The Decision-Making Process in the Construction of the Synchrotron Light National Laboratory in Brazil
Abstract
In 1981, a small group of Brazilian physicists started a very effective campaign to construct a national synchrotron radiation laboratory. By the end of 1984, the project was officially approved and, surviving political shifts brought about by the end of military rule, construction of the lab began in 1987. Why, in these times of declining budgets in world science, should a relatively poor country, struggling with financial difficulties, decide to invest millions of dollars in a Big Science facility? We examine the decision-making process leading to the lab's construction, focusing on three intermediate stages: the decision to build the lab; the choice of its site; and the size of the machine. We show that basic support came much more from policymakers than from scientists and potential users, and that the political ability of the few scientists directly involved with the project was crucial for its implementation. We conclude that the decision to build was made, not to answer scientific problems or to achieve new technological applications relevant to Brazil, but mainly to stimulate technological development, and to introduce the country to the new level of scientific organization represented by Big Science and National Laboratories.
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We thank John Krige for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, Paulo Velho, Marco Antonio Fabro and Rui Albuquerque for assisting in the research, and the Department of Scientific and Technological Policies (DPCT), University of Campinas. Special thanks also to the interviewees associated with LNLS who spared us their time for this research. Financial support was provided by DPCT, while one of us (OPJ) acknowledges a scholarship provided by CNPq, no. 300429/90-8. Most of the original material collected during this research is available at the Documentation Centre of DPCT library.
1.
1. This was the concept of Big Science proposed by Alvin Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967). A similar definition, stipulating that a Big Science facility is one that costs at least US$25m to construct, was used by John D. Holmfeld, `Broadening the Use of Quantitative Information in Science Policy', in Margaret O. Meredith, Stephen D. Nelson and Albert H. Teich (eds), AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 1991 (Washington, DC: AAAS, 1991), 285-301, at 295. The cost of the Synchrotron considered in this paper lies around US$60m (see note 86, below).
2.
2. For a good example of the diversity of approaches to the study of Big Science, see Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (eds), Big Science: The Growth of Large Scale Research (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). This book also offers a selected bibliography on Big Science. Studies more related to the performance of Big Science facilities, giving information on research money allocation, have been conducted by John Irvine and Ben Martin; see, among others: J. Irvine and B. Martin, `Basic Research in the East and West: A Comparison of the Scientific Performance of High-Energy Physics Accelerators', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 15, No. 2 (May 1985), 293-341.
3.
3. For the development of particle accelerators in the USA see, for example, Stuart W. Leslie, `Playing the Education Game to Win: The Military and Interdisciplinary Research at Stanford', Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vol. 18 (1987), 55-88; John L. Heilbron, Robert W. Seidel and Bruce R. Wheaton, Lawrence and His Laboratory: Nuclear Science at Berkeley, 1931-1961 (Berkeley, CA: Office for History of Science and Technology, 1981); Catherine Westfall, The First Truly National Laboratory: The Birth of Fermilab (unpublished PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1988). For a comparative study of the establishment of Big Science facilities in the USA and Japan, see Lillian Hoddeson, `Establishing KEK in Japan and Fermilab in the US: Internationalism, Nationalism and High Energy Accelerators', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 13, No. 1 (February 1983), 1-48. In the case of Europe, the history of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva has been written by a team of historians and scientists, and appears in two volumes: Armin Hermann, John Krige, Ulrike Mersits and Dominique Pestre, History of CERN, Vols 1 & 2 (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1987 & 1989). For other studies by these and other authors on Big Science facilities in the USA, Europe and Japan, see Galison & Hevly (eds), op. cit. note 2.
4.
4. Several third-generation synchrotron radiation facilities are under construction in the developing countries: a 2-GeV ring is being built in South Korea, a 1.2-GeV ring in Brazil and a 450-MeV machine in India: see Barbara Goss Levi, `Many Nations Build the Latest in Synchrotron Light Sources', Physics Today, Vol. 44 (April 1991), 17-20. Two such facilities have just started operating in the Third World: an 800-MeV storage ring in the People's Republic of China (ibid.), and a 1.3-GeV machine in Taiwan (B.G. Levi, `New Synchrotron Light Sources Turn On Around the World', Physics Today, Vol. 47 [January 1994], 18). Besides synchrotron radiation facilities, India was planning to complete in 1995 the linking up of its Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope that will be the most powerful machine of its kind in the world: see Ray Jayawardhana, `Big Science in a Developing Country', Science, Vol. 264 (22 April 1994), 501-02.
