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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2019
The aftermath of the Second World War represented a major turning point in the history of French and European physical sciences. The physicist's profession was profoundly restructured, and in this transition the role of internationalism changed tremendously. Transnational circulation became a major part of research training. This article examines the conditions of possibility for this transformation, by focusing on the case of the summer school for theoretical physics created in 1951 by the young Cécile Morette (1922–2017), just in front of Mont Blanc, at Les Houches. First I show that ultimately it was only thanks to extremely specific and intertwined social positions and dispositions, in terms of class and gender (derived from her socialization as an expected dame de la bourgeoisie), and through the interactions between such social attributes and a dramatic life event, that Morette managed to gather a network diverse, powerful and transnational enough to create this institution. Then, following the first years of this school, I show how it became an international model, paving the way to new articulations between the local, the national and the global scales, even beyond the Cold War oppositions.
This essay was awarded the Singer Prize by the British Society for the History of Science for 2018.
This essay is based on research jointly funded by an Alliance Doctoral Mobility Grant (Columbia University), the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Institut d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (UMR 8066, CNRS/ENS/Paris 1) and the chair of sociology of creative work, Collège de France. For their counsel and support, the author would like to thank Julien Barrier, Nicolas Constans, Leticia Cugliandolo, Robert Fox, Gabriela Goldin Marcovich, Andrew MacGillivray and Yann Renisio.
1 Yves Rocard, ‘La querelle de l'agrégation’, E.N.S. physique (April 1949) 4, p. 2. All translations are mine.
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9 For a discussion of the comparative lack of circulation in the physical sciences see Heffernan, Michael and Jöns, Heike, ‘Research travel and disciplinary identities in the University of Cambridge, 1885–1955’, BJHS (2013) 46, pp. 255–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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12 On Frédéric Joliot see Pinault, Michel, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000Google Scholar. The percentage of women in the CNRS was calculated in the Annuaire du Centre national de la recherche scientifique 1949, Paris: CNRS, 1949Google Scholar. For a general approach see Sonnet, Martine, ‘Combien de femmes au CNRS depuis 1939?’, in Les femmes dans l'histoire du CNRS, Paris: CNRS, 2004, pp. 39–67Google Scholar.
13 Adrien Vila-Valls, ‘Louis de Broglie et la diffusion de la mécanique quantique en France (1925–1960)’, PhD thesis, Université Claude Bernard – Lyon 1, 2012.
14 ‘Interview of Bryce DeWitt and Cecile DeWitt-Morette by Kenneth W. Ford on 1995 February 28’, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, at www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/23199. The ‘Bohr and Wheeler paper’ is Bohr, Niels and Wheeler, John A., ‘The mechanism of nuclear fission’, Physical Review (1939) 56, pp. 426–450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Neasa McGarrigle, ‘The establishment of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1936–1948’, PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2017.
16 McGarrigle, op. cit. (15), p. 222, estimates that the School of Theoretical Physics was in contact ‘with hundreds of individuals in at least thirty-five countries’.
17 On Morette's relationship with her Chinese colleagues see Morette, Nicolette, ‘For love and physics’, Physics Today (June 2019) 72, pp. 11–12Google Scholar.
18 Nicolas Constans, ‘Entretien avec Cécile Morette, 20 mai 2009’. On the social complexities of being two scientists in a couple, especially when the ‘two-body problem’ is an everlasting issue, and the fact that the women in such partnerships have historically borne the brunt of society's asymmetric evaluation of gender, see Pycior, Helena, Slack, Nancy and Abir-Am, Pnina (eds.), Creative Couples in the Sciences, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996Google Scholar; Lykknes, Annette, Opitz, Donald L. and van Tiggelen, Brigitte (eds.), For Better or for Worse? Collaborative Couples in the Sciences, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 On the difficulties encountered to secure a full position for Morette, due to rules aimed at nepotism, see DeWitt, Bryce, ‘Cécile DeWitt-Morette (1922–)’, in Byers, Nina and Williams, Gary (eds.), Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 324–333Google Scholar.
