9 



from many different countries. The life in common in mountain huts and the coor- 

 dination of the experiments planned by different groups paved the way to the idea of 

 vider and more ambitious collaborations which were popping out in various places 

 in Europe. 



Cosmic ray physicists, of course, were interested in a European laboratory 

 only if devoted to high-energ>- physics. In the years l94S-1950,the various aspects 

 of the problem, including energj- and cost of machines, were examined in frequent 

 discussions among European scientists. 



At the European Cultural Conference held in Lausanne in December 1949^ 

 the proposal was made to create in Europe an international research institution 

 without mentioning, however, nuclear physics or fundamental particles. 



. In June 1950 the General Assembly of UNESCO was held in Florence and the 

 American Nobel Laureate, Isidor L Rabi, who was a member of the delegation from 

 the United States, made a ver>- important speech about "the urgency of creating 

 regional centres and laboratories in order to increase and make more fruitful the 

 international collaboration of scientists in fields where the effort of any one countrj- 

 in the region was insufficient for the task". In the official statement approved 

 unanimously by the General Assembly along the same lines, neither Europe nor 

 high-energy physics were mentioned. But this specific case was clearly intended by 

 many people, in particular, by Rabi himself and by Pierre Auger, who was Director 

 of the Department of Natural Sciences of UNTSCO. 



A further endorsement of this idea came from the I nfernaiional Union of 

 Pure and Applied Physics at the beginning of the summer 1950. Rabi's proposal, 



