The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, ), in Dubna, Moscow Oblast (110 km north of Moscow), Russia, is an international research center for nuclear sciences, with 5500 staff members including 1200 researchers holding over 1000 Ph.Ds from eighteen countries. Most scientists, however, are eminent Russian scientists. The institute has seven laboratories, each with its own specialisation: theoretical physics, high energy physics (particle physics), heavy ion physics, condensed matter physics, nuclear reactions, neutron physics, and information technology. The institute has a division to study radiation and radiobiological research and other ad hoc experimental physics experiments. Principal research instruments include a nuclotron superconductive particle accelerator (particle energy: 7 GeV), three isochronous cyclotrons (120, 145, 650 MeV), a phasitron (680 MeV) and a synchrophasotron (4 GeV). The site has a neutron fast-pulse reactor (1500MW pulse) with nineteen associated instruments receiving neutron beams. Founding The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research was established on the basis of an agreement signed on March 26, 1956, in Moscow by representatives of the governments of the eleven founding countries, with a view to combining their scientific and material potential. The USSR contributed 50 percent, the People's Republic of China 20 percent. On February 1, 1957, JINR was registered by the United Nations. The institute is located in Dubna, 120 km north of Moscow. At the time of the creation of JINR, the Institute of Nuclear Problems (INP) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR already existed at the site of the future Dubna since the late 1940s, and it launched a program of fundamental and applied research at the synchrocyclotron. The Electrophysics Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (EFLAN) was established, and under the guidance of Academician Vladimir Veksler, work began to create a new accelerator – a proton synchrophasotron – with a record energy of 10 GeV at that time. By the mid-1950s, there was a worldwide consensus that nuclear science should be accessible and that only broad cooperation could ensure the progressive development of this research, as well as the peaceful use of atomic energy. Thus, in 1954, near Geneva, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) was established. At about the same time, the countries that belonged to the socialist community decided to establish a Joint Institute for Nuclear Research on the basis of the INP and EFLAN. The first director of the United Institute was Professor D. I. Blokhintsev, who