Page 10 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

INTRODUCTION
Why write a history of the ILL?
The Institut Laue-Langevin, or more formally the Institut Max von Laue - Paul Langevin (ILL), is one of the first examples
of fully successful scientific collaboration between European countries. It was preceded only by CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, and by EURATOM whose origins lie in the first years after World War II. The history of CERN, created in 1953, has been described in a massive work of 3 volumes1. EURATOM was established as part of the Treaty of Rome, in 1957. To my knowledge its history has not been published2. Perhaps this is a consequence of the somewhat mixed success of this organisation. In contrast to the creation of CERN, where the USA scientists played an important role, the ILL was a purely French and German initiative. Such a combined activity was
far from evident between two countries which had battled, one against the other, and that the Institut should be placed in a region of France where the Resistance had its pinnacle position in the Vercors mountains. The name of the road to the ILL, the Avenue des Martyrs, bears witness to these events. How this all became possible is one of the themes which I will develop in this book. In
1 “History of CERN”, by A. Hermann et al, 1987-96 ; North-Holland Physics Pub. and Elsevier.
2 2018 addition: In fact a history of EURATOM was published in 2002 “The origins and early history of Eur- atom, 1955-1968”, Mervyn O’Driscoll, 2002, Ed. European Parliament, ISBN: 92-823-1638-6. It was difficult
to find when Bernard Jacrot wrote his book.
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