A young research group in nuclear astrophysics at Darmstadt Technische Hochschule ignited a European renaissance in that field. Many of today's leaders of European science were in this Darmstadt group, which invited Donald Clayton to visit them in May 1977. Clayton's invited talk, "Dust to Dust: a Controversy on the Origin of the Solar System", described new nuclear-astrophysical applications that might be possible from surviving presolar dust in the solar system. Pictured here on May 29 in Darmstadt are Eberhard Hilf, Michael Pabst, Mounib El Eid, Ewald Mueller, Marcel Arnould, Clayton, Wolfgang Hillebrandt and Koji Takahashi. Few other photographs capture so many that were to set the future of nuclear astrophysics in Europe at a moment of its rebirth. Hilf, whose mass law set new standards for r-process calculations, had experienced a postdoc at Yeshiva University with A. G. W. Cameron, who ignited Hilf's interests in nuclear astrophysics; and Hilf brought that torch back to Darmstadt and infected the others. When Hillebrandt left to build this research field at Max Planck Institut fuer Astrophysik in Munich, going with him were Ewald Mueller and Friedl Thielemann (who snapped this photo with Clayton's camera). Clayton was during 1977 resident in Heidelberg as Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist. Two decades later El Eid, who was in 1977 a student of Hilf's, would be an important factor in nuclear astrophysics at Clemson University through his annual visits that initiated stellar evolution at Clemson University with his code.

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