Origins

Many of CERN’s founders gathered for the Third Session of the provisional CERN Council in Amsterdam on 4 October 1952. At this session, Geneva was chosen as the site for the Laboratory and it was decided to build a 25-30 GeV Proton Synchrotron.

French physicist Louis de Broglie puts forward the first official proposal for the creation of a European laboratory during the European Cultural Conference held in Lausanne (Switzerland) in December 1949. At the UNESCO Intergovernmental Conference held in Paris in December 1951, the first resolution to create a European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) is adopted. Two months later, eleven countries sign an agreement establishing the provisional CERN Council.