1. *Kranzberg Professor, School of History, Technology and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332-0345. I thank the archivists for their collaboration, and Catherine Westfall for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
2. The following abbreviations are used: CERN, CERN archives; LC, Rabi papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; SU, Bloch papers, Special Collections, SC303, Stanford University Libraries.
3. 1 The present account enriches my "The nomination of the first Director General and its aftermath," in Armin Hermann, John Krige, Ulrike Mersits and Dominique Pestre, History of CERN. Vol. I (Amsterdam, 1987), chapt. 8.
4. 2 Peter Galison, Bruce Hevly, and Rebecca Lowen, "Controlling the monster. Stanford and the growth of physics research, 1935-1962," in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds., Big science. The growth of large-scale research (Stanford, 1992), 46-77;