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Brief history of ICTP


"Scientific thought is the common heritage of mankind." This sentiment, often expressed by ICTP's founder and long-time director, Abdus Salam, has inspired the Centre since its inception in 1964. Created during the Cold War in the heart of Europe, a continent separated by the iron curtain, ICTP provided a rare line of communication between scientists from the East and West. Later, ICTP emerged as a focal point of co-operation between the North and South, aiming to help scientists from developing countries overcome their isolation and contribute to state-of-the-art research in physics and mathematics. While details have changed with time, the basic relevance of the Center has remained unchanged.

The 1960 Conference at Miramare

In June 1960, the Department of Physics at the University of Trieste organized a seminar on elementary particle physics in the Castelletto in the Miramare Park. The notion of creating an institute of theoretical physics open to scientists from around the world was discussed at that meeting. That proposal became a reality in Trieste in 1964. Pakistani-born physicist Abdus Salam, who spearheaded the drive for the creation of ICTP by working through IAEA, became the Centre's director, and Paolo Budinich, who worked tirelessly to bring the Centre to Trieste, became ICTP's deputy director. After residing for four years in downtown Trieste, ICTP moved to its permanent location near the Miramare Park in 1968.

In 1979, Abdus Salam shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, both from the United States, for the mathematical and conceptual unification of two of the four forces of nature—the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. The theory was subsequently confirmed by experiments carried out by the Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia at CERN in Geneva, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1984.

The Nobel Prize to Abdus Salam

Trieste's ambassador of science, Abdus Salam met dozens of presidents, monarchs, prime ministers and religious leaders as head of ICTP. In his conversations, he tirelessly promoted science as a fundamental force for social progress and peace among nations.

Abdus Salam passed away in London on 21 November 1996, about two years after he resigned as director of ICTP for health reasons. Newspapers from around the world reported his death. The coverage in Italy, Great Britain and Pakistan was extensive.

In 1995, Professor Miguel Virasoro from the University of Rome was appointed to succeed Salam. He was the Centre's director until the end of May 2002.

Throughout its history, ICTP has welcomed some of the world's foremost physicists to its campus. J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project in the United States during World War II, was an influential voice in the creation of the Centre and the first chairperson of ICTP's Scientific Council. Nobel Laureates Werner Heisenberg, who formulated the uncertainty principle, and Paul A.M. Dirac, who predicted the existence of antimatter, were also enthusiastic supporters and frequent visitors to the Centre. In all, some eighty Nobel Laureates have lectured at the Centre as well as many other prestigious scientists in fields ranging from elementary particles to solid state physics to atmospheric sciences to mathematics to astrophysics.

Equally important, ICTP created a nurturing environment for the development of a constellation of institutions in Trieste, each of which is dedicated, in part, to the promotion of science and technology in the developing world. Collectively, this institutional constellation has given rise to the "Trieste System", a name that is gaining increasing resonance across the world.

More on the history of the Centre for the first thirty-five years can be found on the page about the development of the Centre.

The Abdus Salam
International Centre
for Theoretical Physics
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