His discovery of W cmd Z particles mdde 1983 SMASH ERS c1 red-Iefier yedr for physics D, UBES

n 1932 a young, usually reticent Eng dles of `energy, called photons. the lish physicist walked the streets of electroweak, said the theory, must Cambridge, acccsting strangem with betransmittedbyafarnilyofthreo the news: "We have split the atom! We 'heavy" photons. For the theory to be have split. the at0m!" The man was condrmed, these pa.z·ticlea—positive and John Cockroft.; the proclamation was negative W particles, and a neutral Z prompted by his new machine that had to be discovered. accelerated protons to extraordinary In 1978 the European Organization speeds and used them as projectiles to for Nuclear Research (CERN), a consor shatter the atom into its component tium of 13 nations, put into motion a scheme to do just that. Over the next Today the descendants of Cockroffs three years, hundreds of physicists and atom smasher are enormous rings of technicians converted the laboratory's tunnels and magnets scattered over the huge proton accelerator into s machine face of the earth. They are the tools that sends two beama—one of matter, physicists use to probe the inhnitesimal the other of antimatter·—in opposite di realms of the universe. searching for rections around a circular track. As the the harmony and elegance that their beams meet, particles of matter collide faith tells them must be at natu1·e’s with particles of antimatter, annihilat heart, struggling to understand the ing each other and releasing tremen most. basic of questions: What is mat done amounts of energy. That energy is ter? What is the stun` of which htunan transformed into new particles of mat ity and the universe are made? ter; the more energetic the beams, the In the past two decades a chapter of more massive the particles that can be science has been written that parallels created. This past year, in the chaos of the achievements of two of the greatest those annihilations. the physicists dis physicists of the lest century: James cerned the le signatures of Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. In the W’s (Discoven, April 1983) and the 1861 Maxwell constructed a set of equa· Z. It was the ultimate confirmation of tions that explained the seemingly di the electroweak theory, and the culmi verse phenomena of electricity and nation of one of the great intellectual magnetism as two aspects of a single, adventures of the century. more fundamental force. ln doing so, he That discovery demonstrated the ex described the propagation of electro traordinary degree of teamwork need magnetism through space by waves. ed to carry through the colossal experi Sixteen years later, Hertz conhrmed ments of modern physics, but it was also Maxwell’s theory experimentally by the vivid realization of one man's proving the existence of those electro dream. He is a man who bullied and magnetic waves. charmed the scientific community into The latest chapter began in the building the protomantiproton collider, ;. __l,= 1960s. Over morethan a decade three against the advice of some of the world 'a young messes-sne1a¤¤ o1ssn¤w,sse best accelerator physicists. And he led T ven Weinberg, and ‘ Abdus Salam the team that elegantly executed one of pieced together a theory that described thegreat works of modem physics. For electromagnetism and the weak force these reasons, DISGOVER has chosen (which is responsible forcertain kinds of Carlo Rubbia, a 49-year—old Italian ji E} Y radioactive decay in atoms) as, once physicist from CERN and Harvard, as again, aspects of a single, more funda Scientist of the Year. ; ` sg ` if 1**-· mental force, called the electroweak. Rubbia’s passion for physics has had Just as electromagnetism, or light, is repercussions beyond the W’s and the Z. now thought of as being carried by bun The surprising success of his proton antiproton collider has made it the mod mbbla ln•id• mo CERN detector that was el for the next generation of particle u••dtofh•du••wmdZp•nloI•• accelerators. Perhaps even more signifOCR Output

