European Committee for Future Accelerators

Nearly 21 years ago, in December 1962, Viktor Weisskopf and Cecil Powell, then respectively CERN's Director General and Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee, called together a group of European high energy physicists to advise on steps to reach higher energy. The CERN PS had been in operation since 1959, its experimental programme was well established and the time had come to think of the future. The Chairman of the group, which later took the title 'European Committee for Future Accelerators', was Edoardo Amaldi and his influential report, presented to the CERN Council in June 1963, reviewed the whole structure and possible development of the field in the CERN Member States. Its proposals included the construction of the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), and of a 300 GeV proton accelerator which was then envisaged as being the major facility of a second CERN Laboratory elsewhere in Europe