20 Cécile Morette, ‘1948–1950: snapshots’, IAS: The Institute Letter (spring 2011), pp. 10–11, 10.
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24 Hermann, Armin, Belloni, Lanfranco, Krige, John, Mersits, Ulrike and Pestre, Dominique, History of CERN, I, vol. 1: Launching the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1987, pp. 112, 120Google Scholar.
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26 For a synthesis of the rocky relationship between France and the United States during this period, see Costigliola, Frank, France and the United States: The Cold Alliance since World War II, New York: Twayne of G. K. Hall, 1992Google Scholar.
27 Cécile Morette to Société des hôtels de montagne, 26 June 1950, Archives de l'Ecole de physique théorique des Houches (subsequently AEPTH).
28 Cécile Morette to proviseur du lycée de Briançon, 13 February 1951, AEPTH.
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31 To enter the Corps des mines, one must first be accepted at the Ecole polytechnique (the most selective grande école, with the ENS), then be ranked one of the five or six best among a class of usually two hundred students, then follow advanced training at the ENSMP. See et Bruno Belhoste, Anne-Françoise Garçon (eds.), Les ingénieurs des Mines: Cultures, pouvoirs, pratiques, Paris: IGPDE, 2012Google Scholar; Belhoste, Bruno, La formation d'une technocratie: L'Ecole polytechnique et ses élèves de la Révolution au Second Empire, Paris: Belin, 2003Google Scholar.
32 During the 1970s, Morette learned that her biological father was in fact Raphaël Pecker, a Jewish doctor who was killed at Auschwitz. See Feder, op. cit. (11).
33 ‘André Pierre Ernest Morette (1879–1931)’, at www.annales.org/archives/x/Morette.html.
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36 Emily Mitchell, ‘Senior women Web interviews: Cécile DeWitt-Morett’, 2000, at www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesIntCecile.html.
37 On the social dispositions of the French bourgeoisie see Wita, Béatrix Le, French Bourgeois Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994Google Scholar (the study took place during the 1980s, but the interviewees very often evoke the interwar period); Mension-Rigau, Eric, Aristocrates et grands bourgeois, Paris: Perrin, 2007Google Scholar; Pinçon, Michel and Pinçon-Charlot, Monique, Voyage en grande bourgeoisie, Paris: PUF, 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a comparable (if masculine) case see Nye, Mary Jo, ‘Aristocratic culture and the pursuit of science: the De Broglies in modern France’, Isis (1997) 88, pp. 397–421Google Scholar.
38 Grodzins, Ruth, ‘Laura Fermi, 1907–1977’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1978), 34, pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Fermi, Laura, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1954Google Scholar; Carson, Mina Julia, Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2013Google Scholar; Olivia Leontine May, ‘Wife of scientist: the gender, science and political identity of Ava Helen Pauling’, honors thesis, Wesleyan University, 2014.
39 Mitchell, op. cit. (36).
40 Morette, op. cit. (20), pp. 10. Auger's expression could be roughly translated as ‘she will annoy the entire Earth, but she will get it!’ but the crudeness of the French expression remains untranslatable for this author. This quote clearly shows that, if needed, Morette's persuasive power wasn't grounded in seduction.
41 Théodule, op. cit. (11), pp. 24–25.
42 On Rocard and the major role played by the ENS in French post-war physics see Pestre, Dominique, ‘La création d'un nouvel univers physicien: Yves Rocard et le laboratoire de physique de l'Ecole normale supérieure, 1938–1960’, in Sirinelli, Jean-François (ed.), Ecole normale supérieure: Le livre du bicentenaire, Paris: PUF, 1994, pp. 405–422Google Scholar; Verschueren, Pierre, ‘La science comme vocation? Les élèves scientifiques de l'Ecole normale supérieure et l'espace de leurs carrières (1944–1962)’, Histoire de l’éducation (2015) 144, pp. 79–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Ecole polytechnique see Belhoste, Bruno, Dahan, Amy and Picon, Antoine (eds.), La formation polytechnicienne, 1794–1994, Paris: Dunod, 1995Google Scholar.
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44 Morette, op. cit. (25).
45 Cécile Morette to François de Rose, 27 June 1950, AEPTH.
46 On the geopolitics behind US–French scientific collaborations in the nuclear sciences see Krige, John, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Cécile Morette to Pierre Donzelot, 24 March 1951, AEPTH.
