Carlo RubbiaBorn 31 Mar 1934.Italian physicist who in 1984 shared with discovery of the massive, short-lived subatomic W particle and Z particle. Around 1960, he joined the newly founded CERN where he investigated the structure of weak interactions. In 1976, he suggested adapting CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to collide protons and antiprotons in the same ring and the world's first antiproton factory was built, and started running in 1981. In Jan 1983, came the announcement, first from the UA1 detector, that W particles had been created. A couple of months later the even more elusive Z particles were also observed. These particles are the carriers of the so-called weak force involved in the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. |
