Carlo Rubbia was born on 31 March 1934 and is an Italian particle physicist and inventor who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Simon van der Meer for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN.
15 Facts About Carlo Rubbia
2.
Carlo Rubbia's family moved to Venice then Udine because of wartime disruption.
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Carlo Rubbia's father was an electrical engineer and encouraged him to study the same, though he stated his wish to study physics.
4.
Carlo Rubbia gained a degree and doctorate in a relatively short time with a thesis on cosmic ray experimentation; his adviser was Marcello Conversi.
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Carlo Rubbia moved back to Europe for a placement at the University of Rome before joining the newly founded CERN in 1960, where he worked on experiments on the structure of weak interactions.
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The collider started running in 1981 and, in early 1983, an international team of more than 100 physicists headed by Carlo Rubbia and known as the UA1 Collaboration, detected the intermediate vector bosons, the W and Z bosons, which had become a cornerstone of modern theories of elementary particle physics long before this direct observation.
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In 1970, Carlo Rubbia was appointed Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard University, where he spent one semester per year for 18 years, while continuing his research activities at CERN.
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Carlo Rubbia has been one of the leaders in a collaboration effort deep in the Gran Sasso Laboratory, designed to detect any sign of decay of the proton.
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Carlo Rubbia further proposed the concept of an energy amplifier, a novel and safe way of producing nuclear energy exploiting present-day accelerator technologies, which is actively being studied worldwide in order to incinerate high activity waste from nuclear reactors, and produce energy from natural thorium and depleted uranium.
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Carlo Rubbia was principal Scientific Adviser of CIEMAT, a member of the high-level Advisory Group on global warming set up by EU's President Barroso in 2007 and of the board of trustees at the IMDEA Energy Institute.
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In June 2010, Carlo Rubbia has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam.
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In December 1984, Carlo Rubbia was nominated Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI.
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On 30 August 2013, Carlo Rubbia was appointed to the Senate of Italy as a Senator for Life by President Giorgio Napolitano.
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Carlo Rubbia was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1984.
15.
In 1984, Carlo Rubbia received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.