European Organization for Nuclear REsearch(CERN)

 

The European Organization for Nuclear Research  known as CERN established in 1954
is a European Research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world

The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1954

CERN is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 22 Member States

Member States of CERN

Since its foundation by 12 members in 1954, CERN regularly accepted new members.
The founding members are -
Belgium
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
Accepted Members
Austria               01.06.1959
Spain                 01.01.1983
Portugal             01.01.1986
Finland               01.01.1991
Poland                01.07.1991
Hungary              01.07.1992
Czech Republic   01.07.1993
Slovakia              01.07.1993
Bulgaria               11.03.1999
Israel                   06.01.2014
Romania              20.06.2015


All new members have remained in the organization continuously since their accession, except Spain and Yugoslavia.

Spain first joined CERN in 1961, withdrew in 1969, and rejoined in 1983. Yugoslavia was a founding member of CERN but quit in 1961.

Of the 22 members, 18 are EU Member States. Switzerland and Norway are not.

 Israel joined CERN as a full member on 6 January 2014,becoming the first (and currently only) non-European member.

Several important achievements in particle physics have been made through experiments at CERN. They include:

• 1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber;
• 1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments;
• 1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) operating on the Z boson peak;
• 1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment;
• 1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment;
• 2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen;
• 2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes;
• 2012: A boson with mass around 125 GeV/c² consistent with long-sought Higgs boson

The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that resulted in the discoveries of the W and Z bosons. The 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber."