CERN, the European physics laboratory, was founded

On September 29, 1954, the convention establishing CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—entered into force, the official birthdate of the laboratory near Geneva. Twelve founding member states had signed the agreement the previous year under the auspices of UNESCO; ratification became complete when France and Germany deposited their instruments in Paris.

The project was as much diplomacy as physics. Less than a decade after the war, governments chose to pool money and talent on fundamental research no single country could afford, choosing curiosity-driven science over secrecy.

That bet paid off spectacularly. CERN went on to build the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, where in 2012 physicists confirmed the Higgs boson. The web itself was invented there in 1989 as a way for scientists to share data. From twelve members the organization has grown past twenty, still running on the founding idea that nations discover more together.