Rubbia, << ROOB bee uh, >> Carlo (1934-…), an Italian physicist, led a team of scientists who discovered the subatomic particles (units of matter smaller than an atom) known as the W particle and the Z particle. Theoretical physicists believe that these particles are involved in one of the fundamental forces of nature, which they call the weak force. Rubbia’s team at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, discovered the particles in 1983. Rubbia received the 1984 Nobel Prize for physics for the discovery, sharing the award with Dutch physicist Simon van der Meer (see Van der Meer, Simon ).
Rubbia was born in Gorizia, Italy and studied at the University of Pisa. In 1958, he went to the United States as a research fellow at Columbia University in New York City. He returned to Italy to join the faculty of the University of Rome in 1960. He was appointed senior physicist at CERN in 1962. From 1970 to 1988, he was a professor of physics at Harvard University in the United States, a part-time post he held while continuing his work at CERN. From 1989 to 1993, Rubbia was director-general of CERN.
At CERN, Rubbia worked on advances to particle accelerators, devices that produce beams of high-energy particles. He proposed a method of using a particle accelerator to force collisions between protons and antiprotons. His method generated higher energies than had been achieved up to that time (see Antimatter ; Particle accelerator ). Scientists had theorized about the existence of the W and Z particles. Applying this method of proton-antiproton collisions, Rubbia’s team used a device called the super-proton synchrotron to produce the particles for the first time.
As head of CERN, Rubbia oversaw the introduction of two new particle accelerators, the large electron-positron collider and the large hadron collider. These devices helped CERN maintain its position as one of the world’s leading centers of research into particle physics. In the 1990’s, Rubbia also gained attention with a proposal that would make nuclear reactors safer. In his scheme, a beam of protons from a particle accelerator would bombard a mixture of nuclear waste and the element thorium. The process transforms highly radioactive nuclear waste into much less hazardous products.
