Science and Technology Facilities Council
Printable version

CERN turns 60 and celebrates peaceful collaboration for science

Yesterday, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, blowed out 60 candles at an event attended by official delegations from 35 countries. The UK is being represented by His Royal Highness, The Duke of York, KG and the Chief Executive of STFC Professor John Womersley.

Founded in 1954, CERN is today the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and home to the world’s leading particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). CERN is a prime example of international collaboration, bringing together scientists of almost 100 nationalities.

The STFC coordinates and manages the UK’s involvement and subscription with CERN and UK membership of CERN gives our physicists and engineers access to the experiments and allows UK industry to bid for contracts, UK nationals to compete for jobs and research positions at CERN, and UK schools and teachers to visit. In addition UK scientists hold many key roles at CERN and firms in the UK win contracts worth millions of pounds each year. The impact of winning contracts is often even greater as it enables companies to win business elsewhere.

Professor John Womersley, Chief Executive of STFC said “Congratulations to CERN. The last 60 years has seen the researchers at CERN advance our knowledge of the basic building blocks of matter, building a sound theory based on this knowledge - the Standard model - and hugely improve our understanding of how the Universe works and how it began. Physicists and engineers from the UK have played a leading part in this work and I look forward to seeing what they and their colleagues at CERN will discover in future decades.”

With the restart of the LHC next year at new record energy, CERN will continue to seek answers to some of the most fundamental questions about the universe.

For more information go to the CERN website.

 

Channel website: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/

Share this article

Latest News from
Science and Technology Facilities Council

Spotlight on women at Serco – Anita’s story