CHS-8 00 June 1984 I Cfl ::.i:: u STUDIES IN CERN HISTORY The Italian Scenario Parts I and II Lanfranco Belloni GENEVA 1984 II The Study of CERN History is a project financed by Institutions in several CERN Member Countries. This report presents preliminary findings, and is intended for incorporation into a more comprehensive study of CERN's history. It is distributed primarily to historians and scientists to provoke discussion, and no part of it should be cited or reproduced without written permission from the Team Leader. Comments are welcome and should be sent to: Study Team for CERN History c/oCERN CH-1211GENEVE23 Switzerland © Copyright Study Team for CERN History, Geneva 1984 CERN -Service d'information scientifique - 300 - juin 1984 The Italian scenario. Part I As is well known, Italian science had suffered grevious losses before the outbreak of World War II due to Mussolini's racial laws of July 14, 1938. Besides Fermi, Emilio Segre and Bruno Rossi were forced to leave the country. 1 No one could possibly hope for their return: in these post war years Italy had very few attractions both from the scientific and the political point of view. Already before the war Edoardo Amaldi2 was practically left alone and as a consequence tried to concentrate Italian talents and resources in nuclear pyhsics around Rome's Physics Institute. 3 Thus Amaldi arranged the move to Rome of several physicists, who were scattered in Italian universities and were left without an adequate support and a proper guide. Among them was Bernardo Nestore Cacciapuoti, 4 who in the immediate post-war years opted for a carrer at UNESCO and played a role in CERN's prehistory as the link between two of the Founding Fathers, Amaldi and Pierre Auger. Before the war, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) was the only government agency dealing with the problems of scientific and technological research. 5 After its foundation in 1923, CNR had managed to make its presence felt amidst many difficulties trying to act as a link between University research and industry.6 Just before the end of hostilities, CNR was reorganized to meet the challenges of "the years of reconstruction". 7 As an autonomous body of the State, directly dependent on the head of government, the main task of CNR remained "promotion, coordination and regulation of scientific research". Among CNR's primary functions, the "decreto" of March 1945 explicitly stated "consulting for the State in scientific and technical matters", while 2 post war emergency further recommended "investigation of scientific and technical problems bearing on the reconstruction of the country". In order to fulfil its mandate, CNR was entitled a) to co­ ordinate national activities in the various branches of science, b) to promote the stablishment and transformation of scientific laboratories providing financial support within its budgetary limits, possibly in association with other administrations, c) to implement and support research programs of national interest, d) to assist and help scientific institutes and individual scholars and researchers through grants, prizes etc., e) to do bibliographical, documentary and editorial work, f) to take care of Italian participation in inter­ national scientific and technical organizations in agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Such a list of "attribuzioni" provided the juridicial framework of the CNR President's future action in support of the European laboratory project. The main innovation of newly elected (in December 1944) CNR President Gustavo Colonnetti8 was the idea of CNR funded research "centers". Colonnetti's idea was duly embodied in a March 1945 Decreto. In order to fulfil CNR's mandate, specialized research in­ stitutes would have been the ideal solution. However, due to the extremely difficult situation of the immediate post-war years, CNR could not afford to establish even a single specialized research institute. The alternative solution, suggested by Colonnetti, was to help already existing and particularly distinguished research groups. By establishing its "centers", CNR could provide research funds to University-based groups. As far as physics was concerned, Amaldi's group was no doubt prominent. Thus already on October 1st 1945, the "Centro di studio per la fisica nucleare" was established in Rome University under Amaldi's directorship. Personnel and funding were provided by Rome University, while CNR provided funds for equipment and research expenses. The 3 initial endowment of Rome Centro was 5 Million Lire for research expenses. 9 The convention between CNR and Rome University establishing the Centro was supposed to 1 ast f or f ive. years. 1 0 Rome Centro was the first one in Italy as far as nuclear physics was concerned and provided a useful tool for Amaldi's policy of concentrating resources and man-power in the Italian capital. In the following years, two more centers for nuclear physics were established in Northern Italian universities - at Padua (1947) and Turin (1951). Besides CNR Centro in Rome, another important initiative in nuclear physics developed in industrial Northern Italy right after the war. In November 1946, a new laboratory, named Centro Informazioni Studied Esperienze (CISE), was established in Milan with financial support from several Northern Italian private firms. The laboratory's name was purposely kept vague, since at the time of its inception peace talks were still going on in Paris, and it was not clear yet whether Italy would be allowed to develop a nuclear energy program. In fact, CISE's basic goal was the design and construction of a low power experimental reactor. 11 At the time, production and distribution of electric energy in Italy was still in private hands. 12 The interest of electrical (and non-electrical) firms in the new nuclear energy technology was stimulated by industry-based engineer Mario Silvestri. He joined forces with Milan University physicist Giuseppe Bolla1 3 and managed to get support from industrial circles. As already said, theirs was a specific nuclear engineering program and they envisaged CISE as the main source of operative tech­ nology for the development of an Italian nuclear industry. Bolla and Silvestri gathered a group of brilliant young physicists and engineers and started a vigorous research program. CISE's young researchers had the benefit of frequent visits from Rome Centro physicists, namely Amaldi, Gilberto Bernardini and Bruno Ferretti. 4 The CISE physics 4 group started doing measurements of uranium nuclear constants, measurements of neutron diffusion etc. concentrating mainly on funda­ mental research relevant to reactor technology. Not surprisingly, the physicists were more interested in such fundamental researches than in technological puzzles themselves. Especially the consultants from Rome (with the possible exception of Ferretti) never showed more than a passing interest in reactor physics and technology. In fact, the Rome physicists were inclined to carry on the tradition of the "Italian" Fermi, so to speak, and never became involved in the kind of applied nuclear physics to which Fermi himself had turned after his move to the US. In a conference in 1949 on reactor developments, Amaldi explained that after 1945 nuclear research branched in three different directions. 15 The first one was "straight" nuclear physics, that is, the study of nuclear structure, nuclear energy levels and reactions. The second line of development of nuclear physics was represented by the study of elementary particle interactions, that is the kind of interactions ultimately determining nuclear structure. Such investigations were carried out either through the study of cosmic radiation or through the study of nuclear processes artificially pro­ duced by big accelerating machines. The third branch of post-war nuclear research was nuclear engineering. Amaldi stated that in his opinion, nuclear technology (whose main goal was reactor construction) would soon cut its umbilical chord connecting it with "mother" physics to become a straight engineering subject. Amaldi remarked that the three sectors of nuclear physics were not independent from each other. As he put it, "it is deemed certain that the solution of the fundamental problems of elementary particle interactions will have decisive influence, even if not an immediate one, on all researches of nuclear physics and engineering." Reports of research activities at Rome Centro, published 5 once a year in the CNR bulletin16 provide direct evidence of Amaldi's group's preferences regarding the three sectors in which nuclear physics had branched out after 1945. From the list of research papers put together at the end of each yearly report, one sees that reactor physics was definitely not pursued in Rome. "Straight" nuclear physics was a gradually abandoned field, while increasingly more effort went into particle physics. Rome Centro officially extended its activities to particle physics in 1947, when its denomination underwent a significant change from "Centro di studio per la fisica nucleare" to "Centro di studio per la fisica nucleare e delle particelle elemen­ tari". In fact, the second subject of research, that is particle physics, started prevailing on the first and original one at an over­ whelming rate. In his 1949 conference papers, Amaldi commented also on the relation between nuclear research and industrial technology. He mentioned the close links between nuclear physics and electronics and further remarked: "It is not possible to develop