42 | New Scientist | 23 November 2019“ The world desperately
needs places like this”
Fabiola Gianotti is leading CERN, the biggest particle physics lab
on the planet, through difficult times. Scientific collaboration
has never been more vital, she tells Richard Webb
LUCIAHUNZ
IKER/^1
3 PHOTOFeatures
E
VEN if the entrance has been spruced
up, and a spanking new tram runs from
its front door into the centre of Geneva,
from the outside, CERN could be mistaken
for any other institute of higher learning
in need of a lick of paint. Yet the flags of
23 nations fluttering by the main entrance,
and the buzz of activity inside, tell a different
story. Straddling the border between
Switzerland and France, CERN is the world’s
largest particle physics laboratory, an
international scientific collaboration
without parallel in its scale and ambition.
Established by international convention in
the aftermath of the second world war, the
European Council for Nuclear Research –
known now by its French acronym – was
intended to foster collaborative research into
fundamental physics for peaceable purposes.
Today, some 12,000 researchers from across
the globe use its facilities each year, and it has
been the scene of seminal scientific and
technological breakthroughs – notably the
World Wide Web, invented within its portals in
1989 to allow particle physicists to exchange
data across borders.
CERN’s greatest scientific triumph came in
2012, with the discovery of the Higgs boson at
its 27-kilometre-circumference Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) particle smasher. The Higgs is
the particle that gives all other fundamental
particles mass. That same year, CERN was
granted independent observer status at the
United Nations, bestowing the right to
participate in the work of the UN’s General
Assembly and to attend its sessions. It is just
one of the myriad responsibilities with which
its boss must grapple.