Major events for CERN.
1949 - During the European Cultural Conference at Lausanne, the French physicist and Nobel prize-winner Louis de Broglie proposes the creation of a European science laboratory.
1950 - At the 5th
Major events for CERN.
1949 - During the European Cultural Conference at Lausanne, the French physicist and Nobel prize-winner Louis de Broglie proposes the creation of a European science laboratory.
1950 - At the 5th General Conference of UNESCO held in Florence, the American physicist and Nobel prize-winner Isidore Rabi puts forward a resolution, which is unanimously adopted, authorising the Director General of 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...".
1952 - After two UNESCO Conferences are held on the subject, 11 European governments sign an agreement setting up a provisional ‘Conseil européen pour la Recherche nucléaire' (CERN). At a meeting of the CERN council in Amsterdam, a site near Geneva is selected for the planned laboratory.
1954 - The European Organization for Nuclear Research is formally created on 29 September. Its 12 founding members were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. Austria and Spain join CERN in 1959 and 1961 respectively.Yugoslavia leaves the Organization in 1961 for financial reasons. Spain leaves the Organization in 1969 but rejoins in 1983. Finland and Poland join in 1991, Hungary in 1992, the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993, and Bulgaria in 1999 bringing the number of Member States to 20.
1957 - The 600 MeV Synchrocyclotron, CERN's first accelerator, was built to provide beams for particle and nuclear physics experiments. It was subsequently used in nuclear physics, astrophysics and medical physics.
1959 - Proton Synchrotron (PS) -28 GeV- dedicated to particle physics accelerated protons for the first time in November 1959.
1963 - First bubble chamber pictures of neutrino interactions are taken. Neutrino physics benefits greatly from fast ejection of protons from the Synchrotron, which is achieved for the first time ever during May this year.
1965 - Agreement with French authorities is signed in September on extending the CERN site over the French border. In December, the Council approves the construction of the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) on this extension of the site.
1967 - CERN commissions one of the world's finest facilities for the study of very short-lived nuclei-the Isotope Separator On-line (ISOLDE). An agreement between CERN, France and Germany covers the construction of a 3.7 metre hydrogen bubble chamber equipped with the largest superconducting magnet in the world. During its working life from 1973 to 1984, the ‘Big European Bubble Chamber' (BEBC) takes over 6 million photographs.
1968 - CERN scientist Georges Charpak develops a gas-filled box known as a "multiwire proportional chamber" that counted particles one thousand times better than previous detectors. Georges Charpak is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992 for this invention.
1971 - The Intersecting Storage Rings produced the first-ever proton-proton collisions, a precursor to CERN's colliding-beam projects.
1972 - A four ring 800 MeV Booster is completed to increase the injection energy of the PS. With the booster and a new Linac, which starts operation in 1978, the PS machine exceeds its design intensity by more than a thousand times.
1973 - CERN announces an experiment in its Gargamelle bubble chamber shows the existence of neutral currents, a major advance in understanding the particles of matter and how they interact. In particular, it gives strong support to the theory that attempts to unite our understanding of the weak force-governing such phenomena as radioactivity-with the familiar electromagnetic force.
1976 - The Super Proton Synchrotron, with a circumference of 7 km is built, providing beams to large experimental areas of CERN. Scientists using those beams in 1983 discover the two charged particles, called W, and their neutral counterpart Z. The Super Proton Synchrotron is now the last link in the chain providing beams for the Large Hadron Collider.
1978 - Experiments at CERN show how beam quality and intensity can be improved using the ‘stochastic cooling technique', enabling intense beams of antiprotons to be accelerated and stored.
1981 - Conversion of the SPS into a proton-antiproton collider and the building of two experimental areas (UA-1 and UA-2) where data from the collisions can be taken. From then on, the operation of the SPS is div