After 38 years of operation, the DORIS synchrotron ring on the DESY campus was shut down for the last time at 8am on Monday 22nd October. To mark almost four decades of service and research at DORIS, current and past scientists, engineers, users and support staff were invited to attend a series of talks in the afternoon commemorating the history of the synchrotron ring. The event was rounded off with an informal get-together with drinks and snacks.

EMBL Hamburg operated six experimental stations at DORIS with applications in structural biology – five for Macromolecular Crystallography and one for Small Angle X-ray Scattering. Four of these beamlines (X33 (SAXS) and X11, X12, and X13 for MX applications) were operational and being used by users right up until the final shutdown. The other two beamlines (BW7A, BW7B) were more recently used for instrumental development and test set-ups for the new PETRA III beamlines. Following the shutdown on Monday, decommissioning of the DORIS beamlines started immediately and will continue until 2013.

“DORIS was a very important part of our lives here at EMBL Hamburg for many years and today’s event marks the end of an era” says Matthias Wilmanns head of EMBL Hamburg. “We would like to thank everyone who came to measure on the EMBL beamlines and thank everyone who worked in the background making sure that everything ran smoothly. Now we look forward to a new era at PETRA III”.

EMBL Hamburg runs and operates three undulator beamlines at PETRA III – two for macromolecular X-ray crystallography and one for small angle X-ray scattering applications of biological material. These beamlines are integrated into advanced facilities for biological sample preparation and characterisation as well as for X-ray data processing and evaluation.