Yongmin Kim
Dankook University

Arrived in the late Summer, I am now ready to leave at the very end of the Winter. The last six months of my stay at the ISSP as a visiting professor was a feeling of being “exiled to a boring heaven”. (In contrast, living in Korea is sometimes called “living in an exciting hell”.) I worked with the people at the International MegaGauss Science Laboratory (IMGSL) – ISSP, wherein one of the best high magnetic field facilities is located, capacitor-bank-driven 60 T magnets, single-turn coil 150 T, and flux compression 1000 T explosive magnets. Research scientists including graduate students working at the IMGSL are as good as the facilities. For this reason, most of the time while my staying at ISSP, I loved to work in the laboratory to utilize such nice systems and to meet people. From my wife’s point of view, I was “exiled to a boring heaven”. Physicists love to put materials in extreme conditions, such as extremely small (nanomaterials), high pressure, and/or low temperature.Because materials sometimes or maybe most of the time, reveal their nature or show new phenomena under such extreme conditions. A high magnetic field is one of those extreme environments. In IMGSL, it is possible to put nanomaterial in a high-pressure cell, lower the temperature below 4 K and apply magnetic fields as high as one thousand- tesla. For the scientist side, this is a heavenly condition.

To supply such nice scientific research conditions, many countries developed and maintain large high magnetic facilities. For the same reason, a school of Korean scientists is trying to convince the Korean government to build a high magnetic field facility in Korea. My experiences here at IMGSL will not only be limited to my personal development but also to contribute to the development of Korea’s high magnetic field facilities that are expected to be built in the future. I would like to thank the professors at the IMGSL for allowing me such a great opportunity. I also thank the group secretaries and the ISSP -ILO staff members for providing so much hospitality during my stay here. Farewell to my ISSP-ILO #2 green bicycle. How hard must it have been for you to drag my heavy body around for the past six months!