IUPAP 100th ANNIVERSARY TESTIMONIALS FROM THE PAST

Transcript:IUPAP 100th ANNIVERSARY TESTIMONIALS FROM THE PAST:
IUPAP 100th ANNIVERSARY TESTIMONIALS FROM THE PAST Yves Petroff - 1999-2002: President Elect - 2002-2005: President - 2005-2008: Past President In 1999, I was a member of the SLAC (Stanford) Science Advisory Committee when Burt Richter, President of IUPAP and Director of SLAC, asked me if I would accept to be President Designated for IUPAP. At first I refused but Burt called me the following day, inquiring about the reason of the refusal. I told him that, in my country, the IUPAP committee was not very active and most of the young scientists had no idea of what IUPAP was. He said to me that this was typically french: criticising but refusing to help. After this sentence, I had to accept. The first thing that I did was to go to read the minutes of the previous General Assemblies. At the 22nd GA in Upsala (1996), the President Yoshio YAMAGUCHI gave a very honest and couraageous presentation on the situation of IUPAP. « Presently, IUPAP faces many problems.. First, IUPAP is losing its popularity. During the time of cold war, it was vital to have the IUPAP (or more generally ICSU and its family) sponsored conferences, to which organizers were able to invite good physicists (scientists) from Eastern countries. In those days, IUPAP and ICSU were very visible among physics (or scientific) communities. After the collapse of USSR, I may say in an over-simplified fashion, that physicists began to wonder why do we need IUPAP. IUPAP, now a 74 year old organization, has to answer this question. » « Secondly, liaison committees in member countries/regions are rich in variety: in some members they are academies of (natural) sciences or scientific councils or their sub-committees, in some cases physical societies or the division on science and technology of governments, etc. In principle they are fine, but in practise liaison committees do not necessarily have, in some cases, a very good contact with active physicists or active physics communities in their countries/regions even though members of liaison committees are senior and well-established physicists or governmental officers in charge of sciences in member countries/regions. There should be better communication and cooperation in active physics communities, liaison committees, and IUPAP ». « Thirdly, new active fields in physics or physical sciences are emerging rapidly. It is very important to accommodate such fields in the existing commissions. In many cases IUPAP has established new commissions