Programme details

Europe can be proud of its research achievements. Its importance to European industry and commerce cannot be overstated. It was the establishment of European Coal and Steel Community, an industrial alliance Schuman enthusiastically promoted, that marked the beginning of European cooperation. In 1957, attention turned to the nuclear power industry with the creation of Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community. Its mission was to coordinate European nuclear research programmes and ensure the free flow of ideas. One of these ideas, in the 60's, was biomedical. The work was carried out in the United Kingdom by Professor Mansfield who developed a technique of creating imagery by magnetic resonance. You probably know it as MRI. MRI can find a tiny brain tumour, so it's become an invaluable diagnostic tool as well as being very useful in the laboratory.
In the Seventies Europe joined in the conquest of space with the founding of the European Space Agency. Around 1990, a researcher in Geneva for CERN, the European nuclear research organisation suggested that it might be possible for everyone in the world to share information with just a click. Tim Berners-Lee worked there in 1990 to write all the basic software for the World Wide Web.
Europe has achieved a great deal through its research programmes over the past 50 years. But times are changing rapidly and it must adapt itself to these changes if it is to continue to answer the demands of the future.