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134 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



nations. There has been a consistent pattern of helpfulness toward 

 countries whose scientists had political or economic problems of 

 collaboration. 



• CERN's stable finances have permitted it to do things well, i.e., to 

 devote the necessary resources to the building and maintenance of 

 machines, beamlines, and detectors. Few if any scientists there have had 

 to operate under the constraint, only too well known in the United 

 States, to cut comers whenever possible, to take inordinate risks, to 

 compromise quality. 



• CERN's facilities have been designed and built by well-paid 

 engineers — more or less like NASA, which cannot afford technical 

 failures. A U.S. tendency to have research physicists act as amateur 

 machine builders has been avoided. 



• The ensuing high quality of machine building has paid off hand- 

 somely: only by the high standards of magnet and vacuum chamber 

 construction can the success of converting the SPS accelerator into a 

 colliding pp machine be explained. 



• CERN realized early on that the presence of a strong theory group is 

 of great benefit to a laboratory based on accelerator work. Today, a 

 senior staff position with the CERN Theory Division can compete for 

 talent with a professorship at Europe's most prestigious universities. 

 Temporary positions, too, are made unusually attractive. Visitors come 

 in hordes. As a result, much excellent theoretical work is done at CERN. 

 U.S. acceleratorlaboratoriesrarely if ever have been able to compete for 

 theoretical talent on this scale. 



• There has been an explicit policy to bring European industry into 

 close contact with the laboratory. Unlike a tendency well entrenched in 

 the United States, there has not been a trend to build magnets more 

 cheaply on site, to build klystrons or power supplies in competition with 

 industry: Orders have been passed out to industry, sometimes along 

 with necessary expertise. This policy, well balanced over the member 

 states, has made powerful friends for CERN. 



• The laboratory management has made consistent efforts to make 

 not only governments, but also a wide public understand its efforts. The 

 popular brochures put out by CERN are exemplary in content and 

 presentation. 



Clearly, there is a distaff side to the heavily organized, painstakingly 

 defined structure of CERN. On balance, however, the laboratory is 

 liberal in its approach and its practices, elitist in its aims. Therein lies its 

 key to success. 



