Page 43 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 2: Portrait of three founders of the ILL
a lot (becoming finally trilateral.). When the European Science Foundation (ESF) proposed the creation of the ESRF36, Horowitz was initially reluctant and was only convinced when he was told that the ESRF, like the ILL, would have the status of a private company, under French Law37. In the field of fusion however the European project was already mature, but he preferred a world- wide project for the next stage ITER. In what followed he appears to have been right.
The second point on which all contributors were agreed was his extraordinary skill as a negotiator. I was able to appreciate this personally at the ILL, especially in discussions with the British. He was very firm, but managed finally to impose his point of view, firstly because he knew the facts much better than the others, that he spoke clearly and succinctly, and his firmness was accompanied by a great politeness that his opponents never had the impression of their submission. It is regrettable that he was not present during the final negotiations on ITER.
Horowitz was a man of the spoken rather than the written word; outside the scientific publications of his youth he left little written down.
36 The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, a powerful source of X-rays, offering great complementarity to the ILL’s powerful neutron source, see later.
37 This information was revealed in Paul Levaux’s contribution to the commemorative meeting.
34