Ugo Amaldi helped create a European network of cancer therapy centres using beams of ions, in particular carbon ions

Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General, was spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider from 2009 to 2013 and responsible for announcing the discovery of the Higgs boson, alongside the CMS spokesperson

Jürgen Schukraft was the first spokesperson of the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider

Herwig Schopper was Director-General of CERN from 1981 to 1988, during which time the Large Electron Positron collider was approved and constructed

Carlo Rubbia’s name is closely related to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together with Simon van der Meer, for the work he had done as head of the UA1 collaboration

Ted Wilson was involved in the design of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and played a leading role in its commissioning

Violette Brisson played an active part in the discovery of neutral currents; she was head of the Gargamelle group at the Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris

Find out how CERN is celebrating the 100th birthday of former Director-General Herwig Schopper, and how you can be involved

The provisional CERN Council, during its first session in May 1952, founded the Theory Study Group as one of four study groups tasked with planning a unique laboratory

Since its discovery in 2012, the Higgs boson has become one of the most powerful tools to probe our understanding of nature and, with that, examine some of the biggest open questions in physics today.

It was just a few short weeks in mid-2012, but they were so intense that it felt like years. As 4 July drew near, the ATLAS and CMS experiments could sense that they were homing in on something big.

On 10 September 2008, the LHC circulated its first beams. It may not have been all plain sailing from then on, but the adventure had begun.