Taking a closer look at LHC

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CERN IN SHORT

The origins of CERN are generally traced back to 1949, when the French theorist and Nobel laureate Louis de Broglie proposed setting up a new European laboratory to halt the exodus of physics talent from Europe to North America. A year later, at a UNESCO conference in Florence, the American Nobel-prize winner Isidor Rabi put forward a resolution calling on UNESCO "to assist and encourage the formation and organization of regional centres and laboratories in order to increase and make more fruitful the international collaboration of scientists".

The resolution was unanimously adopted and, after two more UNESCO conferences, 11 European governments agreed to set up a provisional Conseil Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN). The new council met in Amsterdam and a site near Geneva in Switzerland was selected. By 1953 the physicists who would build CERN's first accelerators had already started collaborating with their opposite numbers at the Brookhaven lab in the US, although the new laboratory did not formally come into existence until the CERN convention was ratified by the first 12 member states on 29 September 1954. The new lab was called the Organisation Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire but it has been known as CERN ever since.

The 12 member states that signed the CERN convention in 1954 were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Yugoslavia. Since then Yugoslavia has left and Austria, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria have all joined, bringing the number of member states to 20. Spain actually left CERN in 1969 but rejoined in 1983. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the US all have observer status, as do the European Union and UNESCO.

It is estimated that about half of the 13,000 particle physicists in the world are involved in experiments at the lab. Some 4499 come from the 20 member states, and there are also large contingents from Russia (744), the US (586) and Japan (103).

CERN also brings European countries together in more obvious ways. Part of the laboratory is in Switzerland and part is in France. The main site at Meyrin straddles the border, but you can only enter and leave through the gates placed in Switzerland. There is also a second site at Prevessin in France.

Most of the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider will be in France: the control room will be at Prevessin and all the detectors, apart from ATLAS, will also be on (or under) French soil.

	CERN
	CERN IN SHORT
	EDUCATION
	WHERE THE WEB WAS BORN
	CERN & FUTURE

The origins of CERN are generally traced back to 1949, when the French theorist and Nobel laureate Louis de Broglie proposed setting up a new European laboratory to halt the exodus of physics talent from Europe to North America. A year later, at a UNESCO conference in Florence, the American Nobel-prize winner Isidor Rabi put forward a resolution calling on UNESCO "to assist and encourage the formation and organization of regional centres and laboratories in order to increase and make more fruitful the international collaboration of scientists". The resolution was unanimously adopted and, after two more UNESCO conferences, 11 European governments agreed to set up a provisional Conseil Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN). The new council met in Amsterdam and a site near Geneva in Switzerland was selected. By 1953 the physicists who would build CERN's first accelerators had already started collaborating with their opposite numbers at the Brookhaven lab in the US, although the new laboratory did not formally come into existence until the CERN convention was ratified by the first 12 member states on 29 September 1954. The new lab was called the Organisation Européene pour la Recherche Nucléaire but it has been known as CERN ever since.

The 12 member states that signed the CERN convention in 1954 were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Yugoslavia. Since then Yugoslavia has left and Austria, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria have all joined, bringing the number of member states to 20. Spain actually left CERN in 1969 but rejoined in 1983. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the US all have observer status, as do the European Union and UNESCO. It is estimated that about half of the 13,000 particle physicists in the world are involved in experiments at the lab. Some 4499 come from the 20 member states, and there are also large contingents from Russia (744), the US (586) and Japan (103).

CERN also brings European countries together in more obvious ways. Part of the laboratory is in Switzerland and part is in France. The main site at Meyrin straddles the border, but you can only enter and leave through the gates placed in Switzerland. There is also a second site at Prevessin in France. Most of the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider will be in France: the control room will be at Prevessin and all the detectors, apart from ATLAS, will also be on (or under) French soil.