CERN: Past performance and future prospects III. CERN and the future of world high-energy physics

In a series of three papers. we attempt to evaluate the past scientific performance of the three main particle accelerators at the Geneva-based European Organjzation for Nuclear Research (CERN) over the period since 1960. and to assess the future prospects for CERN and its users during the next ten to fifteen years. We concerned ourselves in the first paper (Paper 1 Martin and Irvine [29]) with the position of the CERN accelerators in world high-energy physics relative to those at other large laboratories working in the field. We dealt primarily with the period from 1969 to 1978, and attempted to establish how the experimental output from the three principal CERN accelerators. taken as (1 whole. compared with that from other major facilities. In undertaking this comparative evaluation. we drew on the method of “converging partial indicators” used in previous studies of three Big Science specialties. In contrast, the second paper {Paper II Irvine and Martin 1241) focused in detail on the scientific performance of each of the CERN accelerators tuken rndillidua/(v. In particular, it asked. first, how the outputs from the CERN 28 GeV (giga or billion electron-volts) Proton Synchrotron compare with those from a very similar 33 GeV American accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory over the past two decades. Second, how great have been the experimental achievements of the Intersecting Storage Rings in world terms? And. third, how do