Archival Research at CERN

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend several hours a week with the library staff at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) to access historical documents in their archive. I uncovered quite an interesting story - one that involves our sense of self and country, geopolitics, and financial pressures - somehow all tied with unassuming study of our physical world. I reveal an non-trivial link between the political world and scientific world, and try and answer the question of, what is CERN, and how did it get here.