5.
5. Other Big Science facilities constructed in Latin America were financed by developed countries, such as the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, in Chile, which in a decade will house equipment worth US$1b. For an overview of Latin-American science, including an article on LNLS, see Science, Vol. 267 (10 February 1995), 807-28. More recently, Brazil has approved a grant of US$14m for the construction of a 4-metre telescope (SOAR) in Chile, in partnership with the University of South Carolina.
6.
6. This idea is explicitly put forward by Dominique Pestre in `The Decision Making Process for the Main Particle Accelerators Built Throughout the World from the 1930s to the 1970s', in John Krige (ed.), Choosing Big Technologies (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood, 1993), 164-74. The importance of studying the minutiae of the process of decision making is stressed by D. Pestre and J. Krige, `Some Thoughts on the Early History of CERN', in Galison & Hevly (eds), op. cit. note 2, 78-99, at 80.
7.
7. Ana Maria Ribeiro de Andrade and Aldo Carlos de Moura Gonçalves, `A Construção de Aceleradores no Brasil: Desafios e Realizações - Parte I', in José Luiz Goldfarb (ed.), SBHC 10 Anos, Anais do IV Seminário Nacional de História da Ciência e da Tecnologia (São Paulo: SBHC, 1993), 7-11; Juan D. Rogers, `A História dos Aceleradores no Brasil', in CBPF, Anais do Encontro Técnicas e Aplicações da Radiação Sincrotron (Rio de Janeiro: CBPF/PRS-008/83, 1983), 62-68 (explanation for these initials is given in note 35, below).
8.
8. Besides José Pelúcio Ferreira, the group included: José Leite Lopes, a prestigious Brazilian theoretical physicist who had left the country to work in France, and was planning to return; José Carlos de Azevedo, who had just finished his PhD at MIT and was linked to the Brazilian Navy; Argus Moreira, who had worked in France for a doctoral degree and had built an accelerator at CBPF; Jean A. Meyer, a French physicist who had become a naturalized Brazilian; and Giorgio Moscati, a physicist of the University of São Paulo, who had worked on the dismantling and reassembly of the 35-MeV linear accelerator donated by Stanford University to the University of São Paulo. The group also had the occasional advice of Roberto Salmeron, a Brazilian experimental physicist from the University of Brasilia, who had fled the country and worked at CERN (interview with Giorgio Moscati, São Paulo, 8 November 1993).
9.
9. The Institutional Act #5 was signed by General Arthur da Costa e Silva, the second president under the military dictatorship, on 13 December 1968. It shut down the National Congress, extinguished individual and collective rights, and installed a strong repressive machine. Members of the group who met at FINEP ended up on opposing sides, with some clearly in favour of the military regime, some clearly against it, and others trying to be as `neutral' as possible.
10.
10. Moscati, interview, loc. cit. note 8.
11.
11. CNPq was then the `head' institution of the so-called National System for Science and Technology, having three main functions: establishing the guidelines for science and technology policy through its Scientific and Technological Council (CCT), a board of members of different ministries and representatives of the scientific and technological communities; funding scientific and technological research; and carrying out research through its attached national research institutes. CNPq was linked to the Ministry of Planning, which was entitled by the President of the Republic to appoint the president of CNPq, who in turn appointed the directors of the national research institutes. Thus Roberto Lobo was nominated as director of CBPF by Maurício Mattos Piexoto, a mathematician made president of CNPq by Mário Henrique Simonsen, the Minister of Planning.
12.
12. Interview with Roberto Lobo (São Paulo, 12 April 1994).
13.
