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Paris 1951: The birth of CERNFranois de Rose chaired the meeting that founded Europes premier facility for experimental nuclear and

particle research. Here he relives the five days of drama that changed the world of physics.

As a young French diplomat taking my firststeps in international affairs, I had the privi-lege of representing my country for severalyears at a United Nations commission in thelate 1940s. The United States, under the lead-

ership of the financier and presidential adviserBernard Baruch and the physicist RobertOppenheimer, wanted the United Nations tobe given oversight of all the worlds nuclearweapons and nuclear power the so-calledBaruch plan. The plan failed, but as Francewas a keen supporter, it gave me the oppor-tunity to work with Oppenheimer. We metfrequently to discuss tactics and strategy andsoon became friends.

One day, Oppenheimer told me of a problemthat was very much on his mind. Most ofAmericas best physicists, he said, had likehim been trained, or had worked, in Europes

pre-war laboratories. He believed that Europesshaken nations did not have the resources

to rebuild their basic physics infrastructure.He felt they would no longer be able to remainscientific leaders unless they pooled theirmoney and talent. Oppenheimer also believedthat it would be basically unhealthy

if Europes physicists had to go to theUnited States or theSoviet Union to con-duct their research.

T h e s o l u t i o n ,Oppenheimer felt,was to find a way toenable Europes phys-icists to collaborate. When the United Nationscommission ended, I returned to France,and raised the idea with our foreign ministerRobert Schuman, one of the founders of theEuropean Community. Schuman liked it andallowed me, together with Francis Perrin, then

head of Frances atomic energy commission,to seek the support of colleagues in other

European capitals. Slowly the idea that wouldlater become CERN began to take shape.

We had a mixed reception. There was agood deal of support, but some governmentsand scientists saw the project as too costly

at a time when Europes citizens were beingasked to tighten theirbelts. Others fearedit would take moneyaway from individualnational labs whichmight, in turn, affectthe project, because

successful international cooperation needednational labs to be well resourced.

Still, by 1950 the project had gained con-siderable momentum and the Americanphysicist Isidor Rabi had presented the ideato the member states of the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organi-zation (UNESCO) at an earlier meeting in

It would be basically unhealthy if

Europes physicists had to go to the

United States or the Soviet Union to

conduct their research.

DA

VIDP

ARKINS

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Florence, Italy. A date was then set for a fol-low-up meeting at UNESCO headquartersin Paris on 17 December 1951, where the

idea would be debated and more detailsdiscussed.

View from the chairI was asked to chair what would be perhapsthe most important meeting in the historyof CERN. It was attended by a whos who oftwentieth-century physics. G. P. Thomsonrepresented the United Kingdom, FrancisPerrin spoke for France, Werner Heisenbergfor Gemany and Jakob Nielsen and Niels Bohrrepresented Denmark. In all, 21 countries sentdelegations, as did four international organi-zations, including the Council of Europe and

the then International Council of ScientificUnions (now the International Council forScience). UNESCO was represented by thephysicist Pierre Auger.

Delegates had many questions: did Europereally need a new and permanent experimen-tal research facility, or would it be better ifscientists collaborated in existing Europeanlabs? How much money would such a facil-ity need? Which governments were preparedto pay, and how much would they pledge?Earlier disagreements soon became public asGermany and the United Kingdom, twonations whose support was critically needed,

spoke out about their scepticism.Auger opened by publicly thanking the

United States for suggesting the idea toUNESCO. Next, Thomson rose to speak, andas the official report of the meeting records,he got straight to the point: Britain has, sincethe war, spent a large sum of money on nuclearphysics and especially on large machines. Inthe present state of financial stringency, furtherlarge expenditure by Britain on nuclear physicswould not be justified. It must be rememberedthat there are other expensive branches of sci-ence which have a claim on our finances.

Thomson instead favoured the idea that

Europes physicists should collaborate usingexisting facilities. This would have the advan-tage that physicists could begin work imme-diately and not have to wait many years for anew facility to be completed. As a sign of theseriousness of his proposal, Thomson offeredthe use of a 400-MeV cyclotron at LiverpoolUniversity, which was nearing completion.

