Page 101 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 5: The construction of the reactor and the scientific groups
All this has been achieved and has contributed to the success of the ILL. One point in the scientific organisation which is not mentioned in this text of Maier-Leibnitz, but which played a part in this success was the absence of a rigid hierarchical structure. There has never been a nuclear physics department with a head and allocated room space. From the beginning there was a nuclear physics college involving physicists who worked on the instruments in this field. The term college appears in the annual report for 1971 to describe the scientific activity of the nascent Institut. The colleges served to construct and run the instruments decided on by the various sub-committees of the Scientific Council. There were 10 colleges:
College 1
Theory, at Garching (Munich)
College 2
Theory, at Grenoble
College 3
Nuclear Physics
College 4
Properties of pure crystals
College 5
Crystallographic and magnetic structures
College 6
Liquids, gases, and amorphous solids
College 7
Imperfections in crystals
College 8/9
Biology, polymers, chemistry
College 10
New projects.
Maier-Leibnitz established this structure of colleges to encourage discussions between scientists engaged in the construction of instruments designed to answer the scientific questions in the appropriate college. They evolved naturally leading to a scientific life within the Institut and the collaborations with visiting researchers. It is interesting to note that the list
and numbering of the colleges has remained little changed to the present day, except for college 1, which disappeared with the Munich group. Due to this, the list of colleges started with
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