster Abbey, possibly those left behind him by Raymond
Lully.
Perhaps no symptom of civilisation is more disquieting than the
increasing tendency to compress the half-way worlds—built up by
our forefathers with such lavish expenditure of imagination—into the
narrow limits of that in which we are doomed to spend our working
days—not too joyously. We have seen how the alchemist and the
magician from semi-divine beings, vested with power over gods and
men, have by degrees come to be confounded with the cheap-jack
of a country fair. So it has been with many another denizen of the
Unseeable. Consider, for example, the once formidable giant.
Originally gods, or but little inferior to them, so that Olympus must
exercise all its might to prevail against them; at one time a nation in
themselves, located somewhere in Cornwall, with kings of their own,
Corcoran, Blunderbore, and the rest, aloof from man except when,
for their pastime or appetite, they raided his preserves, vulnerable,
indeed, though only to a superhuman Jack; where are your giants
now? Goliath, though defeated by David, was yet not dishonoured, in
that he was warring not against a puny, sling-armed shepherd, but
against the whole might of the Jewish Jehovah. There were giants
on the earth in those days, the Scriptures tell us, and that in terms
giving us to understand that a giant was to be regarded with respect,
if not with admiration. Polyphemus, again, though outwitted by a
mortal, was none the less a figure almost divine, god-like in his
passions and his agony. The whole ancient world teems with
anecdotes, all proving the respectability of the old-time giant. And to-
day? I saw a giant myself some few years back. He was in a show—
and he was known as Goliath. A poor, lean, knock-kneed wavering
creature, half-idiotic, too, with a sickly, apologetic smile, as though
seeking to disarm the inevitable criticism his very existence must
provoke. Yet he was not to blame, poor, anachronistic wretch. Rather
it was the spirit of the age, that preferred to see him, set up for every
fool to jeer at, at sixpence a time, in a showman's booth, rather than
to watch him afar off, his terror magnified by distance, walking
across a lonely heath in the twilight, bearing a princess or a captive
knight along with him as his natural prey. The same spirit that has
made the giant shrink to an absurdity can see only the charlatan
beneath the flowing robes of the astrologer; and has argued the
witch even out of existence.
So it is with the mermaid. They showed one at the same booth
wherein the degenerate giant was mewed. A poor, shrunken,
grotesque creature enough, yet even so it might have passed for a
symbol, if no more, had they been content to leave it to our
imagination. Instead they must explain, even while they pocketed our
sixpences, that the whole thing was a dreary sham, concocted out of
the fore-quarters of a monkey and the tail end of a codfish, the whole
welded together by the ingenious fingers of some Japanese
trickmonger. Yet there are those who would uphold such cruel
candour, who would prefer to pay sixpence in order to see an ape-
codfish rather than to remain in blissful ignorance, rather than
imagine that every wave may have its lovely tenant, a sea-maiden of
more than earthly tenderness and beauty. Civilisation prates to us of
dugongs and of manatees, and other fish-beasts that, it says, rising
upon the crest of a wave, sufficiently resemble the human form to be
mistaken for it by credulous, susceptible mariners. But is not our faith
in that tender story of the little mermaid who, for love of a man,
sought the earth in human shape even though she knew that every
step must cause her agony, every foot-mark be outlined with her
blood—is not it better for us to believe that fairy-tale than to cram our
weary brains with all the cynical truths of all the dime-museums or
schools of science between London and San Francisco?
Even those who smile at Neptune and his daughters cannot refuse
the tribute of a shudder to the Man-Beast. For however it be with the
mermaid, the were-wolf is no figment of the imagination. Not the
fanciful alone are convinced that many human beings partake of the
nature of certain beasts. You may pass them by the hundred in every
city street—men and women showing in their faces their kinship with
the horse, the dog, cat, monkey, lion, sparrow. And not in their faces
alone—for their features do but reflect the minds within them—the
man with the sharp, rat-like face nine times out of ten has all the
selfish canning of the rat. We have no need to seek for further
explanation of the centaur myth—to argue that some horseless
nation, seeing horsemen for the first time, accepted the man and his
mount as one and indivisible; there are plenty of men who have as
much of the equine as of the human in their composition. So it is with
the wolf-man—the were-wolf. He exists, and to this day, despite all
your civilising influences. Not among savages alone—or chiefly. He
roams the streets of our great cities, seeking his prey. Perhaps he
lives in the next street to you—a prosperous, respected citizen, with
a shop in Cheapside, a wife and family, and the regard of all his
neighbours. The wolf in him has never been aroused—may never
be. Only, let Fate or chance so will it, and—well, who can tell us Jack
the Ripper's antecedents? And where in all the annals of lycanthropy
can you find a grimmer instance of the man-wolf than Jack the
Ripper?
