CERN receives prestigious Milestone recognition from IEEE

At a ceremony last night at CERN*, Mr W. Cleon Anderson, President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE**) formally dedicated a Milestone plaque in recognition of the invention of electronic particle detectors at CERN. The plaque was unveiled by Mr Anderson and Georges Charpak, the Nobel-prize winning inventor of wire chamber technology at CERN in 1968.

With the attribution of this IEEE Milestone, CERN finds itself in good company. There are currently over 60 Milestones around the world, awarded to such momentous achievements as the landing of the first transatlantic cable, code breaking Bletchley Park during World War II, and the development of the Japanese Bullet train, the Tokaido Shinkansen.

“It has been my pleasure to have participated in the dedication of seven of these Milestones,” said Mr Anderson at the event, adding that all have brought important advances to humanity. “What is being done here at CERN,” he concluded, “is of benefit to the world.”

Particle physics research was revolutionised in 1968 when Georges Charpak published a paper describing the multi-wire proportional chamber, a forerunner to many of the particle detectors in use at CERN today. This invention paved the way for new discoveries in particle physics, as underlined by Swiss Secretary of State for Education and Research Charles Kleiber. “I am delighted that the IEEE has decided to award a key Milestone to CERN for the invention of the multi-wire proportional particle detector by Professor Charpak and his collaborators in 1968,” he said “These developments have led to crucial progress in our understanding of the constituents of nature.”

Charpak’s invention also made it possible to increase the rate of data collection by a factor of a thousand. The significance of this was underlined by Walter LeCroy, founder of the company that bears his name, who said that Charpak’s invention had “transformed the world of the electronics developer.” “The advent of electronic particle detectors,” he said, “brought the need to store, transmit and analyse data faster than ever before.” Many of the developers working for LeCroy are former particle physicists.

In 1992, Charpak, who had been working at CERN since 1959, received the Nobel Prize in physics for his invention. He has also actively contributed to the use of this new type of detector in various applications in medicine and biology. The value of fundamental research institutes such as CERN in fostering innovation of this kind was a recurring theme of the ceremony. “CERN’s reputation is based on fundamental research,” said the Laboratory’s Director General, Robert Aymar, “but the Organization is also an important source of new technologies. In our work we need instruments based more and more on electronics, so that a tight collaboration worldwide in this field is beneficial to science. In turn the developments in our science feed back into the equipment in industry and in the end they appear in your home.” The point was underlined by Charpak himself, who stressed the importance of intellectual freedom, saying of his time at the Laboratory, “CERN was a fantastic place because of the freedom I had, which permitted me to do a lot of things that were unexpected.”