13. In August 1979, Simonsen was replaced at the Ministry of Planning by Antonio Delfim Neto. It took Delfim Neto about six months to change the president of CNPq and appoint Lynaldo Albuquerque, who decided to maintain Roberto Lobo as director of CBPF. Lynaldo Albuquerque was not a scientist himself, but much more a scientific administrator who was very involved with the idea of science planning. One of his first decisions was to ask the directors of all research institutes, as well as the members of the scientific community, for concrete Programmes of Action for the development of their scientific institutions and research fields. This effort resulted in a collection of documents called Ação Programada em Ciência e Tecnologia (Programmed Action in Science and Technology).
14.
14. Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12.
15.
15. Of course, a machine that meets such requirements and, on top of that, is not too expensive (as compared to a high-energy physics lab) can be `rationally' defended.
16.
16. Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12.
17.
17. For a better understanding of the emergence, functioning and uses of synchrotron radiation facilities, see the articles in Physics Today, Vol. 34 (May 1981), 28-71, and the following references: Arthur Bienenstock and Herman Winick, `Synchrotron Radiation Research: An Overview', Physics Today, Vol. 36 (June 1983), 48-58; Edwin A. McMillan, `A History of the Synchrotron', ibid., Vol. 37 (February 1984), 31-37; Herman Winick, `Synchrotron Radiation', Scientific American, Vol. 257 (November 1987), 72-81; Levi (1991), op. cit. note 4.
18.
18. It is always fruitful to compare the case of Brazil with that of India. At a meeting of the Brazilian Physics Society (SBF) in 1982, four proposals for reasonably big machines were presented by different groups of physicists: the synchrotron radiation lab, a superconductor linear accelerator extension for the existing Pelletron at the University of São Paulo, a national plan for plasma physics and controlled thermonuclear fusion, and a 185-MeV linear electron accelerator: see Boletim Informativo Sociedade Brasileira de Física, Vol. 13, No. 2 (April/May 1982), 1-19. At that same time, India was discussing the simultaneous construction of similar machines: a synchrotron radiation lab, a linear proton accelerator, a fusion project, and an electron accelerator: see CBPF, 2° Encontro das Sociedades Científicas para o Estudo de Viabilidade de Implantação de um Laboratório Nacional de Radiação Síncrotron (Rio de Janeiro: CBPF/PRS-013/84, 1984), 28.
19.
19. The extraordinary increase in interest in the field of synchrotron radiation on the part of the industrialized countries, because of its actual and potential applications, had drawn the attention of countries that had already reached an intermediate stage of development. `The scientific communities of countries like Brazil, China, India, Taiwan and Korea, among others, are aware that the optimal moment for scientific and technological transfer is likely to occur when a new field is still in the process of development'. Moreover, synchrotron radiation was particularly attractive because it is not excessively costly and because of its multidisciplinary character. In the mentioned developing countries, synchrotron radiation facilities were either under construction or planned by that time: see Levi (1994), op. cit. note 4, 18.
20.
20. Interview with Lynaldo Albuquerque, conducted by Paulo Velho (Brasília, 18 August 1994).
21.
21. The appointment of Lynaldo Albuquerque to the presidency of CNPq did not please the scientific community. He was not a scientist, nor was he from the Southeastern part of the country (and particularly not from either São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro). Also he did not like the way CNPq traditionally allocated research grants: peer review of individually submitted research proposals. For this reason, he had created a number of other divisions within CNPq which were draining money from the traditional division, and which were operating with `revolutionary' procedures, such as institutional grants to support research in `economic sectors', instead of in scientific fields. Of course, that meant a significant loss of power for the scientific community, and scientists were very dissatisfied. The Synchrotron could reverse this feeling because it was a scientific project, led by a group of respected and influential physicists. Physicists have for many years been the best organized and politically most active segment of the Brazilian scientific community.
22.
22. This point was made by different interviewees. A piece of evidence in its favour is the fact that Lynaldo Albuquerque kept Lobo as director of CBPF: see note 13.
23.
23. It is interesting to point out that two participants in these meetings - Cylon Gonçalves da Silva and Ricardo Rodrigues - were particularly opposed to the idea for different reasons, and openly expressed their criticism. Soon after, however, they were `converted' and became key persons in the development and management of the project. The first has been the appointed director of the LNLS since 1987, and the latter is the head of the Project Division: interviews with Lobo, loc. cit. note 12, and with Ricardo Rodrigues (Campinas, 23 September 1994).
