ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Science for Europe: CERN and the conceptual construction of European scientific cooperation

• In Event: Sciences and the Ideas of Europe: Geographies, Temporalities and Actors

English Abstract

In 1954, the convention of the European Organisation for Nuclear Energy (otherwise known as CERN) came into force. As the first intergovernmental scientific laboratory, CERN would set the stage for the development of an entire ecology of European organisations similarly devoted to scientific cooperation in the decades to follow. Though CERN’s mission was clearly scientific in character, the founders of the organisation had also imagined CERN as making a significant contribution to the project of European unity. CERN’s creation thus not only required convincing the various governments to finance the project, but also involved reconceptualising science and scientific cooperation as a resoundingly European endeavour.
In my contribution, I uncover some of the ideational and conceptual work surrounding CERN during the early years of the organisation. Drawing on a diverse body of sources, ranging from personal material of a small network of founding fathers and other key actors (memoirs, speeches, lectures, publications) to institutional documentation (annual reports, official publications, meeting minutes), I show how CERN was continually being portrayed as the manifestation of a shared European cultural identity. This shared identity was in turn predicated on the assumption that the roots of modern science were geographically located in Europe (and in particular in the CERN member states), thereby elevating scientific cooperation between European states to the epitome of Europeanness.

Author

• Luca Forgiarini