Llewellyn Smith, Christopher H.
Oral history interview with Christopher Llewellyn Smith, 2010 February 18.
This interview is part of a series conducted during research for the book Tunnel Visions, a history of the Superconducting Super Collider project. It mainly addresses parts of Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smiths career prior to his time as CERN Director-General, a position he held from 1994 to 1999, focusing on international perspectives surrounding the proposal and construction of large collider facilities. It covers his service as the scientific advisor to the 1984 Kendrew inquiry, which assessed UK membership in CERN, and to another inquiry, led by Anatole Abragam, which assessed CERNs management. The interview extensively covers CERNs preparations to build what became the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the tunnel where the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider was built, and how those preparations were influenced by the U.S. move to build the SSC and, later, by the SSCs declining political fortunes and termination. Llewellyn Smith offers his perspectives on whether it would have been politically feasible in the 1980s to build a world accelerator, as well as on Japanese perceptions of U.S. plans for the SSC and the prospect that the U.S. could have secured contributions to the project from Japan. He also discusses early cost estimates for the LHC and their role in efforts to secure support for building it. The interview concludes with discussions of how CERN, the SSC, and the ITER fusion facility project were organized, and of the distinct roles of major facility directors and project managers.
Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith is a British theoretical physicist and Emeritus Professor of Physics at University of Oxford. He served as Chairman of Oxford Physics, Director General of CERN, and Provost and President of University College London.
Abragam, A.
Kendrew, John C. (John Cowdery), 1917-
Llewellyn Smith, Christopher H.
European Organization for Nuclear Research
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Project)
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
University College, London
University of Oxford
Colliders (Nuclear physics).
International cooperation.
Large Hadron Collider (France and Switzerland)
Nuclear fusion
Science and state
Superconducting Super Collider
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Riordan, Michael, 1946- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA