This article explores the problem of the foundation of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), by reconstructing a broader institutional framework, which includes other international actors – EURATOM, UNESCO and the International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics (ILGB) in Naples – and a relevant, but still neglected figure, the Italian geneticist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso (1913–1983). The article considers the tension between centralized and federal models of organization in the field of life sciences not just as an EMBO internal controversy, but rather as a structural issue of European scientific cooperation in fundamental biology in the early 1960s. Along with EMBO, the article analyzes in particular the EURATOM Biology Division Program and the constitution of UNESCO International Cell Research Organization (ICRO). Adriano Buzzati-Traverso, as founder of ILGB and scientific consultant of EURATOM and UNESCO, played a crucial role in the complex negotiation which ultimately led to the foundation of EMBO. A synchronic treatment of ILGB, EURATOM, UNESCO-ICRO and EMBO opens a window on the early 1960s institutional configuration of molecular biology in Europe, showing how it basically incorporated the “Cold Spring Harbor” decentralized model rather than reproducing the “CERN” centralized model.
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