Fifty years ago, in September 1954, CERN officially came into being. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, as it was then called, welcomed Felix Bloch back to Europe as its first director general. The Stanford University physicist, a Nobel Prize winner with dual Swiss and American citizenship, personified what CERN’s founders hoped the laboratory would achieve. They hoped it would play a fundamental role in rebuilding European physics to its former grandeur, reverse the brain drain of the brightest and best to the US, and continue and consolidate postwar European integration.
Today, CERN has more than fulfilled the goals of its founders. It is one of the outstanding high-energy physics laboratories in the world. Home to thousands of European physicists and engineers, the lab is an essential resource for thousands of others the world over who build and run experiments there. And it is a model of European integration. From...
