In 1956 on the recommendation of the Director-General, C. J. Bakker, the Scientific Policy Committee endorsed the proposal to set up the Accelerators Research group, which was finally approved by the Council at its sixth session.

In 1957 the Accelerators Research group was established, as part of the Proton Synchrotron (PS) division, in order to undertake research on the design of future machines. It remained quite small until the end of 1959, when the PS entered into operation, after which more resources were transferred to this area.

In 1960 after the completion of the PS accelerator, several members of other PS division groups joined the AR group, whose scope was at the same time enlarged to include more general studies of as accelerators and related instrumentation technology.

In 1961 the AR Group became the AR division. Some specific studies were started by the AR staff on two possible future CERN projects :

• Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) approved in 1965
• Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) approved in 1971