24.
24. In note 18 we mentioned three other reasonably big projects which competed for the same source of money - CNPq. The fear of money drainage did not come as a surprise. A very similar situation was experienced by Japanese physicists when proposals for a proton synchrotron were discussed by the Physical Society of Japan in 1960: `The new synchrotron bred some resentment from non-high energy physicists who felt that such heavy support of high energy might distort the overall physics programme' (Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 23).
25.
25. This was the counterargument to the proponents' argument that the construction of the Synchrotron would help to develop technological capabilities internally in the country. As the counterargument goes, the lack of experience with projects on this scale would force the country to import the necessary equipment and expertise. Again, a very similar worry was expressed by the Japanese during discussions for the construction of KEK, the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics, in Tsukuba: see Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 31.
26.
26. Interview with Rogério Cerqueira Leite (Campinas, 12 January 1994).
27.
27. From the last two years of the 1970s to the mid-1980s, CNPq's budget suffered a significant decrease.
28.
28. Interviews with Lobo, loc. cit. note 12; with Leite, loc. cit. note 26; and with Aldo Craievich (Campinas, 26 November 1993).
29.
29. The criticisms were similar to those put forward in the previous meetings, perhaps with an even greater emphasis on the fear that the allocation of financial resources to this facility would squeeze out all the available funding for other sciences.
30.
30. A summary of the presentations and discussions of this meeting have been published in CBPF, Encontro das Sociedades Científicas sobre Proposta Preliminar do Estudo de Viabilidade Para a Implantação de um Laboratório Nacional de Radiação de Síncrotron (Rio de Janeiro: CBPF/PRS-003/83, 1983).
31.
31. According to Lobo, he resigned the post at CBPF because he had said, the day he accepted it, that he would only stay for three years: `The day I completed three years I stepped down' (Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12).
32.
32. Lobo and some co-workers participated in the annual meeting of SBF held in Belém, and also in the International School for Teaching Crystallography in Campinas, both in July 1983: LNRS, Relatório no.1: Resumos de Atividades (January 1985), 6.
33.
33. Kazutake Kohra, director of the Photon Factory, Tsukuba, Japan; Jöel le Duff, of the Laboratoire de l'Accélerateur Linéaire (LAL), Université de Paris Sud; Yves Petroff, of the Laboratoire pour l'Utilization de Rayonnement Electromagnetique (LURE), Orsay, France; Helmut Wiedemann, of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), USA (LNRS, op. cit. note 32, 6).
34.
34. A three-day meeting on `Techniques and Applications of Synchrotron Radiation' was held in Rio de Janeiro in August 1983 (see CBPF, op. cit. note 7). In December of the same year, a meeting on the `Applications of Synchrotron Radiation in Medicine' took place in Rio de Janeiro; see CBPF, Reunião do Comitê Executivo do Projeto Radiação Sincrotron com Representantes das Sociedades Médicas (Rio de Janeiro: CBPF/PRS-012/84, 1984).
35.
35. The publication was called Série Projeto Radiação Sincrotron, and was edited by Ramiro de Porto A. Muniz and Aldo F. Craievich. While the project was located at CBPF, until 1984, 15 numbers in this series were published - CBPF/PRS-001 to -015.
36.
36. Cylon E.T. Gonçalves da Silva and A. Ricardo D. Rodrigues, Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron - Uma Fábrica de Fótons (Campinas: MCT/CNPq/LNLS, 1987), 24. The interesting thing about microlithography is that it is too expensive to be done in Brazil, the cost of a clean room and associated equipment being comparable to that of the Synchrotron (Craievich, interview, loc. cit. note 28). No one working on the project knew this when the argument was used to convince laymen and scientists of the importance of the machine. We have not been able to track down any other specific interest of the military with respect to the Synchrotron.
37.
