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News from ICTP 111 - Features - Ideals and Realities in the 1980s
Gallieno Denardo describes the Centre's rapid development in the 1980s---a decade of explosive growth that, in many ways, transformed ICTP into what it is today.
Ideals and Realities in the 1980s
The glory that the Nobel Prize
brings to its recipients also brightens the reputation of the
institutions for which they work.
But those institutions are usually already well-known throughout
the world---the likes of Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford universities.
As a result, it's usually the newly minted laureates who gain
lasting star status not only among scientists but the public at
large.
In the case of Abdus Salam and ICTP, however, the impact of the
Nobel Prize boosted the institution as much as and, in fact, even
more than the individual.
Abdus Salam received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1979, which
he shared with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for their theoretical
unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces.
The recognition afforded by the prize not only represented a personal
triumph for Salam but a boon to the prestige of ICTP and a primary
force that soon elevated the Centre to new heights.
In the late 1970s, the Centre operated on an annual budget of
US$1.8 million---not much higher in real terms than a decade before.
Spurred by the enthusiasm for the Centre expressed by its foreign
minister Giulio Andreotti, an enthusiasm that became even more
intense after Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize, Italy initially
decided to raise its annual contributions to ICTP to US$7.3 million.
The announcement took place at the ICTP Commemorative Meeting
on 'The Next Twenty Years in Plasma Physics' held in Trieste in
September 1984. By the end of the decade, ICTP's budget would
exceed US$13 million with funding not only from the Italian government
but also from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO).
This boost in funding meant that the Centre would never be the
same.
Not only was ICTP able to greatly expand its core research and
training activities in high energy physics, condensed matter physics
and mathematics, but it was also able to embrace new subfields
and to develop new capacity building strategies that substantially
broadened the scope and range of its activities.
Workshops and conferences, for example, in radiopropagation, geophysics,
cloud physics and microelectronics were all organised for the
first time during this decade, setting the stage for the creation
of the Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory, the SAND (Structure
and Nonlinear Dynamics of the Earth) group, and the ICTP-INFN
(Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics) Microprocessor
Laboratory. ICTP activities in optics, medical physics, soil physics
and a host of other areas all received their start in the 1980s.
In the 1970s, ICTP organised fewer than 15 research and training
activities each year. In the 1980s, the annual number of Centre-sponsored
research and training activities nearly tripled to 40. In the
1970s, about 1500 visitors on average came to ICTP each year.
In the 1980s, the average number of visitors stood at 4000 a year---again
virtually a threefold increase.
As the level of activities and the number of scientists participating
in ICTP activities rose, the Centre had to take a number of significant
logistical steps to accommodate these changes. There was a dramatic
growth in staff, which increased from 20 in 1980 to 120 in 1989.
With additional help from Italian authorities, ICTP doubled the
size of the Main Building through a construction project that
began in 1984; occupied the Galileo Guesthouse in 1982; and signed
a long-term lease for the Adriatico Guesthouse in 1985. Miramare
train station was re-opened in 1987 to accommodate the increased
flow of staff and visitors.
Before the 1980s, all ICTP research and training activities took
place on the Miramare campus. But now the Centre was ready to
'export' its successful strategies to the developing world---and
parts of the developing world were ready to receive them. The
infusion of additional resources, of course, provided ICTP with
an opportunity to pursue this goal but it was the ad hoc
advisory committee's recommendation for "the Centre to operationalise
activities in developing countries," issued in 1983, that
provided the rationale for such endeavours.
To help advance its overall outreach strategy, ICTP first turned
to its closest scientific neighbours---the Italian research laboratories---and
it did so by creating the Training and Research in Italian Laboratories
(TRIL) programme in 1983.
Three primary principles lay behind the birth of the TRIL programme.
First, it enabled ICTP to tap the expertise and facilities found
in Italy's network of laboratories, allowing the Centre to extend
its reach well beyond the research and training activities offered
at ICTP. Second, TRIL provided opportunities for scientists from
the developing world to engage in experimental and applied physics,
a choice not readily available on the Miramare campus where the
focus remained largely on theoretical studies. And third, TRIL
enabled the Centre to strengthen its ties with scientific institutions
in Italy in ways that would benefit both ICTP and its host country.
Over the past two decades, some 1000 scientists from the developing
world have participated in the TRIL programme, and more than 330
Italian scientific institutions have partnered with ICTP in this
effort.
TRIL, however, still confined the Centre's capacity-building strategies
to Northern institutions. One of the most fundamental shifts in
ICTP's method of operation took place in 1985 with the creation
of the Office of External Activities (OEA), which seeks to help
scientists in the developing world forge their own research and
training agendas by developing research and training activities
within their own countries. To advance this goal, OEA has financed
the creation of affiliated centres and networks, organised visiting
scholars' programmes, and funded workshops and conferences. The
point is that all of these activities have taken place 'there'
and not 'here,' and that all are designed to have scientists from
the developing world assume the lead in the programmes' development
and implementation. Over the past two decades, more than 40 affiliated
centres and networks have been established, among them the Lasers,
Atomic and Molecular Physics (LAMP) Network in Dakar, Senegal,
for the African countries, and the Multiple Optical Network (MON),
based in La Plata, Argentina, for Latin-American countries.
At the same time, the 1980s, largely as a result of the growing
reputation and visibility of ICTP, witnessed the creation of an
expanding Trieste-based nexus of international scientific research
and training centres that ultimately came to be called the Trieste
System.
These institutions include TWAS (the Academy of Sciences for the
Developing World) and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology (ICGEB), both created in 1983, and the International
Centre for Science and High Technology (ICS), which was created
in 1988. The latter operates under the United Nations Industrial
Development Organization (UNIDO).
The 1980s proved to be a stimulating and productive decade, one
in which the Centre's programmes were vastly expanded.
All in all, the 1980s were a decade that saw Salam's noble ideals
turn into Nobel realities.
Gallieno Denardo
Former Head, ICTP Office of External Activities
ICTP IN THE '80s
1980
First workshop on earthquake processes
1981
First college on microprocessors
1982
ICTP Prize created
Galileo Guesthouse opens
First college on biophysics
First meeting on applications of physics to medicine and biology
First course on mathematical ecology
1983
TWAS established
TRIL programme begins
First college on soil physics
1984 20th anniversary
Expansion of Main Building
Books and Equipment Donation programme launched
Carlo Rubbia wins Nobel Prize for confirming experimentally Abdus
Salam's theory
First college on troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere
1985
Italian contribution increases to US$7.3 million
ICTP Dirac Medal established
Office of External Activities established
ICTP-INFN Microprocessor Laboratory established
Renting of Adriatico Guesthouse begins
First workshop on cloud physics and climate
1986
Mathematics research group established
Adriatico Research Conferences expand training and research in
condensed matter physics
First conference on synchrotron radiation
1987
High Temperature Superconductivity laboratory opens
1988
Abdus Salam proposes creation of International Centre for Sciences
(ICS)
Creation of Third World Network of Scientific Organizations (TWNSO)
and Third World Organization for Women in Science (TWOWS)
1989 25th anniversary
First Staff Associates appointed
Scientific Computer section installs mini-supercomputer
Italian contribution reaches US$13.5 million