The greatness of an institution is not to bemeasured only, or even mainly, by the size of itsbudget, he concluded. Men are more impor-tant than machines. Later, Steva Dedijer, thedelegate from Yugoslavia, countered: Europeis supreme in knowing how to develop man.

But men cant work without machines. Andthey will go where there are machines.

For France, Perrin said that the lack ofmore powerful equipment in the physics offundamental particles would have the effect of

prejudicing European states and the aspects ofcivilization that they represent. He remindedthe meeting that Europes scientists would moveto America if they couldnt find good facilitiesat home; and he said that building a machinecomparable to those being constructed in theUnited States would be far beyond the meansof any single European state. Perrin advisedthat even if the United Kingdoms offer wereto be accepted, work on the new laboratoryshould not be delayed.

The record of the meeting shows that influ-ential backing for Thomsons view came fromHeisenberg. Our country is

in an extremely difficult eco-nomic position and I am notentitled at the present time tocommit our government to anyexpense in this connection, hesaid. He too emphasized that itwas important that any schemeshould produce results quickly and at mini-mum cost. One should not just try to copyone of the big American machines. Nielsen,for Denmark, agreed that young researchersfrom Europes scientifically less-developedcountries were keen to begin work immedi-ately using whatever experimental facilities

were available.Yet, as the meeting progressed, it became

clear that more delegates were in favour ofbuilding a new machine than against, and con-crete offers of support started to come in. Bythe end, France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium andYugoslavia had collectively pledged $151,000towards a feasibility study and Denmark saidit would very probably join them. Denmarkalso proposed Copenhagen as a possible sitefor the new laboratory, with Belgium and Italysuggesting Geneva.

CERN takes shape

Two months later, 11 European governmentsagreed to establish a provisional governingcouncil and the CERN acronym (ConseilEuropen pour la Recherche Nuclaire) wasborn. Thanks to the generosity and farsight-edness of Switzerland, Geneva was chosen asthe site of the laboratory in October 1952, andin July 1953 the CERN Convention was rati-fied by the 12 founding member states: Bel-gium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republicof Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands,Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UnitedKingdom and Yugoslavia.

The first cyclotron a 600-MeV device

came into operation in 1957. Two years later itwas joined by the 28-GeV proton synchrotron,

which was for a brief period the worlds highest-energy particle accelerator.

Today, as CERN enters an exciting new

phase, it is worth recalling the many para-doxes in the foundation of this great insti-tution. For example, at the 1951 meeting,unusually for the time, the United Kingdomtook an opposite position to Americas knownwishes. Also unusual was the fact that theUnited States felt more strongly than Britainthe need to strengthen European science,a major component of European culture.

Although early proponents of the idea ofCERN also included the influential Frenchphysicist Louis de Broglie, it is impossibleto overstate how important it was for all the

proponents of CERN to have

the United States take thelead and present the idea toUNESCO this made theproposal much harder forothers in Europe to oppose.But American support forCERN may have come at a

price for American physicists. In later years,US policy-makers have used the existence ofCERN as a reason to refuse requests from theUS scientific community for expensive high-energy machines in their own country.

Few of us present that December in 1951thought that by the time the meeting closed

there would be so many pledges to take theidea of CERN forward. We began the meetingvoicing different points of view, yet holding aunified vision for greater scientific coopera-tion and lasting peace in our continent. Thatvision is the one that eventually prevailed.Had the meeting failed, had scientists andgovernments not been able to agree on a jointprogramme of action, the repercussions offailure would have been felt far beyond theuniverse of nuclear physics.

The meeting was a success, and this allowedme to close our deliberations with the remarkthat: if it would be difficult to find scientists

among diplomats, it was obvious that therewere many diplomats among scientists. Franois de Rose chaired the UNESCO meeting

that was held in Paris from 17 to 21 December

1951. He was president of the council of CERN

from 1959 to 1962 and was Frances ambassador

to NATO from 1970 to 1975. He is the author of

La France et la dfense de lEurope (Seuil, 1976),

translated as European Security and France

(Macmillan, 1984).

See Editorial, page 137.

This is the first of a series: for more Meetings that

Changed the World over the next five weeks see

www.nature.com/nature/focus/meetings

It was obvious that

there were many

diplomats among

scientists.

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