The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research was established on the basis of an agreement signed on 26 March 1956, in Moscow by representatives of the governments of the eleven founding countries, with a view to combining their scientific and material potential.

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.

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.

Sergey Dmitriev, director of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, believes that the SHE factory will enable closer examination of nuclei near the limits of stability, as well as experiments aimed at the synthesis of elements 119 and 120.

The first award was dedicated to Wang Ganchang, deputy director from 1958 to 1960 and the Soviet Professor Vladimir Veksler for the discovery of antisigma-minus hyperon.