Am reading “The big machine” by Robert Jungk. This book is exactly 50 years old. It was written at the time of the “particle zoo”, where more than a hundred subatomic particles had been discovered but not yet explained using the “eightfold way” or the “three quarks for muster mark”.

This is an early “popularisation of science” type book, but Jungk’s interest isn’t in the physics itself but in how big science is done, how it manages to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles in the pursuit of excellence.

Pre-CERN began as one of many pan-European projects begun following World War II. No-one knows who first came up with the idea. The other pan-European projects failed because they began by getting governments of each country to send representatives to the table, but then these representatives had to abide by the political agenda of their country in spite of their own personal feelings. CERN began as a conference of individuals, who took the agreed conclusions back to their home countries as advocates. A big difference.

The first threats to pre-CERN were from the physicists themselves. Bohr and the Copenhagen group objected that it would fail because the aims were too pie-in-the-sky. Joliot-Curie objected on the grounds that CERN would attract all the best physicists leaving the whole of the rest of Europe impoverished. Others objected that the Americans would have too big an influence on the results. None of these happened. The proton-synchrotron was designed.

Then came the financial threats to pre-CERN. Getting UN approval wasn’t easy, and the start-up funding from the UN was so small that it wouldn’t even have bought a single luxury car. Italy was the first country to pledge money followed quickly by France, and later by others. By the way, all the historical documents on pre-CERN at the UN were about to be trashed when they were saved by a newspaper reporter.

Then came political threats to pre-CERN. Four sites were considered and Geneva selected, but to get that approved the citizens of Geneva first had to sign a petition. But even then opposition was fierce, so all citizens of Geneva had to approve it through a vote. Pre-CERN became CERN. Construction began before political approval from the CERN member nations.

Then came the technical threats. A new breakthrough in technology was needed or else the magnets would have been impossibly heavy and expensive. The breakthrough came from Brookhaven in the USA, where it was realised that alternating left-right and up-down focussing magnets could compress the beam to a much smaller diameter allowing much smaller magnets. The proton-synchrotron had to be redesigned from scratch. The required accuracy was such that nobody could draw the circle on the ground that accurately, or make magnets with a magnetic field that accurate. Solving those problems led to the first spin-off technologies.

Then measurements showed that the ground wasn’t stable enough, even down at the bedrock. The reason – the Moon. The tides were pulling the circle out of position. More technical problems followed.

CERN as utopia? Jungk makes a good case. From the very start, security was negligible and it remained negligible at least up until the book was written. That was unique for any facility dealing with atomic science. Anybody who wanted to visit CERN could visit, and every atomic physicist from Europe did, with many from outside Europe. Neither of the first two director generals of CERN had any sort of degree or diploma. Adams was a mechanic who joined British Telecom and was drawn into the radar project during WW II where his genius was recognised. He totally avoided micro-managing CERN, and was always available to listen to complaints. People rarely complained to him because they knew that the whole facility would hear those complaints within a day. Sure there were plenty of conflicts of personality in CERN, for example between physicists and builders, but those got solved. Even the language difficulty ended up being as much a help as a hindrance, a new language called CERNese grew up that was a mixture of French, German, English and technical physics.

Equipment at CERN is never treated as finished, but only ever as a work in progress. Even during the few years between the start-up of the proton-synchrotron and 1966, the beam intensity there was increased by more than a factor of 100.

Because people visit CERN for 2 to 3 years before going home rather than stay there permanently, the whole of Europe and even the whole of the world has benefited as people take the lessons learnt at CERN home with them. People working at CERN were far happier than those working at other atomic research places around the world, such as Brookhaven in the US and Dubna in Russia.