Particle physicists from most of Europe and beyond have joined together in a remarkable co-operative venture to seek answers to the questions that challenge us about the big bang and the origin of matter.
Their base is CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, on the outskirts of Geneva, straddling the French/Swiss border. CERN is probably the best example of European co-operation in any field, not only in science. It was founded in 1954, at a time when many European physicists began to realise that co-operation provided the only way forward for a project as complex as a large particle accelerator.
The founder states include Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. Since 1954, CERN has grown in size until today it houses several accelerators which serve a community of more than 6,000 physicists worldwide. The number of member states now stands at 19, with Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Spain adding to the original list, while Yugoslavia has left. Physicists from countries outside CERN such as Japan, the USA and the Russian Federation also collaborate in experiments by contributing pieces of equipment.
Since it began CERN has built several accelerators, culminating in 1989 in its current centre-piece - LEP - the Large Electron Positron Collider - the world's largest particle accelerator.