With the were-wolf we return to closer contact with witchcraft proper.
It is true that the were-wolf was not always bewitched. Sometimes
the tendency was inborn—the man or woman was transformed into
the wolf at each recurrent full moon. In France—and more
particularly in the South, where lycanthropy has always had one of
its strongholds—the liability of certain individuals, especially if they
be born illegitimate, to this inconvenience is still firmly credited by the
popular mind. The were-wolf may be recognised for that matter, even
when in his human form, usually by the shape of his broad, short-
fingered hands and his hairy palm. It is even possible to effect a
permanent cure should the opportunity occur, and that by the simple
means of stabbing him three times in the forehead with a knife while
in his lupine shape. Again, in Scandinavia and elsewhere certain
men could transform themselves into wolves at will—a superstition
arising naturally enough out of traditions of the Berserkers and the
fits of wolfish madness into which they threw themselves. Yet again,
as Herodotus tells us, lycanthropy was sometimes a national
observance. The Neuri, if the Scythians were to be believed, were in
the habit of changing themselves into wolves once a year and
remaining in that shape for several days. But more frequently the
change was attributable to some evil spell cast by a witch. It is true
that the wolf was only one of many animals into whose shape she
might condemn a human soul to enter. Circe is, of course, a classical
example; Saint Augustine, in his "De Civitate Dei," relates how an
old lady of his acquaintance used to turn men into asses by means
of enchantments—an example which has been followed by younger
ladies ever since, by the way—while Apuleius' "Golden Ass" gives us
an autobiographical testimony to the efficacy of certain drugs
towards the same end.
Doubtless because the wolf was extirpated in this country at a
comparatively early date English were-wolf legends are few and far
between. They could indeed only become universally current in a
country mainly pastoral and infested by wolves, as, for instance, in
ancient Arcadia, where indeed the were-wolf came into his highest
estate, or in many parts of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to-
day. In certain Balkan districts the were-wolf shares the attributes of
the vampire, another allied superstition which is by no means without
its foundations of fact. Most people must have, indeed, been
acquainted at some time or other with the modern form of vampire,
individuals who unconsciously feed upon the vitality of those with
whom they come into contact. Many stories have been written, many
legends founded upon this phenomenon, to the truth of which many
people have testified from their own experience. At which point I
leave the subject to those with more scientific knowledge than
myself.
In case there should be any who desire to transform themselves into
a wolf without the trouble and expense of resorting to a witch, I will
close this chapter with a spell warranted to produce the desired
effect without any further outlay than the price of a small copper
knife. It is of Russian origin, and is quoted from Sacharow by Mr.
Baring Gould. "He who desires to become an oborot (oborot = 'one
transformed' = were-wolf) let him seek in the forest a hewn-down
tree; let him stab it with a small copper knife and walk round the tree,
repeating the following incantation:

On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,

On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ash-stock lying
In a greenwood, in a gloomy vale.
Towards the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf,
Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;
But the wolf enters not the forest,
But the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale.
Moon, moon, gold-horned moon
Check the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters' knives,
Break the shepherds' cudgels,
Cast wild fear upon all cattle,
On men, on all creeping things,
That they may not catch the grey wolf,
That they may not rend his warm skin!
 My word is binding, more binding than sleep,
More binding than the promise of a hero!

"Then he springs thrice over the tree and runs into the forest,
transformed into a wolf."

CHAPTER V
THE WITCH'S ATTRIBUTES
In his very learned and exhaustive treatise, "De la Démonomanie
des Sorciers," the worthy Bodin, with enterprise worthy of a modern
serial-story writer, keeps his reader's curiosity whetted to its fullest by
darkly hinting his knowledge of awesome spells and charms
commonly employed by Satan's servants. Unlike the modern writer,
however, he refrains from detailing them at length in his last chapter,
fearing to impart knowledge which may easily be put to the worst
account. However valuable a testimony to his good faith and
discretion, this would certainly have brought down upon him the
strictures of modern critics, and might indeed have entailed serious
loss to the world had not other less conscientious writers more than
rectified the omission.
