By Martinus Veltman
The history of the NIKHEF has been published several times, in particular there is an overview due to Tiecke that may be found at the NIKHEF website. Yet there is a strange gap, namely the period 1973-1976. What happened?
Let me first briefly review what happened until 1973. Concerning high energy physics people were often holding meetings that in general did not result in any practical progress. The reason for this lack of progress had to do with the integration of the various groups. Basically, there were the following groups:
• The Amsterdam group, located in the Zeeman laboratory directed by Kluyver;
• The Nijmegen group under the direction of Van de Walle;
• A group under the direction of Sens working at locations such as CERN;
• The Amsterdam nuclear physics group, located in the IKO.
In 1965 the NIKHEF was essentially born, to be built at the present location. Other than that nothing happened. In 1968 or so there was a lot of commotion, because the RAWB (a committee advising the government) brought out an advice against participation at CERN and encouraging nuclear physics, in particular the IKO, the Amsterdam institute for nuclear-physics research. Noteworthy members of the RAWB were Casimir (Philips) and Böttcher (Chemistry, Leiden). Philips had been involved with the IKO, giving them a cyclotron. Personally I was flabbergasted that Casimir was so anti-CERN. I tried to organize opposition but I was very ineffective. I had a friend who had been active in the underground during the war, and he was one of the founders of the daily journal “Het Parool”. He then used his influence there, resulting in an interview of me done by J.J. Peereboom (not the sports journalist). I think Peereboom never really understood what I was telling him. For some more details see an interview of me by Wigmans (NTvN B49, 3 (1983) 97), as well as the ensuing reactions.
Read the entire article by Martinus Veltman from the Nikhef Annual Report 2010 (PDF, English only)