Perched on a slope beneath the towering aiguilles of the French Alps, the Summer School at Les Houches commands a captivating view of the valley of Chamonix. It was a hardworking school, however,particularly in its early years, and enjoyment of the scenery was confined to brief intervals between lectures held in a recently converted barn. In 1954, the two months of lectures featured a course by Enrico Fermi on pion–nucleon interactions, and several other courses by faculty including Léon van Hove, Freeman Dyson, Robert Marshak, and me.
The school’s director and founder, Cécile De Witt, scheduled a welcome respite from classes for the quatorze juillet holiday and suggested various excursions for the day. As one excursion, she negotiated for Fermi and three others of us a rarely granted invitation to visit the cosmic-ray laboratory maintained by the Ecole Polytechnique near the peak of the Aiguille du Midi. It was an...