48 Darmon, Muriel, Classes préparatoires: La fabrique d'une jeunesse dominante, Paris: La Découverte, 2013Google Scholar; Darmon, , ‘Drafting the “time space”: Attitudes towards time among prep school students’, European Societies (2018) 20, pp. 525–548CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goffman, Erving, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, New York: Anchor Books, 1961, pp. xxi ffGoogle Scholar.
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50 Université de Grenoble, Ecole d’été de physique théorique: Les Houches, 1954, Annex B.
51 Archimède television show, chaîne Arte, 30 October 2001.
52 Many examples of the fidelity of the school's alumni can be found in David, op. cit. (22). There is no denying that something exists like a Les Houches mythology, consciously built by Morette herself; François David's book, edited for the fiftieth birthday of the school, may be considered its legendarium. But such a topic is beyond the scope of this paper: I will limit myself to pointing out that many analyses developed by Pnina Abir-Am about the collective memory of science could be transposed to this case. See Abir-Am, Pnina, Commemorative Practices in Science: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000Google Scholar.
53 Parker, John N. and Hackett, Edward J., ‘Hot spots and hot moments in scientific collaborations and social movements’, American Sociological Review (2012) 77, pp. 21–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
54 On how tacit knowledge shapes theoretical physics practice see Luis Reyes-Galindo, ‘The sociology of theoretical physics’, PhD thesis, Cardiff University, 2011, pp. 159–205.
55 Archimède, op. cit. (51).
56 See the application form in Université de Grenoble, op. cit. (50).
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58 Léon Rosenfeld to Cécile Morette, 3 September 1952, AEPTH.
59 Calculated with Enseignement supérieur. Facultés des sciences. Tableaux de classement du personnel enseignant au 31 décembre 1962, Paris: Ministère de l’éducation nationale, 1963Google Scholar.
60 It must be noted that Morette never hesitated to intervene directly with Donzelot, and his successor Gaston Berger, in order to assure the career of her protégés. See, for example, Cécile Morette to Pierre Donzelot, 18 August 1952, CDWMP, 2015-248/1.
61 Université de Grenoble, Ecole d’été de physique théorique. Les Houches. Rapport d'activités 1951–1966, 1967, for a full list.
62 About the support provided by the Fulbright programme see the reports kept in University of Arkansas Libraries, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Historical Collection, Group 3, Series 3, Boxes 118, 125A–E. For the Ford Foundation see ‘Proposal to the Ford Foundation. Assistance to the French summer school of physics of the University of Grenoble at les Houches, for the summer 1958’, AN, F/17/17583.
63 ‘Université de Grenoble. Ecole d’été de physique théorique. Patrimoine de l'Université de Grenoble, pour le compte et à l'usage de l’école d’été de physique théorique’, 1978, AEPTH.
64 Cécile Morette, ‘Les leçons à tirer de l’époque héroïque’, 5 April 1993, AEPTH.
65 ‘Rapport administratif annuel de l’école d’été de physique théorique. Les Houches (Haute Savoie)’, 4 January 1958, CDWMP, 2015-248/1. The professors earned 80,000 francs per month in 1951, 140,000 francs in 1958.
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71 ‘Science Committee. NATO advanced study institute programme. Note by the secretary’, 30 November 1959, NAOR, AC/137-D/52.
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76 Moïse Haïssinsky to Marcel Prettre, 28 September 1953, Archives du Musée Curie, Archives de l'Institut du radium, Fonds Moïse Haïssinsky (subsequently FMH), Box 15.
77 ‘Centre international de chimie physique et de ses applications à Nice. Procès-verbal de la séance du comité d'organisation’, 27 October 1953, FMH, Box 15. None of these people ever went to Morette’s summer school.
78 Moïse Haïssinsky to Jean Lépine, 13 February 1954, FMH, Box 15.
79 The troisième cycle is the collective name given to a wide series of postgraduate programmes, dedicated to research training, created after the seminal report of Jean Coulomb and René Navarre, ‘Rapport concernant l'organisation du 3ème cycle de l'enseignement supérieur’, 10 June 1953, AN, 19800284/103.
