The concept of a Muon Collider was first proposed by Budker (10) and by Skrinsky (11) in the 60s and early 70s. However, there was little substance to the concept until the idea of ionization cooling was developed by Skrinsky and Parkhomchuk (12). The ionization cooling approach was expanded by Neufer (13) and then by Palmer (14), whose work led to the formation of the Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (MC) (3) in 1995. The concept of a neutrino source based on a pion storage ring was originally considered by Koshkarev (18). However, the intensity of the muons created within the ring from pion decay was too low to provide a useful neutrino source. The Muon Collider concept provided a way to produce a very intense muon source. The physics potential of neutrino beams produced by muon storage rings was investigated by Geer in 1997 at a Fermilab workshop (19, 20) where it became evident that the neutrino beams produced by muon storage rings needed for the muon collider were exciting on their own merit. The neutrino factory concept quickly captured the imagination of the particle physics community, driven in large part by the exciting atmospheric neutrino deficit results from the SuperKamiokande experiment. As a result, the MC realized that a Neutrino Factory could be an important first step toward a Muon Collider and the physics that could be addressed by a Neutrino Factory was interesting in its own right. With this in mind, the MC has shifted its primary emphasis toward the issues relevant to a Neutrino Factory. There is also considerable international activity on Neutrino Factories, with international conferences held at Lyon in 1999, Monterey in 2000 (21), Tsukuba in 2001 (22), and another planned for London in 2002.
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