Carlo Rubbia (born March 31, 1934) is an Italian physicist. March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining. ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ...

Rubbia was born in the small town of Gorizia, Italy. After high school, he studied in the Faculty of Physics at the Scuola Normale in Pisa where he completed a thesis about cosmic ray experiments. In 1958, he became a researcher at Columbia University's Nevis Laboratories to widen his experience and to familiarize himself with particle accelerators. Gorizia (Slovenian: Gorica, German: Görz, Friulian: Gurize) is a small town at the foot of the Alps, in northeastern Italy, on the border with Slovenia. ... Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ... 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... Nevis Labs is a research center owned and operated by Columbia University. ... A 1960s single stage 2MeV linear Van de Graaff accelerator, here opened for maintenance A particle accelerator is a device that uses electric and/or magnetic fields to propel electrically charged particles to high speeds. ...

Around 1960, he moved back to Europe, attracted by the newly founded CERN where he worked on experiments on the structure of weak interactions. He was appointed professor of physics at Harvard University in 1970, but continued to travel to Europe frequently to work at CERN. 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. The collider started running in 1981 and, in January 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. 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... World map showing Europe Political map Europe is one of the seven continents of Earth which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europes borders. ... CERN logo The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), commonly known as CERN, is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just west of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... CERN logo The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), commonly known as CERN, is the worlds largest particle physics laboratory, situated just west of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. ... Properties In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ... The antiproton (aka pbar) is the antiparticle of the proton. ... 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In physics, the W and Z bosons are the elementary particles that mediate the weak nuclear force. ... In physics, the W and Z bosons are the elementary particles that mediate the weak nuclear force. ...

The following year, 1984, Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer shared the Nobel prize for physics, one of the shortest intervals ever between discovery and award. 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Simon van der Meer (born November 24, 1925) is a Dutch physicist. ... Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) accepting the Nobel Prize for his work on magnetohydrodynamics [1]. List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ...

Rubbia continued working both on UA1 and as a professor of physics at Harvard until 1989 when he accepted the job of Director-General of CERN, a post he held until 1993. The UA1 high energy physics experiment ran at CERN from 1981 until 1993 on the SPS collider. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ...

Rubbia has also invented a unique concept for a new type of a nuclear energy reactor called the energy amplifier. This inherently safe design concept combines a particle accelerator with a subcritical nuclear reactor which can make use of the abundant element Thorium as fuel and is essentially meltdown-proof. Moreover, the waste it produces is dangerous for a much shorter period of time than that produced by conventional reactors, and it can also break down long-lived waste from conventional nuclear reactors into less harmful substances. In nuclear physics, an energy amplifier is a novel type of nuclear power reactor, a subcritical reactor, in which an energetic particle beam is used to stimulate a reaction, which in turn releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator and leave an energy profit for power generation. ... General Name, Symbol, Number thorium, Th, 90 Chemical series Actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 232. ...

Carlo Rubbia is currently professor at the University of Pavia, Italy . The University of Pavia is a university in Pavia, Italy. ...

Carlo Rubbia was president of ENEA (Italian Institute for New technologies, Energy and Environment) until July 15, 2005 (Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri Silvio Berlusconi).

Further reading

Gary Taubes, Nobel Dreams: Power, Deceit, and the Ultimate Experiment, Microsoft/Tempus Press, Redmond, Washington, 1988. Well-written, reads like a novel.

See also

• Scuola Normale Superiore

The Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, also known in Italian language as Scuola Normale (English: Normal High School College of Pisa or Normal School), is with no doubt the most elitary college in the whole Italian universities world. ...

External links

• Article on Carlo Rubbia from Encyclopedia Britannica
• Nobel prize Autobiography
• Comment by Eugene Garfield on the nobel prize of Carlo Rubbia