History of CERN

History of CERN
The initiative of setting up research organization for studying the nucleus of the atom was made by the French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Louis de Broglie, in 1949. In 1952, the European governments provisionally established “Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire” (CERN) to be located at a site near Geneva. Its convention was ratified in 1954, and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and its first accelerator, a 600 MeV proton Synchrocyclotron, began operation in 1957. One of the first experiment achievements was the long awaited observation of the decay of a pion into an electron and a neutrino.

In 1960s, CERN was leading in neutrino physics benefiting greatly from fast ejection of protons from the synchrotron. The 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron commissioned in 1959 acted as the central hub and it provided an unparalleled variety of particle beams and research possibilities. CERN commissioned the Isotope Separator On-Line (ISOLDE) in 1967 for the study of very short lived nuclei. It began construction of the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) to develop the world’s first proton collider, which was commissioned in 1971. The most significant work started back in 1968 with the invention of multiwire proportional chambers and drift chambers that revolutionized the electronic particle detectors. Georges Charpak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992 for this work.

CERN began to gather its momentum with the construction of a seven kilometer Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) in the early 1970s, initially planned for energy 300 GeV. The interconnected, large facilities gave an edge to the particle physics experiments, the construction of the SPS expanded the activities of CERN in the French side, thus residing now at the border of the two countries.

In 1984, Carlo Rubbia and Simon van de Meer received the Noble Prize for Physics for their work, which culminated in the discovery of the W-boson and Z boson at CERN in 1983 – the long sought carriers of the weak nuclear force – confirmed the “electroweak” theory unifying weak and electromagnetic forces.

In 1981, the construction of the 27 kilometers long Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) ring started. It was the largest scientific instrument constructed at the time, for initial operating energy of 50 GeV per beam.
History of CERN