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Chapter 1. 1967-1972
The Beginning: Out of Chaos, Order, then Complexity

Concept and Vision

George S. Benton E. James Archer

A successful model for a joint university-federal government enterprise, primarily in atomic physics, had existed in Boulder since 1962. The Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, now called JILA, had been formed as a cooperative activity of the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) of the Department of Commerce and mainly the Department of Physics, but also Astro-Geophysics (now Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences), and Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University. Evidence of the benefits to both partners of participation in JILA motivated George S. Benton, Director of ESSA's Institutes for Environmental Research, and Alan Shapley, Director of IER's Office of Programs, to approach James Archer, Dean of the C. U. Graduate School, in 1965, with a suggestion that a similar joint institute be formed in the areas of science within the mission of IER. Dean Archer set up a steering committee in the spring semester of 1966, with the intention of developing a plan for the creation of a joint institute. This committee initially included Archer and Benton, as well as Wesley Brittin (Physics), James Warwick (Astro-Geophysics), Frank Essenberg (Mechanical Engineering), Frank Barnes (Electrical Engineering), Mahinder Uberoi (Aerospace Engineering), J. C. "Chris" Harrison (Geological Sciences), and Charles De Puy (Chemistry) from the University and James Wait and John Rinehart from ESSA. Brittin, the chair of Physics, had been active during the formation of JILA and advocated that institute as a model for the new one.

No available documents indicate progress toward this goal until early 1967. In an apparently independent action, but in consultation with the concerned departments, Brittin and Warwick submitted a preliminary proposal to the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), in February 1967. The formation of a Joint Institute for Environmental Sciences (JIES), to be operated jointly by the University of Colorado and ESSA, was proposed. Although this proposal was not successful, the organizational concept, if not the specific program areas, was similar to that which became the foundation of CIRES. Three broad areas of research were proposed: plasma physics, solid-state sciences, and continuum mechanics, the first two of which were included in the proposal to DoD. Initially, plasma physics was to have been led by Brittin and Warwick, with the solid-state sciences led by Chris Harrison of Geological Sciences, and S. W. Maley of Electrical Engineering.

• The Birth of CIRES
• Getting Established

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