1.Bromley, A. (1997) Material provided by participants in the New York Academy/Wallenberg Foundation seminar on ‘Science and Technology for Europe's Future: What Mix of Collaboration and Competition?’ 19–21 October 1997.Google Scholar

2. Part of the explanation for the decrease in westbound traffic could be that, whereas 40 years ago European science had not recovered from the war, and a period in the US was almost a necessity for aspiring young European scientists, Europe now offers equally exciting opportunities. The increase in two career families, and general nervousness about job prospects, are obviously important factors.Google Scholar

3. Nevertheless, setting aside questions of social responsibility, it is not a good policy to leave these activities to other countries as an active research base is essential to sustain and foster technological development (for further discussion, see Ref. 4 which contains a discussion of the economic importance of basic research).Google Scholar

4.Smith, C. H. Llewellyn ‘What's the Use of Basic Science?’ accessible at http://www.cern.ch.Google Scholar

5.Krige, J. and Guzzetti, L. (eds) (1997) History of European Scientific and Technological Co-operation (European Commission in Brussels).Google Scholar

6. Experimental physicists based in 52 countries are involved in approved experiments (current plus LHC) at CERN. The fact that scientists in so many countries collaborate together in experiments at CERN created a pressing need to facilitate communication between them, and in particular to make it easy to access information stored in many different computers. This led to the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN, which is the laboratory's best known ‘spin-off’ (CERN has produced many spin-offs, including techniques for detecting particles that are now in widespread use in medical imaging).Google Scholar

7. Nevertheless CERN expects all European countries whose scientists make extensive use of the Laboratory to join the Organization when the financial and political conditions are appropriate (despite the problem of further dilution of responsibility, and the increased difficulty in reaching decisions in the CERN Council). Membership of CERN is voluntary, but the basis of the Laboratory, and in particular its open-access policy, would be threatened if European countries that use CERN extensively, and can afford to pay, did not join.Google Scholar

8. The SSC was approved in 1987, on the basis of a cost estimate of $4.4 billion, which was soon increased to $5.9 billion, including the cost of constructing detectors. It was abandoned in 1993, at which time the General Office of Accounting gave a cost estimate of $11 billion. The SSC was conceived as a national project, but after approval substantial international contributions were sought, without success – which was one of the reasons for cancellation. The SSC would have been much larger, and more expensive, than the technically more advanced LHC, and its energy would have been higher. The LHC will, however, be able to operate at much higher intensity, which can be accommodated thanks to extensive detector R&D carried out in the USA (for the SSC) and in Europe (for the LHC). The higher intensity will make the experiments much more difficult, but (by making it possible to detect rarer events involving quarks carrying a higher fraction of the parent proton's energy) it should largely compensate for the lower beam energy, and it is hoped that the LHC will be able to fulfil the goals foreseen for the SSC.Google Scholar

9. The situation is not helped by the fact that while the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, which inter alia fund particle physics, espouse open access, NASA has linked allocations for European scientists of viewing time on the Hubble telescope to ESA's contribution to the project.Google Scholar

10. The question is sometimes raised why these countries do not become Member States of CERN. Despite the ‘E’ in CERN, expansion of membership outside Europe would, I believe, be possible in principle if all Member States agreed, but in fact up to now no non-European country, apart from Israel, has shown any interest. In most of CERN's Member States, over 80% of the experimental particle physicists carry out their research at CERN (the others working at DESY or elsewhere). In other countries this percentage is much lower (e.g. although the US is now the biggest user of CERN in absolute terms, only some 30% of the US community of high-energy physicists works at CERN), and the commitment involved in joining CERN does not seem justified. Other forms of relationship have therefore been sought with non-Member States for the LHC era.Google Scholar

11.International Partnerships in Large Science Projects. Office of Technology Assessment OTA–BP–ETI–150 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Although revolutions may of course revive seemingly dead and unattractive subjects, as in the case of optics following the invention of the laser.Google Scholar