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OCR OutputSCIENTIST OF THE YEAR

icant, Rubbia's collider has shifted the and learning speed, as well as an intense Rubbia concedes that the qualities balance of power in high energy phys desire for knowledge. Says David Cline, that have driven him so hard in science ics, a Held the United States has d0mi— a particle physicist at the University of have drawbacks. "I am so pushed in my mated since before World War II. Now Wisconsin, "Given any subject, Rubbia profession," he says, "my curiosity is so Europe has taken the lead, and Ameri seems to master it not just to a level of great, that I carmot resist trying to re can physicists End themselves in the un· gross description but to deep under spond to these natural questions all the familiar position of playing catch·up. standing faster than anyb0dy." Adds time. It is hopeless. My daire for get Through these achievements, Rub» Lederman, "Rubbia has an unbeatable ting somewhere is so 181*9%, so strong, bia has become a reigning ldng of Big combination: a very good grasp of phys that my mind keeps running all the Science and one of the most controver ics and an enormous amount of aggra time." He is also aware that at times he sia] and colorful personalities in phys sive energy. alienates his colleagues. "Sometimee, ics. Says Leon Lederman, director of Even Rubbia's critics readily concede professionally, you get yourself against the Fermi National Accelerator Lab his brilliance, but they say his speed a brick wall, " he says. '-Then you have oratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and his fertile mind often betray him: toiindawaytogetthmughit.Myown `What Rubbia has done is set the pace his ideas come so quickly that he leaves reaction is to get more aggressive. more erratic, and more pushy when I'm cor nered than when I'm not." Nothing exemplifies Rubbia's style better than his aggressive pursuit of the W He does not waste timewith self si doubt. "For the past llfty years," says ts? 4 g1 Rubbia, "if you really wantedtobecome ’§é;i famous in our Held, you had to get your ·c.' lg IT'; tsk self the biggest and the largest and the most powerful accelerator? 'lb do that, a physicisthas tolcnow morethan phys 3**. —;:*¤a ics; he has to plan, sell, and run an enter prise that can take years, involve hun dreds of scientists, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. He also has to have an idea worth pursuing.

ubbia’s idea was to master anti matter—to create it, collect it, ac celerate it, and collide it into mat ter. He discusses the process without understatement: "'I'he man on the street thinks all matter wm made by God in the moment of creation. But high energy physicists like us are repeating *•· _“* ‘v¤··~». over and over again the miracle of cre Ri.bbIaandaccaI•ratord••lm•rSlmonva1d•rM••rvI•w1in•a1tbr¤!¤n ation—tra.n.sforming energy into mat ter. For the man on the street, a collision for this science." That springs from the a trail of half-completed projects be means destruction. Youlsmash two cars core of Rubbia’s personality: his drive, hind him as he goes oH` in pursuit of together and you destroy the cars. In curiosity, and ambition are so great the next idea. Some compare his phys particle physics, when you smash two that he works at an extraordinary ics to his life style, which is one of the cars together you get twenty new cars. speed that enlivens his colleagues and more Hamboyant in science. ln an era You lil] a vacuum with tremendous ener forces his competitors to keep up with when scientists regularly attend con gy, and in a collision, anything that can him. For Rubbia, everything is second f erences throughout the world, Rubbia be produced will be p1·oduced." Rubbia ary to physics. His hobby is physics; his travels so much that he has been ap believed that with matter and antimat relaxation is physics; his entertainment pointed an honorary board member of ter, his collisions could produce the W is physics. And all this is motivated by the Alitalia airline. Says one physicist, The scientiic commtmity did not what Rubbia believes is the one Enal, 'His mode of operation is to come in share his faith. When Rubbia iirst dis unequivocal fact: "Make no mistake with enormous interest in doing some missed the scheme at symposiums, re about it," he declares. "Physics is fun. thing Hashy, and then just pushing and calls David Cline, "there would be snick Forget about everything else. Physics shoving, whatever it takes to do it. ers in the audience." It was proposed to is fun. " There’s an awful lot of noise and Fermilab and rejected; the director, now Rubbia seems to play physics as a smoke, and not much 1ight." Still, the retired, suggested that Rubbia, "that game, using amazing intuitive ability critic admits, "he’s done great physics. jet-flying cl0wn," should go elsewhere.

