On 4 October 1972 representatives of the Soviet Union, United States, and 10 other countries from the Eastern and Western blocs met at The Royal Society in London to sign the charter establishing IIASA. It was the culmination of six years’ effort driven forward by both the US President Lyndon Johnson and the USSR Premier Alexei Kosygin. For IIASA it was the beginning of a remarkable project to use scientific cooperation to build bridges across the Cold War divide and to confront growing global problems on a truly international scale. The first scientist had arrived at IIASA in June, 1973.