The Origin

Following the 1990 proposal by several nuclear physicists from the Niels Bohr Institute, the community of European theoretical nuclear physicists was invited to discuss the opportunity of founding a European (and in fact international) center. This idea was greeted with enthusiasm. After two years of public discussions and appropriate referendums, various groups were invited to formulate specific proposals, and a Steering Committee was nominated to evaluate them.

The Steering committee was chaired by Oriol Bohigas (Orsay) and included Jean-Paul Blaizot (Saclay), Rudi Malfliet (Groningen), Ulrich Mosel (Giessen), Ben Mottelson (Copenhagen), and Aage Winther (Copenhagen). Specific proposals were elaborated by groups in Denmark, Italy (two proposals: one from INFN in Legnaro (Padua) and one from the nuclear physics group of the Physics Department of Trento), Netherlands, and CERN. A careful scrutiny of various projects was undertaken. European delegates convened in Orsay-Paris in 1992. Given the scientific quality of the project, the logistics provided and the local financial support assured, the nuclear physics community was practically unanimous in its choice of the Trento project.

The European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*) was founded on behalf of the European nuclear physicists community, by the Istituto Trentino di Cultura (ITC) in January 1993 and overseen by Prof. Renzo Leonardi. In February 1996 a meeting of the European nuclear physics community was convened to evaluate the first three years of activity of the Centre. ECT* underwent a critical review: an evaluation committee was elected and asked to produce an evaluation report. In December 1996 the international evaluation of the Centre was completed and the evaluation report produced. Since then steps have been taken to obtain from European Institutions formal recognition of the European role of ECT*, which was completed by an agreement of mutual understanding with the European Science Foundation (ESF) Associated Committee NuPECC (the Nuclear Physics European Coordination Committee). The agreement was ratified by the ESF in autumn 1997.

Bilateral agreements of collaboration have been signed with the Russian-Nordic-British Theory (RNBT) collaboration for Radioactive Nuclear Beam Physics (JINR-Dubna, RRC-KI-Moscov; UiB-Bergen, NBI-Copenhagen, CTH/UiG-Göteborg; SCNP U-Surrey-Guildford); the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Trieste); the Physics Department of the University of Adelaide; the Institute of Physics (Belgrade); and the Physics Department of the University of Perugia (AMS Collaboration with the Cosmion Laboratory, Moscow). An important step in efforts to ensure direct support from European national funding agencies was taken when representatives of the agencies of the three largest users of the Centre agreed to convene at ECT* to discuss future funding. At the meeting, which was held in January 1998, the representatives of BMBF (Germany), CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France), and INFN (Italy) agreed to propose to their national funding agencies that they provide a regular yearly contribution, in order to flank the local financial contribution. This was an initial step towards a broader cooperative effort of the European nations participating in the field of nuclear physics and related areas. NuPECC has agreed to help in coordinating this European effort.