I. I. Rabi and the Birth of CERN

Physics Today article on the US role in the Birth of CERN:

The European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), sponsored by 20 neations (not including the United States), plays a key role in the international physics community, and hosts many U.S. researchers. Isidor I. Rabi, Columbia University physicist, Nobel laureate, and scientific statesman, played a key role in the creation of CERN.

"Rabi has been honored as the father of CERN in recognition of a pathbreaking intervention he made as a member of the US delegation to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) meeting in Florence, Italy, in June 1950. During that meeting, Rabi had an enabling resolution passed, after authorization by the US State Department, and after consultation with some European physicists. In essence, the resolution called for the establishment of regional research centers grouping together countries -- above all, in Western Europe -- that had previously made major contributions to science: countries like France, West Germany, and Italy. By pooling their human and financial resources, member nations could acquire the expensive instruments of modern research that they could not afford alone. As for the fields that ought to be explored at such centers, Rabi specifically mentioned physics, biology, and computing, with accelerator physics as the initial priority."