Geneva, 11 December 1998. The CERN1 Council, where the representatives of the 19 Member States of the organization decide on scientific programmes and financial resources, held its 111th session on 11 December under the chairmanship of Dr. Hans C. Eschelbacher (DE).
End of Director-General's mandate
Speakers representing the world community of particle physics praised the outstanding achievements of Prof. Christopher Llewellyn Smith during his five-year mandate as Director-General of CERN. The significance of his achievements whilst Director-General are difficult to over-estimate. The approval of the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 1994 and the subsequent decision in 1996 to build the accelerator in a single stage, in a period of great economic difficulty, was in large part due to the leadership and tenacity of the Director-General. This decision to go ahead with the LHC has laid the foundation for CERN's central role in global particle physics at the high-energy frontier for the next 25 years. The speakers also drew attention to Prof. Llewellyn Smith's outstanding diplomatic skills which were crucial in the successful negotiations with the non-Member States (Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Russia and the United States) for contributions to the construction of the accelerator. The LHC has set a precedent for future international "big science" projects.
Prof. Llewellyn Smith worked successfully to motivate the Laboratory staff in a period of budget and personnel cuts. By establishing the Tripartite Employment Conditions Forum (TREF) the Director-General established a mechanism for dialogue between the staff, the management and CERN's Council. The results have been very positive best illustrated by the staff's support of the innovative Recruitment by Saved Leave scheme (RSL). This programme has allowed staff to exchange a percentage of their salary for extra leave on the understanding that the money be used for the recruitment of new young staff members. In 1998, 36 new posts were opened thanks to RSL.
Prof. Llewellyn Smith's remarkable diplomatic abilities linked with his international prestige as a scientist with a deep understanding of the physics he represented, has cemented CERN's continuing position as a world-leading research laboratory.
Science at CERN in 1998
In his report to Council, the Director-General pointed to a year of solid achievement and outstanding results across the whole of the CERN research programme. Every machine in CERN's interlinked chain of accelerators achieved a new record performance in 1998.
At low energies, the unique Isotope Separator (ISOLDE) continues to provide incisive results over a wide range of nuclei. Although the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) was closed at the end of 1996, the accumulated data continues to bear fruit. One highlight is the new direct evidence from the CPLEAR experiment for the subtle violation of time symmetry in the decays of neutral kaons. CERN's new Antiproton Decelerator (AD) machine operated with protons for the first time in 1998 and first operation with antiprotons is scheduled for 1999.
With a record number of protons supplied for neutrino production, 1998 was another notable year for neutrino physics. Although the big NOMAD and CHORUS experiments found no evidence for neutrino oscillations, the range thereby excluded has important implications for particle physics and for cosmology.
Another record was production of high energy lead ions in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). Here the ultimate objective is to find the 'quark-gluon plasma' - when individual nuclei fuse together into a uniform quark 'soup'. During the course of the year, several experiments reported interesting indications of new behaviour. CERN's flagship machine, the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP), setting up several records, provided 30% more electron-positron collisions at an energy of 94.5 GeV per beam over the year than had been expected. The self-consistency of accumulated physics results show that LEP is already in the most likely energy region where the long-sought Higgs particle should be found. Direct searches at LEP have now definitely ruled out the Higgs in half this region. With 97 GeV per beam and above scheduled for next year, LEP is poised to continue the search for both the Higgs and for new 'supersymmetric' states in its final two years of operation.
For the immediate future, the LHC proton collider, scheduled to begin operations in 2005, is on schedule and on budget. Construction work on the new experimental areas has begun and the first shafts for transfer tunnels are now being sunk. Looking further ahead, the novel CERN LInear Collider (CLIC) scheme has shown its worth and points a new route towards higher energy electron-positron colliders.
Elections
Dr. Hans C. Eschelbacher (DE) was re-elected as President of the CERN Council for the period of one year starting in January 1999.
Prof. Fernando Aldana (ES) was re-elected Vice-President of Council for a period of one year as of 1 January 1999.
Mr Fernando Bello (PT) was re-appointed Chairman of the Finance Committee for a period of one year as from 1 January 1999.
Dr Leif Westgaard (NO) was re-elected Vice-Chairman of the Finance Committee for a period of one year, from 1 January 1999.
G.E Kalmus (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK) was appointed Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee for one year as from 1 January 1999.
D. Trines (DESY, Germany), S. Ozaki (BNL, USA), A. Golutvin (ITEP, Russia) and J. Feltesse (CEA, France) were elected members of the Scientific Policy Committee for 3 years from 1 January 1999.
Senior Staff Appointments
Mr J. Van der Boon has been appointed as Leader of the Personnel Division for a period of three years as from 1 April 1999. Previously he was the Head of Personnel at NWO (the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) in The Hague. From 1 January 1999 to 31 March 1999 Dr W. Blair will run the division ad interim.
Senior Management of CERN as from 1 January 1999
Directors
- Director for Collider Programmes :
R. Cashmore (GB) - Director for Fixed Target and Future Programmes :
C. Détraz (FR) - LHC Project Leader :
L. Evans (GB) - Director for Accelerators :
K. Hübner (AT) - Technical Director :
J. May (DE) - Director of Administration :
M. Robin (FR) - Director for Technology Transfer and for Scientific Computing (until May 1999)* :
H. Wenninger (DE)
*Dr Hans F. Hoffmann (DE) was appointed Director for Technology Transfer and for Scientific Computing, from 1 June 1999 to 31 December 2001.
Division Leaders
- Administrative Support :
J. Ferguson (GB) - Information Technology (IT) :
M. Delfino (ES) - Engineering Support and Technologies (EST) :
D. Güsewell (DE) - Finance (FI) :
A. Naudi (CH/GB) - Large Hadron Collider (LHC) :
Ph. Lebrun (FR) - Experimental Physics (EP) :
G. Goggi (IT) - Personnel (PE)
until 31 March : W. Blair (GB)
as from 1 April : J. Van der Boon (NL) - Proton Synchrotron (PS):
D. Simon (FR) - SPS + LEP (SL) : K. Kissler (DE)
- Supplies, Procurement and Logistics (SPL) :
R. Perin (IT) - Technical Inspection & Safety Commission (TIS) :
H. Schönbacher (AT) - Technical Support (ST) :
A. Scaramelli (IT) - Theory (TH) :
A. De Rújula (ES)
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1. CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation,the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and Unesco have observer status.