CERN is the world’s largest research center for the study of subatomic particles. An association of 23 European nations called the European Organization for Nuclear Research finances and operates CERN, which is located near Geneva, Switzerland. The name CERN comes from the original name of this association in French. The center is known informally as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
Activities at CERN center on experiments that use particle accelerators, devices that produce beams of subatomic particles of extremely high energies. Scientists used CERN’s super-proton synchrotron (SPS) for the laboratory’s most celebrated achievement—the discovery of the W particle and the Z particle. These subatomic particles transmit the weak nuclear force, one of four fundamental forces in nature. Physicists Carlo Rubbia of Italy and Simon van der Meer of the Netherlands received the 1984 Nobel Prize for physics for the discovery. CERN houses the world’s largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a ring-shaped machine measuring 17 miles (27 kilometers) in circumference. The LHC was finished in 2008. It lies in a tunnel that previously housed another giant accelerator, the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider. In 2019, CERN revealed plans to build an even larger and more powerful collider, to be named the Future Circular Collider (FCC).
CERN has a staff of several thousand scientists and other personnel. Thousands of visiting scientists also carry out research at the center. CERN has stimulated scientific activity in Europe by providing facilities for large-scale experiments in subnuclear physics. The center also ranks as a leader in the development of research and computer equipment.
Full members of CERN are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Other countries involved with CERN include Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine. CERN was founded in 1954.
