The Volkswagen Foundation

History

As with many foundations financing scientific research, physicists held key positions at the Volkswagen Foundation. Its funding department was headed by Rudolf Kerscher, a physicist by training and a friend of Leo Szilard. Kerscher visited Szilard in the USA in the summer of 1962, even before he launched the idea of EMBO in December 1962…

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Raymond Appleyard biography

History

EMBO began as an idea enthusiastically endorsed by leading scientists from across Europe, but with no funding and no central administration. By offering to run it as a part-time job, Raymond Appleyard enabled it to become established while senior figures in the organization set about obtaining the intergovernmental agreement that would secure its long-term future.…

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The Ravello meeting

History

The Ravello meeting took place in September 1963 and was critical in the development of what was to become EMBO. Meetings had taken place on 28 March and 28 June in Geneva, hosted by Victor Weisskopf who invited the great and the good from several European countries, working from a list drawn up by John…

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The meeting at CERN

History

The founding myth of EMBO, set out in John Tooze’s 1981 history of the organization for the launch issue of The EMBO Journal, is that: “In December 1962, immediately following the Nobel Prize investiture ceremony, John C. Kendrew together with James D. Watson visited [CERN] in Geneva. Leo Szilard… was also in Geneva at the…

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