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News from ICTP 107 - Commentary
This year marks the 40th anniversary of ICTP. The Centre will celebrate the event by drawing on the past to expand its impact and reach in the future.
Centre Turns Forty
When Abdus Salam presided over
the Centre's inaugural workshop, the International Seminar on
Plasma Physics, on 5 October 1964, it marked the successful end
to a non-stop four-year journey characterised by intense personal
commitment and resolve.
During this period, Salam had spent much of his time in the bureaucratic
maze of international organisations trying to persuade those with
the power and purse strings to create a global centre for theoretical
physicists and mathematicians from the developing world.
At a time when most diplomats and international civil servants
set their sites on East-West relations, Salam focussed on what
was then an obscure notion: a potential NorthSouth axis in
science. His ability to get others to listen--and then act--served
as a remarkable testimony both to his persuasiveness and persistence.
Forty years later, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical
Physics (ICTP) is a shining example of the enduring value derived
from international scientific cooperation in a troubled world.
ICTP, in effect, has become a lasting reflection of Salam's vision.
Vision and persistence have been at the heart of the Centre's
experience for the past four decades and represent the most enduring
legacy that Abdus Salam has given to the institution that now
bears his name.
More than 4000 scientists currently visit the Centre each year
attending 40-plus conferences, workshops and seminars in a wide
variety of fields related to physics and mathematics.
The Centre's pioneering efforts to forge strategies for the uplift
of science in the South--its associateship scheme, diploma course,
affiliated centres (through the Office of External Activities),
the Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) programme,
and long-standing efforts to provide access to scientific literature
in the South (culminating with the creation of the eJournal
Delivery Service in 2001) have blazed a path for scientific
capacity building that other institutions and nations throughout
the world have sought to follow.
Equally important, ICTP created a nurturing environment for the
development of a constellation of institutions in Trieste, each
of which is dedicated, in part, to the promotion of science and
technology in the developing world.
These institutions include the Third World Academy of Sciences
(TWAS), the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations (TWNSO),
the Third World Organization for Women in Science (TWOWS), the
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
(ICGEB), the International Centre for Science and High Technology
(ICS), the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA),
the Synchrotron Light Laboratory Elettra, and the InterAcademy
Panel on International Issues (IAP).
Collectively, this institutional constellation has given rise
to the 'Trieste System,' a name that is gaining increasing resonance
across the world as a symbol of global science. The city of Trieste
itself has become a crossroads for the exchange of science--both
North and South, East and West. The Italian government's willingness
to generously support each of Trieste's scientific enterprises
reflects the government's own vision--and willingness--to turn
Abdus Salam's vision into a reality.
For all of these reasons, ICTP is both a place and an ideal, and
on the occasion of our 40th anniversary, we plan to celebrate
both.
As a small contribution to the celebration, the next several issues
of News from ICTP will contain feature articles examining
the development of the Centre's existence over the past four decades.
The articles will be written in the first person by individuals
who have been instrumental in making the Centre what it is today:
One of the world's foremost examples of science both as a universal
intellectual pursuit and an international forum for inquiry that
helps to bring people of different cultures closer together.
We begin in this series with an article by André-Marie Hamende who
will examine the events that led to the creation of ICTP in the
1960s. His article begins on page 6.