IUPAP: Foundation and Early International Cooperation

After the First World War, the Allied countries led the reorganization of international science. The International Research Council, founded in 1919, coordinated disciplines, and astronomy, chemistry and other fields established unions. Physics was delayed by inadequate participation and representation. Fauque and Fox note that the system initially excluded Germany and other defeated countries, giving cooperation a political boundary from the outset.

When the council met again in Brussels in July 1922, physicists decided to establish IUPAP and formed an executive committee. William Henry Bragg was president and Henri Abraham secretary-general, with Lorentz, Knudsen, Millikan, Hantaro Nagaoka and others in its leadership. The committee then sought formal participation from national academic bodies already affiliated with the council.

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The union’s organizing assembly met at the French Renaissance Club in Paris on December 10, 1923, during the French Physical Society’s fiftieth-anniversary celebrations. Public lectures at the Sorbonne featured foreign physicists describing their research. The assembly moved earlier preparations into formal institutional proceedings.

These events strengthened connections between the union and the French Physical Society. Lorentz participated in both the celebrations and union meeting, describing encounters with colleagues in a letter to Einstein. Learned-society representatives and personal correspondence together supported the organization’s early international contacts.

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The Brussels meeting of 1922 had proposed systematically including abstracts with papers published in scientific journals, helping findings circulate between countries. It also supported expanding existing cooperation on compilations of chemical, physical and technical constants to related work by the American National Research Council.

These projects addressed everyday needs: locating findings among many papers and using commonly accessible data in calculations and experiments. Alongside international meetings, the union sought to organize scientific information and exchange across national boundaries.

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An international physics congress planned for Cambridge in 1923 failed through organizational difficulties, and activities were instead combined with the Paris anniversary. In July 1925, the union decided to postpone congresses under its name until German physicists could participate freely. Bragg, Abraham and Lorentz supported this position.

The participation of Germany and other defeated states in the International Research Council and its unions continued affecting relations among scientists and governments. After IUPAP’s second assembly, the next did not occur until 1931. Committees on symbols, units and nomenclature subsequently established more regular work. Academic exchange and institutional development required prolonged coordination.

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