CERN the atom trapped by the Marshall Plan

This article is dedicated to the story of CERN's conception and gestation that began 50 years ago by a path-breaking intervention the American scientist I.I. Rabi made as a member of the US delegation to a UNESCO meeting in Italy. CERN was created in part to help restore a great European scientific tradition by stopping the brain drain of the European scientists to the US, they were fleeing a devastated Europe lacking adequate research facilities. This article highlights also that the establishment of a big European laboratory advanced US scientific and foreign policy plans. US would benefit from the recovery of European science because Western Europe remained the cradle of scientific discovery while America'strength lay in the application of scientific discovery. Among US foreign policy aims we can cite: the promotion of European unity through the re-integration of Western Germany in order to challenge the communist threat, and to provide Western Germany with an acceptable framework for the development of 'peaceful' physics. (A.C.)