37. CBPF, op. cit. note 34. The application of synchrotron radiation for imaging blocked arteries in patients with coronary problems is constantly referred to in the literature of the topic: see, for example, Nina Hall, `Europe's Shining New Light', New Scientist, Vol. 133 (14 March 1992), 30. However, it is much more expensive than what was thought and said to the representatives of the medical societies in this meeting. Appealing to cultural, political and social values seems to have been a resource used to legitimate Big Science from its beginning. For instance, neutron therapy for the treatment of cancer was promoted by Lawrence in order to raise funds for his laboratory at Berkeley in the 1930s, `with results that were at best disappointing and at worst disastrous for patients': Robert W. Seidel, `The Origins of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory', in Galison & Hevly (eds), op. cit. note 2, 21-45, at 27.
38.
38. The importation of a French machine was seriously considered by Lobo and his group when the Synchrotron was first conceived. One particular member of the group - Jacques Danon, a CBPF physicist who had worked in France for many years - strongly favoured the idea, and tried to convince the others. Some of them were not sure what was best (to buy a machine could save time and money), but others were very strongly against. However, when it became clear that important and influential converts to the project could be gained if the machine were internally constructed, this idea prevailed (Leite, interview, loc. cit. note 26; Rodrigues, interview, loc. cit. note 23).
39.
39. S. Caticha Ellis, `Sinopse e Conclusões', in CBPF, op. cit. note 7, 438-40, at 440; C.E.T. Gonçalves da Silva, `The Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron: a Brazilian Synchrotron Light Source', in Minko Balkanski, Gonçalves da Silva and John M. Worlock (eds), Festschrift in Honor of Rogério Cerqueira Leite (Singapore: World Scientific, 1991), 331-40, at 340.
40.
40. The presentations, discussions and recommendations of this meeting were published in CBPF, op. cit. note 18.
41.
41. The scholarships were granted to various levels of training, from undergraduate to post-doc, both within the country and abroad. Although candidates from several fields of science were eligible, out of the 14 scholarships granted, only three were not in physics (LNRS, op. cit. note 32).
42.
42. The Technical and Scientific Council of the Synchrotron Radiation Project was created on 25 April 1984, by an executive resolution of Lynaldo Albuquerque, the president of CNPq (CNPq, Resolução Executiva RE-050/84).
43.
43. The Brazilian Physics Society (SBF) seems never to have been convinced that this lab was the wisest decision. In 1987, an SBF report on LNLS agreed that the physics research in the country needed a change in scale (that is, in the size of its projects), but argued that LNLS was not the best means for achieving that. It pointed out that this proposal resulted from `a superficial analysis of the development of condensed matter physics in the country', and that it represented `a sudden change from investment in equipment of less than one hundred thousand dollars to a machine of tens of million dollars, skipping the intermediary stages which would be essential to train personnel in medium-size equipment' (43). It also stressed that the decision to build this lab was `politically driven and aimed at following the international development of science and technology' (43), and `did not come out of the identification of a concrete necessity of Brazilian physics' (42): see `Relatório da Diretoria e Conselho da SBF sobre a Fonte de Luz Síncrotron', report approved by the Board of Directors and Council of SBF, Boletim Informativo Sociedade Brasileira de Física, Vol. 18, No. 2 (October 1987), 42-48.
44.
44. CCT was the Council for Science and Technology of CNPq (see note 11). Lynaldo Albuquerque submitted the already-made decision to build LNRS to the CCT meeting of 25 January 1985. Even on that occasion, very general questions were once more raised: Was Brazil capable of building such a machine? Would there be enough money to build it? Would there be a critical mass of users? Despite considerable discussion, and some criticism, when the lab proposal was put to the vote, it was approved with only two votes against (CNPq, Ata da 24ª' Reunião Ordinária do Conselho Científico e Tecnológico (CCT) do CNPq, 25 January 1985).
45.
45. CNPq, Nota Informativa no. 100/84. In this note, Lynaldo Albuquerque points out not only the scientific and technological relevance of the lab, but also its `positive impact on the relationship between government and the scientific community'.
46.
46. It is not altogether clear whether the Ministry of Planning was convinced that LNRS was truly a good decision, or whether it just conceded it because a new government would take over very soon, and the approval did not involve money to be spent in the current term.
47.
