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100 Years of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics

Nature Reviews Physics volume 4, pages 568–569 (2022)Cite this article

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The International Union for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) celebrates its centenary this year, but its beginnings were far from easy. Roberto Lalli and Jaume Navarro reflect on IUPAP’s evolving role in promoting international cooperation.

Indeed, the IRC was the main driving force promoting the internationalization of science after the Great War. Yet, ‘international’ meant, for the IRC, the explicit exclusion of the Central Powers, particularly Germany. This led, in turn, to the rejection of a number of leading physicists to give any scientific content to the new union: the IUPAP seemed to be on the road of becoming a stillborn international project for physics.

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Fig. 1: The first President and Secretary General of the International Union for Pure and Applied (IUPAP).

References

  1. Bohr to Abraham, 12 December 1934. In IUPAP archives, Quebec Secretariat, subseries E1, box 5, folder 38 (1934).

  2. Statement by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics on the Events Occurring in Ukraine (IUPAP, 2022); https://iupap.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/IUPAP_Ukraine_2022_03_01.pdf.

  3. IUPAP Resolution Regarding International Conferences in this Time (IUPAP, 2022); https://iupap.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/IUPAP_conferences.pdf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

    Roberto Lalli

  2. University of the Basque Country and Ikerbasque, Bilbao, Spain

    Jaume Navarro

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  1. Roberto Lalli
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  2. Jaume Navarro
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Correspondence to Roberto Lalli.

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Lalli, R., Navarro, J. 100 Years of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics. Nat Rev Phys 4, 568–569 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00503-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00503-w

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