Otto Haxel at age 88 with Donald Clayton at Max Planck Haus, Heidelberg, on April 10, 1997. The occasion was the 4th International Solar Neutrino Conference. Haxel was coauthor of work that defined the nuclear shell model (Haxel, Jensen and Suess 1949 Phys Rev 75, 1766). It was Haxel who first suggested that doubly-magic 56Ni was the nucleosynthesis parent of 56Fe; Clayton worked out the burning process that achieved that, and also its gamma ray consequences. This is described in historical detail in the July 1999 issue of Meteoritics and Planetary Science 34, A145 (1999), where this photo has been published. This was the key issue for the history of nucleosynthesis in stars, where Hoyle's description synthesized 56Fe as itself (the e process of B2FH). See also the Centennial Volume of ApJ.

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