It were, of course, impossible to include within the limits of such a
volume as is this—or of a hundred like it—one tithe of the great store
of spells, charms, and miscellaneous means towards enchantment
gathered together in the long centuries since the birth of the first
witch. So also it is impossible to select any particular stage in her
long evolution as the most characteristic, as regards her manners
and customs, of all that we imply by the word "witch." On the other
hand, she has definitely crystallised in the minds of those of us who
have ever been children, in the shape of the "horrid old witch" of fairy
lore; and just as, in a preceding chapter, I have endeavoured to
reproduce one of her working days—as imaged in the popular mind
—so the witch of the Middle Ages may best be chosen when we
would reconstruct her more human aspect.
Of her actual appearance, divested of her infernal attributes, no
better description could be desired than that given by Reginald Scot
in "The Discoverie of Witchcraft":—"Witches be commonly old, lame,
bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; poore, sullen,
superstitious, and papists"—(it is perhaps unnecessary to point out
that Scot was of the Reformed Faith)—"or such as know no religion;
in whose drousie minds the devill hath goten a fine seat; so as, what
mischiefe, mischance, calamitie or slaughter is brought to passe,
they are easilie persuaded the same is doone by themselves,
imprinting in their minds an earnest and constant imagination hereof.
They are leane and deformed, showing melancholie in their faces to
the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad,
devilish."
Endowed with so unfortunate a personality, it is not surprising that,
as Scot goes on to inform us, the witch should have found it difficult
to make a living. It is indeed an interesting example of the law of
supply and demand that such woeful figures being needed for the
proper propagation of the witch-mania, the conditions of mediæval
life, by their harsh pressure upon the poor and needy among
women, should have provided them by the score in every village.
You may find the conventional witch-figure to-day in the lonely
hamlet or in the city workhouse, but, thanks to our better conditions
of life, she has become almost as rare as have accusations of
witchcraft against her.
The only means of subsistence open to her, Scot goes on, is to beg
from house to house. In time it comes about that people grow weary
of her importunities. Perhaps they show their impatience too openly.
"Then," says Scot, "she curses one or the other, from the master of
the house to the little pig that lieth in the stie." Someone in the wide
range between those two extremes will be certain to suffer some
kind of mischance before long—on much the same principle as that
which gives life to one of our most popular present-day superstitions,
the ill-luck attending a gathering of "thirteen at table." Any such
disaster is naturally attributed to the old beggar-woman—who is thus
at once elevated to the dangerous eminence of witch-hood. Nor did
the sufferer always wait for her curse. Edward Fairfax, for example,
the learned seventeenth century translator of Tasso, upon an
epidemic sickness attacking his children, sought out their symptoms
in a "book of medicine." Not finding any mention of "such agonies"
as those exhibited by his children, he determined that some unholy
agency must be at work. His thoughts turned, naturally enough, to
the gloomy forest of Knaresborough, within convenient distance of
his abode. Nothing could be more suspicious than the mere fact of
living in such a suggestive locality, yet Margaret White, widow of a
man executed for theft, her daughter, and Jennie Dibble, an old
widow coming of a family suspected of witchcraft for generations
past, were imprudent, or unfortunate, enough to live within its
borders. The natural result attended their rashness—and so earnest
was the worthy Fairfax that he set the whole proceedings down in a
book, adding a minute account of the symptoms and delusions of the
invalids.
As the King has his orb and sceptre, the astrologer his spheres and
quadrant, so the witch has her insignia of office. And it is a strong
indication of her descent from the first house-wife that most of them
are domestic or familiar objects. The imp or "familiar" who attends
her may have the form of a bird or dog, but is far more often the
most domestic animal of all, the cat. Frequently it is malformed or
monstrous, in common with Satan himself and all the beings who
owe him allegiance. It may have any number of legs, several tails, or
none at all; its mewing is diabolic; it may be far above the usual
stature of its kind. Usually it is black, but is equally eligible if white or
yellow. As is a common incident of all religions, the symbol is
sometimes confused with the office, the witch and her cat
exchanging identities. Thus witches have confessed under torture to
have formerly been cats, and to owe their human shape to Satan's
interference with natural laws. A piebald cat is said to become a
witch if it live for nine years, and the witch, when upon a nefarious
errand, frequently assumes a feline shape.
A characteristic of the witch, in common with demons and imps in
general, is that she does everything contrary to the tastes and
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