DISCOVER / JAMJARY 1984 OCR Output When Rubbia, Cline, and Peter McIn tyreof Harvard submitted apaperon the l|..ICII1’lR IIIDTDRQGITIIS ILACI IIA! collider to the Physical Review Letters, the pinnacle of physics journals, the edi tors refused tn publish it. i U After the Fernulab rejection, Rubbia took the ideato CERN. There he be came, in his words, a "missionm·y' for the proton-antiproton collider. "He *‘§»¢’*’i“' a pulled 0H a great political p1oy," says physicist Lawrence Suiak of the Univer sity of Michigan. "He got the tremen dous power of _CERN's accelerator ¤·•~·•··*•*·*·•·¤ r t ...- E physicists to take up the challenge, and . a l stir .1 Tljf T i·‘:.<-3 -3 { l they did a bang·up job. U Z . Theiheorlsisr .,., Rubbia had one essential ally, a Dutch accelerator physicist named Si Carlo Rubb1a’s discovery of the __ Steven,Wunberg,_-than atAHarvard; mon van der Meer. In 1968, van der WandZpa1ticluwasupecial1ydra and the`PakistaniTpi1tvsii1istj’Abd11s Meer conceived of a technique, called matic because the mdstenee, pf the i¤dershe¢¤¤y rm. stochastic cooling, that he considered particleo—and the precise ‘too far-i`etched" to publish. But eight heeded to create them—had `beeii ·e¤é=¤f=¤sW’·¤¤¤¥ years later it was just what Rubbia predicted 15 years earlier by a the ...:.··¤i¤ ;'!1¤¢r»i¤ needed to collect and control the anti ory that. unided e protons. The two agreed to work to with the weak force, ruponsible for v¤¤¤'bis_ieie¤.!1=¤¤v¤1r§¤;stB¤¤ryw gether; van der Meer directed the re radioactive decay. The Brat step to building of the accelerator and Rubbia ward that theory was taken in 1960 prsbiérn the creation of the house-sized W and by Sheldon Glashow, then at the Uni l?l°9¤·» EP .Z detector. CERN dually gave the versity of Copenhagen, but his work go·ahead. was unheralded because it did not` Even then, many scientists doubted yield any predictions that could be im. that the collider would work. The two oondrmed experimentally. In 1967, ishared the particle beams were supposed to circle Q_, , in the accelerator 50,000 times a second. Each time around they would pass through each other, and a few of the tril they still didn’t kill each other as they Rubbia spent his college years at the lion or so particles in each beam would were supposed to. That was the most ex University of Pisa. "The school worked collide. Several respected American ac citing moment in my whole experi like a monastery," he says. "You were celerator scientists predicted that the ence." Although the discoveries of the locked inside and did nothing but study, two beams-—not just a few particles in W's and the Z were still a year on`, this which was exactly what I wanted. each-—would not survive the very Hrst was the crucial test of the experiment. Well, almost nothing, because it was encounters: they would blow each other while he was at Pisa that he met his fu up, leaving no more beams—and no ubbia calls his passionate involve ture wife, Marisa, who was also study more experiment. ment with science "a birth defect, ing physics. Committed to the project, Rubbia had so to speak." He was born in 1934 From Pisa, Rubbia went to New York no choice but to ignore these predic in Gorizia, Italy, a small town outside City and entered graduate school at Co tions. "Let's be serious," he says. "If we Trieste, the oldest son of an electrical lumbia University, at the time the most had spelled out these doubts before the engineer. He was only ten when World exciting school in the country for high project was launched, nobody would War II swept through Gorizia, destroy energy physics. Among the young phys have given us the money for it. These re ing his home and clouding his childhood icists at Columbia were Steven Wein marks were coming from very, very with tragedy. Paradoxically, the war berg, Leon Lederman, now the director good people. I was scared stiH' the beam was a boon to Rubbia’s scientihc curios of Fermilab, and Rubbia's ollicemate wouldn’t work. ity. By the time he was 15 he had Nicholas Samios, now the director of He describes the moment when the scoured the countryside collecting an Brookhaven National Laboratory. Al accelerator-as well as his faith and van impressive amount of communications though the Columbia years were among der Meer’s expertise—was tested. Says equipment left behind by the armies the happiest in Rubbia's life, he had to Rubbia, "We were there, and the beams that marched through northern Italy. overcome a severe inferiority complex were injected and we looked at the From working and playing with the that came, he says, "from jumping from damn thing and the beams were still equipment, he developed a lmack for the countryside into the middle of the there, and we looked again and they electronics that is still one of his fortes a.ction." were still there, and it came around and as a physicist. In 1961, Rubbia went back to Europe OCR Output

