Editorial: Half a Century of EPS ! The European Physical Society celebrates its 50th anniversary
It is always great to celebrate an anniversary, even more when it is for half a century!
What follows is not really an editorial but most a description of ongoing activities based on a presentation I gave at the EPS Council on 7th of April in Paris.
With a series of events and actions, the EPS remembers this year its foundation that took place in 1968 at the University of Geneva. Under the impulsion of the Italian physicist Gilberto Bernardini, the creation of this truly international cooperative venture in physics became reality with the aim to contribute to the strength of European cultural unity. Initially consisting of 62 individual members representing 20 countries the EPS has grown to become the large learned society and umbrella organisation of today, grouping 42 national physical societies in Europe.
Thinking about it, 1968 was in fact a year of big turmoil: Vietnam War, assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in the USA, the invasion of Prague, student revolts in France and worldwide political and social protest movements. The new hippie and baby boomer generation was up. In science and technology 1968 was dominated by space exploration, with the Soviet space craft Zond 5 and the Apollo missions heading around the moon Breakthroughs happened in computer science with the ‘Mother of all Demos’ made in Stanford by Douglas Engelbart [1], or in physics with the first use of a multiwire proportional chamber for particle detection by Georges Charpak and in medicine with the second successful human heart transplant performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in South Africa.
Well, the world has changed quite a bit since then! And not always for the better.
The first action decided by the EPS50 organisation committee for 2018 was to create a logo. The final version illustrates the deformation of space-time by a heavy mass according to Einstein’s general relativity theory. It is also a reference to the newly created Gravitational Physics Division. The second action was to collect as many documents as possible tracing the history of EPS in order to write several contributions from its foundation to today in two separate issues of Europhysics News (EPN). The first EPN 49/2 issue has already appeared with 11 short chapters covering among others, the respective developments of Member Societies, Divisions and Groups, and Associate Membership or discussing the Eat-West relations, the Hungarian connection and the move to Mulhouse. Another series will be published in EPN 49/3. A third action was the creation of twelve banners covering several topics of Physics in YOUR life, from the invention of the lasers, the GPS or MRI to the application of physics to the analysis and preservation of our cultural heritage. A pin was also created with the sentence “Responsible science for a better world”. Why responsible? Because today scientists, like their learned societies, have important roles to play in promoting research and innovation but also in producing objective scientific evidenceto positively influence politicians, policy makers and the public on the actual grand societal challenges.
Several EPS50 events have already been or will be organised by divisions and groups or national societies. One session took place in March during the joint DPG-EPS CMD27 Spring meeting in Berlin, a second one at EPS Council on 7 April in Paris, another one will be organised in June during the SEENET-MTP (South European Network in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics) workshop or school at the University of Nis, Serbia. But the next important official event will be the ‘Festakt’ on the 28 September in the Aula Magna of the University of Geneva where it all started. A nice program is being prepared with four high-level invited speakers and many invited VIPs. The following day an EPS Forum on Physics and Society will be organised on the topic ‘Physics and ethics for society in the Horizon 2050‘, using this opportunity to look into the future of EPS and physics in general. The EPS History of Physics group will meet in October for a workshop in San Sebastian (ES) and by the same token will have a session devoted to EPS50 and participate in the inauguration of the Laboratorium in Bergara, a new EPS historic site celebrating the discovery of wolframium or tungsten in 1783 by the Elhuyar brothers.
An interesting project is the preparation of a booklet summarizing all the EPS historic sites that have been inaugurated up to now and which will be presented at the ‘Festakt’ in Geneva. The EPS Young Minds sections will also contribute with specific activities to the EPS anniversary, in particular with a photography contest. Last but not least, the EPL Association has decided to set aside a special fund for activities related to the EPS anniversary.
Now it is evident that the celebration of this EPS 50th anniversary can be shared by all National Physical Societies and all Individual Members willing to contribute in any manner. Ideas and new initiatives are still welcome.
Christophe Rossel
chair of the EPS 50th Anniversary Planning Committee
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
