Only ten years younger than CERN, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, ICTP, celebrated its 50th anniversary in October 2014. Today, the centre is recognized as a driving force that supports scientists in their home countries in order to stem the scientific brain drain from the developing world. The current director is Fernando Quevedo, who first came to CERN as a young post-doc. In his role as director of ICTP, he took part in a colloquium at CERN in September, on “From physics to daily life”, and found time to talk to Antonella Del Rosso about the contribution that theorists make to society and why it deserves support.

Read more: "ICTP: theorists in the developing world" – CERN Courier