47. CNPq, RE-141/84. The Board of Directors was composed of a director-president (Roberto Lobo) and three other members (Aldo Craievich, Ricardo Rodrigues and Cylon Gonçalves da Silva), all `to be nominated by the President of CNPq' (2). It should be noted that Lynaldo also signed the creation of two other projects at the time, a National Plasma Laboratory and a Material Science Lab, but neither of them advanced. `There was a lot of fighting over the Plasma Lab.... A successful enterprise can never be born from several heads.... You need an individual, a leader, but the Plasma Lab did not have a single leader' (Rodrigues, interview, loc. cit. note 23).
48.
48. In Lobo's words: `He [the Minister] seemed to receive everyone, but he did not receive me' (Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12).
49.
49. Rogério Cerqueira Leite was connected to the section of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) of São Paulo commanded by Ulysses Guimarães, the best known representative of the state of São Paulo in the National Congress and, at that time, president of the House of Representatives. Renato Archer had been appointed Minister of Science and Technology by the influence of Ulysses Guimarães.
50.
50. Cerqueira Leite, interview, loc. cit. note 26.
51.
51. Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, Portaria no. 26/86.
52.
52. The political alliance which allowed the election of the first civil president, Tancredo Neves, involved traditionally antagonist political parties and resulted in a complicated distribution of government posts. The appointed Minister of Science and Technology, Renato Archer, and the president of CNPq, Roberto Santos, had clear political divergences as well as different ideas on what Science and Technology Policy should be.
53.
53. This was a joint decision of the Minister of Science and Technology and the newly appointed President of CNPq, the biologist Crodovaldo Pavan. The latter, who replaced Roberto Santos in April 1986, had been President of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), and a member of the CCT. In such positions he had been a vigorous opponent of the lab (see, for example, a transcript of his speeches in both CBPF, op. cit. note 18, 21, and CNPq, op. cit. note 44). According to him, he was later convinced of the relevance and importance of the lab by technical arguments: interview with Crodovaldo Pavan (São Paulo, 12 April 1994). However, the fact that he was politically very close to Renato Archer and shared with him support from the same political group within PMDB (see note 49) facilitated the coordinated action between CNPq and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT).
54.
54. Actually, the appointment of the directors of LNRS was a prerogative of the president of CNPq, and not of the Minister of Science and Technology. However, as said, on this occasion both were quite well-tuned. Lobo had against him the fact that he had been a director of CNPq under the military regime. The new people in government, particularly the most progressive, wanted to keep their distance from anyone who could be identified with the previous government.
55.
55. Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12.
56.
56. CNPq, Portaria PO-572/86, and CNPq, Resolução Normativa RN-015/86, respectively.
57.
57. Craievich, interview, loc. cit. note 28.
58.
58. The time required to construct the LNLS, and to start operating it, was estimated to be at least five years, `depending on the availability of financial resources'. The lab was expected to be operational in 1992: see, for example, MCT/CNPq/LNLS, Laboratório Nacional de Luz Sincrotron (Campinas, 1988), 3. In fact, it started test operations in May 1996, and the machine was expected to be open to users in July 1997, with an energy around 1.37 GeV and a current of about 100 milliamperes circulating in the ring 8 hours a day.
59.
59. Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12. The same feeling about the lack of interest shown by CBPF staff was expressed by other interviewees, including Aldo Craievich who, at that time, was a researcher of CBPF (Craievich, interview, loc. cit. note 28).
60.
60. CBPF was dominated by theoretical physicists who thought that if an experimental lab such as a synchrotron was hosted in the institution, they would lose power (Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12).
61.
61. `National Laboratory' is a concept apparently invented simultaneously in Japan and in the USA during the process of creating KEK and Fermilab; it means `a facility run by a board with nationwide representation and open to a wide community of users' (Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 3).
62.
62. Cerqueira Leite, interview, loc. cit. note 26.
63.
63. Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 17. It is true, however, that the creation of a national or international lab from scratch does not guarantee that the in-house staff will not acquire privileges. The in-house staff at CERN, for instance, was `immensely powerful and dominant in the early days, and it took a determined effort to force them to share their facilities with outside users. Indeed, it was only possible because CERN was a multinational laboratory. The problem has never really been solved on the national level, even in a high-energy physics laboratory like Fermilab' (John Krige, private communication, 1 December 1994).
