CERN

CERN, officially the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an international organization that operates the world's largest particle physics laboratory. It is located near Geneva, Switzerland, on the border with France. Established in 1954, CERN’s aim is to advance our understanding of the fundamental structure of matter through high-energy experiments.

CERN was founded by twelve European states and has grown into a global collaboration that hosts scientists, engineers, and students from many countries. Its governance is through the CERN Council, with a Director-General as the head of the organization. The laboratory is funded by its member states and associate members, with annual budgets approved by the Council.

The laboratory’s centerpiece is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometer underground ring that accelerates particles to near-light speeds and collides them to study fundamental forces and particles. The LHC hosts major experiments, including ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb, along with other accelerators such as the Proton Synchrotron and the Super Proton Synchrotron. The research program covers high-energy particle physics, heavy-ion physics, and related fields, supported by an international computing grid and ongoing detector development.

Notable achievements include the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, which confirmed a key part of the Standard Model. CERN is also closely associated with the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989-1990, and it continues to contribute to advances in computing, technology transfer, and medical and industrial applications through its research and collaborations.