Page 103 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 5: The construction of the reactor and the scientific groups
instruments to be built was made with help from the Scientific Council and its sub-committees. It was only in 1969 that the construction was able to commence; the objective was to have about half the devices ready when the reactor became operational.
The ILL had its first building (aptly named ILL1) available on
1 March 1969, with an area of 1200 square metres. One of the first facilities there was the library that seemed to us to be essential for scientific life. Christine Castets was recruited to take charge of this.
We also thought it indispensable to provide the first scientists with laboratory equipment while waiting for neutron beams. There was a laser which could be used for Brillouin scattering, yielding complementary information to that from inelastic
neutron scattering. Reinhard Scherm set up and looked after
the system with a student, Anne Hamelin. Later, in 1970, a four circle X-ray diffractometer was installed, with the collaboration
of Janine Lajzerovitz from Grenoble University. This, with Michel Thomas in charge, helped familiarise the physicists with crystallographic techniques. The arrival of Jacques Villain from Saclay in September 1969 started off the theoretical physics
group at Grenoble. His arrival was also important because it compensated for the difficulty and even impossibility to attract
the Saclay experimental physicists. This inability I associate with Parisianism; these colleagues had a tendency to think that there was nothing good outside the region of Paris. This contrasted strongly with the attraction the ILL held for German scientists from the start. Another sign of the scientific life of the ILL was the organisation of a Summer School on the use of neutrons from 20
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