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Overview

ILL Aerial

The ILL was founded on 19 January 1967 with the signing of an agreement between the governments of the French Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. The friendship and influence of Louis Néel and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz brought this project to fruition in Grenoble.

The ILL was given the innovative status of service institute, offering the scientific community the world's leading facilities in neutron science and technology - a large cold neutron source and ten neutron guides, each capable of serving three or four instruments with a very high intensity neutron flux.

In January 1973 the United Kingdom decided to join ILL and officially became the Institute’s third Associate member country in 1974.

Since then, thirteen other countries have signed "Scientific Membership" agreements with ILL: Spain (1987- ), Switzerland (1988- ), Austria (1990- ), Italy (1997- ), the Czech Republic (1999- ), Sweden (2005- ), Hungary (2005-2013), Belgium (2006-2023), Poland (2006- ), Denmark and Slovakia (2009- ), India (2011-2014) and Slovenia (2020- ).

The Institute is an exceptional centre of excellence, a fine example of successful co-operation in Europe, and a prototype for the European Research Area.

Key dates

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Founders and pioneers
The patrons When the French and German governments were seeking a name for the Institute in the 1960s, they decided to honour French and German scientists distinguished for their co…
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ILL founding papers
Founding papers of the ILL and its High Flux ReactorIn 1971 and 1972, 20 founding papers were published by teams from both the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA) involved in the design and building of the High-Flux Reactor (RHF). They were published in the …
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Techniques
The following pages describe the evolution of techniques at the ILL. Many of the latter were initiated at the ILL but testimonials, photos or documents are often rare, at least for the first 30 years of the ILL. Understanding how we arrived at current techniques is instructive and it is useful to d…
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Prizes and honours
On this page, we present some of the famous (and not so famous) prize-winning scientists who have worked at or collaborated with the ILL over the years. This is by no means an exhaustive list but should give you some idea of the sheer wealth of ground-breaking research to which the ILL and its neut…
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Books and other historical accounts
Bernard Jacrot's book "Neutrons for Science: the story of the ILL, a very successful international cooperation" English version of Bernard Jacrot's book "Des neutrons pour la science", 2006, EDP S…