The 1956 CERN Symposium

CERN, currently the largest organization in the world for particle physics, was founded in 1954. Originally located in Meyrin, at the outskirts of the city of Geneva in Switzerland, it has with time extended into neighboring France. The Theoretical Study Division of CERN, however, was created already in 1952, i.e., before the official inauguration of CERN. It was situated in Copenhagen. Christian Møller [1] was appointed (part-time) as the Director and there were two full time senior staff members, Gunnar Källén and Ben R. Mottelson. While constructing buildings and accelerators were in progress, an international conference was organized by CERN in the city of Geneva. This “CERN Symposium on High Energy Accelerators and Pion Physics”, 11–23 June 1956, attracted about 250 participants from outside CERN, among them at least 18 Nobel Laureates or future Laureates. Unfortunately, the participants from CERN are not listed in the Proceedings [2]. The conference focused on measuring devices such as bubble chambers, track chambers as well as counter techniques. These turned out to be essential for many future discoveries. Physics-wise, as the title indicated, the conference was dominated by pions. The most exciting news of the Symposium was an announcement made by Pauli [3] stating that he had just received a telegram from Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan (Los Alamos) informing him: “We are happy to inform you that we have definitely detected neutrinos …” Pauli added: “I make this announcement because otherwise everybody would ask me separately.”