The 600 MeV Synchrocyclotron: Laying the Foundations

On 15 February, 1952, the agreement was signed constituting a “Council of Representatives of European States for Planning an International Laboratory and Organizing Other Forms of Co-operation in Nuclear Research.” I. Rabi, Nobel Prize 1944, considered this “The official birth of the project fathered in Florence” with a resolution submitted to the Fifth General Conference of UNESCO in June 1950. While the UNESCO resolution was deliberately vague and abstract, it lent authority to the ensuing debates among the leading scientists, spearheaded notably by E. Amaldi, P. Auger and N. Bohr (Nobel Prize 1922), on the possible mission of such an international laboratory, considering accelerator-based fundamental (“nuclear”) physics as the most attractive choice. The signing of the February 1952 Agreement set in motion a sequence of events unfolding with astounding swiftness and purposefulness. Barely three months later, in May 1952, the first meeting of the (provisional) Council agreed on a detailed and prescient “business plan” for the future laboratory, laid down the major lines for two accelerators and established the corresponding study groups in several European countries. Council also initiated and sponsored a conference, to be held in June 1952 chaired by Bohr to evaluate scientific topics related to the planned laboratory. The second Council meeting was held in June 1952, following the two-week Copenhagen Conference. At that meeting, W. Heisenberg (Nobel Prize 1932) summarized the key conclusions of the conference in a remarkable tour d’horizon of particle physics and accelerators. This led to the recommendation that one group should design a 600 MeV synchrocyclotron (SC) and a second group should undertake a feasibility study of a powerful proton synchrotron (PS) [Box 2.1]. The larger one would be a frontier proton machine with energies in the 10 to 20 GeV range, while the smaller one should be based on well-established principles and provide beams as soon as possible. This would allow the laboratory and the