64.
64. Albuquerque, interview, loc. cit. note 20.
65.
65. Ibid. Lynaldo Albuquerque also explained that he thought it would be easier to have the approval of the Ministry of Planning for a new lab if he could argue that a state governor had interest in it, and would be willing to pay for half the costs: see also note 21.
66.
66. Craievich, interview, loc. cit. note 28.
67.
67. Additional sites considered were Petropolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (Rodrigues, interview, loc. cit. note 23), and São José dos Campos, in the state of São Paulo (Moscati, interview, loc. cit. note 8), but these cities did not submit a proposal.
68.
68. Lobo, Cylon and Craievich. Ricardo Rodrigues was at Stanford.
69.
69. The powerful physics community in Campinas was formed with the creation of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the late 1960s, during the military regime. The aim of this new type of university was to anticipate the future technological demands of Brazilian industries, in order to fulfill the overall objectives of the military for technological autonomy for the country. The Physics Institute concentrated on solid-state physics, and in 1974 the fields of physics and engineering together received 85% of UNICAMP's total research budget: see Renato Dagnino and Léa Velho, `University-Industry-Government Relations in the Periphery: The University of Campinas, Brazil', Minerva (forthcoming, Summer 1998).
70.
70. CNPq, Ata da 56ª ' Reunião Ordinária da Diretoria Colegiada do CNPq (Brasília, 12 February 1985, 2).
71.
71. Cerqueira Leite, interview, loc. cit. note 26.
72.
72. Interview with José Leite Lopes (Paris, 20 September 1994).
73.
73. See note 49. Rogério Cerqueira Leite himself recognized having played a role in both the decision leading to Campinas, and in resisting reversal of the choice (interviews with Leite Lopes, loc. cit. note 72, and Cerqueira Leite, loc. cit. note 26).
74.
74. Craievich, interview, loc. cit. note 28.
75.
75. Before Fermilab was established in Illinois, there was considerable debate concerning its location: 125 site proposals were received, suggesting over 200 sites (Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 18). Several other instances of disputes of this kind are reported in the literature cited in notes 2 and 3.
76.
76. It has been shown for the case of CERN that there seems to exist an inverse correlation between the value of the purchase of goods, material and supplies made by a country, and its distance to the lab. For detailed data and analysis of this point, see John Krige, `The International Organization of Scientific Work', in Susan E. Cozzens, Peter Healey, Arie Rip and John Ziman (eds), The Research System in Transition (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), 179-97.
77.
77. The final choice of Weston, Illinois, to host Fermilab is rumoured to have been the result of political agreements involving Lyndon Johnson and the Illinois senator Everett Dirkson (Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 19). Similarly, it is claimed that Strasbourg, France, was to be the site of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility until President Mitterrand met with the mayor of Grenoble, and decided to locate the facility in that city (Leite Lopes, interview, loc. cit. note 72). Strasbourg was initially favoured `for reasons connected with regional balance', which in essence is the same argument put forward by Leite Lopes in favour of Rio. The rationale for choosing Grenoble was that it is `France's only official physics pole outside Paris': see William Sweet, `Plans Advance for Synchrotron at Grenoble, a “Physics Pole” ', Physics Today, Vol. 39 (December 1986), 65-67.
78.
78. In 1982, Roberto Lobo visited the following Synchrotron labs: the National Bureau of Standards and Brookhaven, both in the USA, and LURE in France (Lobo, interview, loc. cit. note 12).
79.
79. Moscati, interview, loc. cit. note 8. Argus Moreira and Giorgio Moscati were two of the scientists/engineers involved with the Synchrotron who defended this position (ibid.). A preliminary design for a 1.2-GeV machine that would be able to touch the hard X-ray region of the spectrum, but not allow research in angiography, had been presented in 1983 by Jöel le Duff, `Conceptual Design of a 1.2 GeV Storage Ring Extending in the Hard X-Ray Region', in CBPF, op. cit. note 7, 428-37.
