The Shifting Balance of Power in Experimental Particle Physics

NOV 01, 1986

‘Bibliometrics’—the analysis of publication and citation data—indicates that Europe has taken the lead from the US in experimental high‐energy physics, which raises the question of how the US should respond.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881042

John Irvine

Ben R. Martin

James E. F. Skea

Tim Peacock

Nigel Minchin

David Crouch

For 30 years after the second world war, the United States dominated experimental particle physics. This dominance was particularly pronounced during the 1950s, when the leading US machines dwarfed those in Western Europe, while ostensibly equivalent facilities in the Soviet Union posed little threat. The 1960s witnessed the beginning of a European challenge from the new Proton Synchrotron at the joint European laboratory CERN near Geneva and from various smaller machines in national laboratories such as DESY at Hamburg. Yet despite a broad similarity in the research facilities available on either side of the Atlantic, the major discoveries of the 1960s—the $Ω^{-},$ the two types of neutrino, CP violation and deep inelastic electron scattering—all came from the US.

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References

1. Report of the 1983 Subpanel on New Facilities for the US High Energy Physics Program, High‐Energy Physics Advisory Panel, S. J. Wojcicki, chairman, Department of Energy (1983).
2. Nuclear Science: Information on DOE Accelerators Should Be Better Disclosed in the Budget, US General Accounting Office (1986).
3. B. R. Martin, J. Irvine, Res. Policy 13, 183, 247 (1984).https://doi.org/REPYBP
4. British Science Evaluation Methods, Committee on Science and Technology, House of Representatives, 95th Congress, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1986).
5. J. Irvine, B. R. Martin, Social Studies of Sci. 13, 48 (1983).
6. B. R. Martin, J. Irvine, Res. Policy 13, 203 (1984).https://doi.org/REPYBP
7. P. Galison, Rev. Mod. Phys. 55, 477 (1983).https://doi.org/RMPHAT
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9. B. R. Martin, J. Irvine, Minerva 19, 408 (1981).https://doi.org/MINEFY
10. S. J. Wojcicki, quoted in Science 220, 809 (1983).https://doi.org/SCIEAS
11. D. de Solla Price, Res. Policy 13, 3 (1984).https://doi.org/REPYBP

More about the Authors

John Irvine. University of Sussex, England.

Ben R. Martin. University of Sussex, England.

James E. F. Skea. University of Sussex, England.

Tim Peacock. University of Sussex, England.

Nigel Minchin. University of Sussex, England.

David Crouch. University of Sussex, England.