Sir, – When the proton synchrotron at CERN produced the first high energy K-mesons in the early sixties, Professor Cormac O Ceallaigh of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies was instrumental in ensuring that Irish scientists would have access to the centre by being part of a collaboration which included a number of universities and research institutes in both eastern and western Europe.
He used his influence as discoverer of one of the decay modes of the K-meson to establish an Irish presence at CERN. A small group of us were fortunate to work there from time to time on front line projects and received full access for our research. O Ceallaigh saw the huge benefits of CERN membership and was eventually disappointed when his efforts to encourage the government to join were ignored or misunderstood.
Several campaigns to generate interest in availing of the obvious scientific and technological aspects of membership have met with extraordinary apathy.
Just over a decade ago a sustained effort to change this situation was supported by the Royal Irish Academy and many Irish scientists working in Ireland and abroad. Following meetings with senior staff at Forfás and Enterprise Ireland and a review by Georgia Tech Consultants which advised against Ireland’s membership, the matter was conveniently kicked to touch once more. However, many scientists believed that the Georgia Tech report greatly understated the value of membership. Furthermore, its recommendation that Ireland should build up its presence in experimental high-energy physics before considering membership was a chicken-and-egg situation.
With the legacy of Ernest Walton, one of the pioneers of particle accelerators, O Ceallaigh, and later, Lochlainn O’Raifeartaigh,a world leader in the field of supersymmetry, which is part of the CERN research programme, we should be ashamed that after 60 years of lost opportunities, our gifted young students still cannot join the ranks of the brightest of world scholars in particle physics. – Yours, etc,