Chapter 5 The relationship between CERN and its ‘visitors’ in the 1970s

Abstract

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Central European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) staff and management negotiated a number of arrangements with the outside users aimed at protecting the visitors' right to work around the machines. A committee structure was set up for deciding on the experimental program on which visitors were well-represented. A suitable scheme for using beams and distributing photographs was worked out by bubble-chamber physicists once the big equipment built by groups in France and at CERN had been installed and was running. Finally, an equilibrated mix of CERN teams and outside groups using the electronic modes of detection had been established by 1964/65. In 1961, five out of six groups doing electronic experiments at the CERN PS were composed of CERN staff only, plus the odd individual visitor. By 1965, only three out of twelve teams were built like this. There were eight mixed teams of CERN staff and outsiders working at the machine and one team composed of visitors only.