European Center for Nuclear Research

European Center for Nuclear Research 

(Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire; CERN), a scientific research institute at which experimental and theoretical research in the physics of elementary particles is conducted; it also coordinates such research in Western Europe. It was founded near Geneva in 1954 as a means of providing cooperation among European states in the field of nuclear research. Active participants in the organization of CERN, which was conducted through UNESCO, were P. V. Auger, L. de Broglie (France), G. Kramers (Great Britain), N. Bohr (Denmark), E. Amaldi (Italy), and R. Oppenheimer (USA).

The following countries are members of CERN U971): Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Greece, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. CERN’s budget consists of contributions from member countries. In 1970, 261.9 million Swiss francs were spent on the basic research program. The supreme body of CERN is its council, which consists of two representatives from each member country. A director-general and seven members of the board are in charge of all practical activity. The following individuals have occupied the post of director-general: F. Bloch (USA), 1954; C. Bakker (the Netherlands), 1954-59; J. Adams (Great Britain), 1960-61; V. Weisskopf (USA), 1961-65; B. Gregory (France), 1966-70; and W. Jentschke (Federal Republic of Germany), since 1971. Approximately 3,000 permanent associates and a large number of scientific groups from national European laboratories are conducting’scientific research at CERN.

Experimental research at CERN is conducted on two proton accelerators: a synchrocyclotron with a power of 600 mega electron volts (MeV; started up in 1957) and a strong-focusing synchrotron with a power of 28 GeV (started up in 1959). In 1971 construction of storage rings was completed and experiments were begun on opposing proton beams with an energy of up to 28 GeV. At CERN a number of new elementary particles and resonances have been discovered and their properties have been studied. Research has been conducted on the phenomenon of the narrowing of the dif-fraction peak in proton-proton scattering, and polarization effects in the scattering of elementary particles on nucleons have been studied. In addition to experiments on the decay of elementary particles, unique experiments were conducted at CERN studying the interaction of the neutrino with matter (the law of the conservation of leptons has been confirmed through experiments; the nonidentity of electron and muon neutrinos has been proven). In 1971 a decision was made to construct a proton accelerator with a power of approximately 300 GeV; for this purpose the independent CERN-2 labora-tory has been organized within the framework of CERN.

V. S. KAFTANOV