ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

New Perspectives on the History of the CERN Laboratory: The 1980s

• In Event: New Perspectives on Collaboration in Science 2

English Abstract

This talk examines the history of CERN in Geneva from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, asking whether and how this intergovernmental organization redirected its trajectory or continued along its established path. Building on previous work on the history of CERN (especially Vols. I–III) and prompted by an initiative to digitize part of CERN’s archival holdings, it reassesses what, in fact, changed during this long decade. From the second oil crisis to the end of the Soviet regime, CERN’s scientific, technological, economic, and political environment underwent marked shifts. Within the laboratory, transitions from chambers to detectors, the consolidation of the Standard Model, greater diversity, the construction of a new tunnel for today’s largest accelerator, and new exchange programs reshaped the organization’s composition, scale, and ambitions. CERN also emerged as a center for computer networking, building infrastructures whose impact extended beyond physics. Yet important continuities remained, especially in the organization of collaboration within the laboratory, long a defining feature of CERN since the 1950s. This talk brings these external-internal dynamics into focus, highlighting tensions and transformations that enrich existing accounts of CERN as a model of international scientific collaboration.

Author

• Barbara Hof, University of Lausanne