80.
80. Comments presented by the representative of the Brazilian Crystallography Society, S. Caticha Ellis, in CBPF, op. cit. note 30, 7.
81.
81. Although we were told that the community of crystallographers slowly adhered to the Synchrotron Project, and their arguments against it disappeared from circulation, and although it has also been said that `the community was making pressure for a larger machine', we found no documents or records reporting such position. On the contrary, the report we have already cited, issued by the Brazilian Physics Society in 1987, clearly states that condensed matter physics in the country would be better off with medium-sized equipment than with the LNLS (SBF, op. cit. note 43, 43).
82.
82. A.R.D. Rodrigues and R. Lobo, `The Brazilian Synchrotron Radiation Project' (Brasília: CNPq, 1985).
83.
83. Ibid, 2.
84.
84. Moscati, interview, loc. cit. note 8. Ricardo Rodrigues, however, who was the leader of the team sent to Stanford, stated that he had `complete freedom to choose the energy he thought more convenient' (Rodrigues, interview, loc. cit. note 23).
85.
85. The two already mentioned in note 79. Giorgio Moscati said that he `did not want anything to do with such an outlandish decision', and recognized that he `did not put the necessary effort to argue for his view' (Moscati, interview, loc. cit. note 8). Argus Moreira, on all accounts, continued to maintain good relations with LNLS people and to provide assistance when asked, but was not directly involved with the project, and was clearly against the decision to upgrade the energy. Only recently, in 1994, has he become a member of the LNLS Directing Council.
86.
86. Interviews with Craievich, loc. cit. note 28, and Rodrigues, loc. cit. note 23. By the end of 1996, the actual cost, according to LNLS officials, has been around US$60m, besides the US$6m- to US$8m-worth of land donated by the state of São Paulo. This relatively low figure is claimed to have been possible because many of the machine parts (such as magnets) have been developed by industries located in Brazil, with intensive training of local technicians.
87.
87. Two experimental stations can be coupled to each magnet. By the end of 1996, three of these user lines have been completed, and a total of nine are projected for the end of 1997. The machine is open to all potential users. No industries have yet made proposals for experiments, in spite of having members in the LNLS Directing Council.
88.
88. A.F. Craievich, `Scientific Case for the LNLS VUV-III Project', in Craievich (ed.), Synchrotron Light: Applications and Related Instrumentation II (Singapore: World Scientific, 1990), 6-12.
89.
89. Ricardo Rodrigues himself recognized this: `I was the ambitious one. I was always pushing the energy up and the others were trying to hold it down' (Rodrigues, interview, op. cit. note 23).
90.
90. Pestre & Krige, op. cit. note 6, 271.
91.
91. Roberto Lobo was more likely to give credit to the opinions of younger and earnest scientists, such as Ricardo Rodrigues, than to the older and cautious ones, such as Argus Moreira and Giorgio Moscati. Lobo believed one had to be daring to carry on a project like this, and the `older generation of physicists had never had the initiative to do something big, even in the times when money was not a problem. How would they do it now?' (Rodrigues, interview, loc. cit. note 23).
92.
92. See, for example, the analysis about the decision of the energy of the Brookhaven and Berkeley proton synchrotrons in John L. Heilbron and Robert W. Seidel, Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Vol. I (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), and in Seidel, `Accelerating Science: The Postwar Transformation of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory', Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vol. 13 (1983), 375-400.
93.
93. One of the few reported cases of a machine being built against the will of future users was the intersecting rings of CERN (Hermann, Krige, Mersits & Pestre, op. cit. note 3, Chapter 12). In fact, even the creation of CERN was subject to dispute within the community of physicists, since part of the establishment (Bohr, Chadwick, Kramers) was against building big machines (Krige, loc. cit. note 63).
94.
94. For information concerning the USA and Japan, see Hoddeson, op. cit. note 3, 19, 35.
95.
95. Two original achievements of the project are a precise and inexpensive X-ray monochromator, and the use of laser light to cut its magnets. The LNLS has also built a beam line at the Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices of the University of Louisiana: see Boletim LNLS, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1992), 1-2.
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