Fermi, CERN and the renaissance of INFN
Some 170 scientists from all over the world came to Rome at the beginning of December to commemorate the legacy of Enrico Fermi 50 years after his untimely death, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of CERN, and to mark the 25th anniversary of the "renaissance" of INFN. Invited by Antonino Zichichi, president of the Enrico Fermi Centre and of the World Federation of Scientists, they met in the International Meeting Hall of the Italian Foreign Ministry, in the Palazzo La Farnesina, under the patronage of the minister of foreign affairs, Gianfranco Fini.
The symposium was opened by Zichichi, who reminded the audience of Fermi's legacy of a great alliance between science and society. Fermi's "pupil", Tsung-Dao Lee, and Yoichiro Nambu from the Enrico Fermi Institute in Chicago talked about his life in the city and their personal encounters with him. Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN, then presented CERN's scientific projects and strategy for the future. He recalled the roots of the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as documented in a CERN report recently published in Zichichi's honour. A special memoir highlighting CERN's history, edited by Zichichi, was presented to the minister.
The talks that followed covered the renaissance of INFN, after Zichichi became the institute's president. Twenty-five years ago, he elaborated a new scientific strategy for INFN based on three projects - Gran Sasso, LEP and the HERA machine at DESY - and convinced the Italian government to increase the budget considerably to allow adequate financial support for Italian research activities at the frontier of physics at CERN and other international laboratories.
Lorenzo Foà recalled the impact of INFN's renaissance on physicists working at CERN, citing his personal experience. As an example of the impact in Germany, Günter Wolf presented the latest scientific results from HERA, a project that was approved thanks to the participation and contribution of INFN. The current president of INFN, Roberto Petronzio, then gave the keynote speech on 25 years of INFN, its renaissance and its future. Carlo Rizzuto recalled the impact of INFN's renaissance on the establishment of Italy's Institute for Material Science, and Enzo Boschi spoke of the impulse given to the Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology. Lucio Rossi, head of the LHC magnet group at CERN, recalled Zichichi's vision of investing in advanced superconducting magnet technology in Italian industry.
Among further talks, Alex Müller spoke of a workshop at Erice, where he first had the idea about where and how to look for high Tc superconducting materials, which later won him a Nobel prize. Finally, Raffaella Schneider presented the projects of the young researchers holding special grants from the Enrico Fermi Centre. During the meeting, several welcome messages were read out from the Italian President and various ministers.
The second day was devoted to presentations on projects, planned and implemented within the framework of ILSEAT, the International Laboratory for Science, Engineering and Advanced Physical and Biomedical Technologies. Speaking in the Augustinian conference hall in the Vatican, Zichichi introduced ILSEAT with its three components: science, technology and global emergencies. The morning session continued with presentations on interdisciplinary topics ranging from extreme weather events and pollution, to health physics, to accelerator and detector R&D, and parallel computing.
In the afternoon, a talk by the minister of health, Girolamo Sirchia, was followed by several presentations on the Cultural Emergency and the Extreme Energy Events project - an educational project to measure the effects of very-high-energy primary cosmic rays (see CERN Courier July/August 2004 p35). The meeting closed with a review by the national representatives on the status of the World Federation of Scientists' National Scholarship Programmes, established in 30 countries around the globe. The day concluded with a concert in the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, when the Erice Prize winners for 2003 and 2004 were announced and the awards presented to Robert Clark, Maurice Cosandey and Alex Müller.
Further reading
CERN/DG-2004-306, "The Roots of LEP and LHC", published in honour of Antonino Zichichi and his contribution to particle physics in Italy as INFN president and in Europe as chairman of the 1979 ECFA Working Group defining the layout of LEP.