‘Monsters’ and Colliders in 1961 : The First Debate at CERN on Future Accelerators

Abstract

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was officially set up in September 1954.* Two years before, it had already been decided by the provisional organization to build a 600 MeV synchrocyclotron (SC) and a multi-GeV proton synchrotron (PS). Both formed the first generation of CERN accelerators. The SC went into operation in 1957; the PS of 28 GeV, at the extreme end of 1959. One year later, a spirited debate about the next generation of machines for CERN started in Europe. The aim of this chapter is to describe how the debate occurred in that first year. Let us note before starting that only scientists took part in the discussion — which is a key reason why I wish to study it carefully here. The debate involving government officials only started in 1962/3.²