msccven J JANUARY 1ssa SCIEHTIST OF THE YEAR

E':E-l i }? tral currents, involving the electrically neutral Z particles. Rubbia and his ool

r ' ‘ leagues put the W aside and decided to - an ..... ‘£ .;·¢·;—s¥é§i**;m~ look for neutral currents. The search was one of the great races of high energy physics. Vying against '·?"i“ .` f ·Rubbia and the team at Fermilab was a I`! group of physicists at CERN working with a huge bubble chamber detector called Gargamelle. In January 1973 the _ ‘..»·;tJ Gargamelleteaunfoundinits dame sin gle eventthatappeazwedtlcbestriking evidence uf neutral currents. They pub lished their nasults in July. »»·$'“ ata began Fermilablateinaccumulating at. D following 1972, spring and appeared by the to support · the existence of neutral current.s·—but. not conclusively. After CERN ’s announcement., the pressure was on Rubbia’s group to report its own results. A month later they did, but still with inconclusive evidence. At this time, says Rubbia, "a. big disaster cccurred’ hisvisaexpiredandhehadtloleavethe United States. While Rubbia waited in Switzerland for a new visa, the other members of the group, still not trusting the data, decided to repeat the experi ment quickly with a few modifications. Unfortmxately, the second experi S` @5% ment was flawed, and it revealed no neutral currents. Rumors spread that the Gargnmelle paper would be contra dicted; the physicistsat.CE.RN weredis· tressed that, having already published, Outing a I•••¤n h •|•¢tron|¢• Imm hh an, Arndi they would be made to look silly. The Fermilab team prepared a no-neutral no join the seven-year-old CERN. He his daughter, Laura, 23, is in her fourth current paper. was fascinated with the promise of a. year of medical studies at the Universi Then the situation reversed itself laboratory that from its inception was ty of Geneva. His son, André, 17, is a again: the flaw in the experiment was based on international cooperation. "T0 yoimg electronicswizard in his fat.her’a uncovered and new data emerged sup 1·ne," he says, "that seemed like a great mold. porting the existence of neutral cur idea worth Eghting for, especially com In 1969, Rubbia was approached by rents. In March 1974, Rubbivfs group ing out of the ashes of Europe after the Alfred Mann, at the University of Penn submitted a third and Hnal paper cun war." This multinational theme runs sylvania, and David Cline, both eager to Enning the Gargarnelle discovery. It through Rubbia's life: he is proud of the search for the W with Fem1ilab’s new was an exemplary piece of physics, but more than twenty diH'erent cou.ntries accelerator, which at the time of its it did not undo a joke that had spread represented in his experiment and completion three years later would be through the scient.iHc community: Rub pleased that he speaks four languages the most powerful in the world. The out bia’s group, the joke went, had discov Euently—Italian, English, French, and come was experiment 1A at Fermilab— ered "alternating neutral current.s." German. "When you speak to someone which would tarnish Rubbia's reputa Says Rubbia, "In a way, we blew it. in his own lang·uage," says Rubbia, tion for the next decade. Those few years were the most tu 'you get into his frame of mind. The original goal of experiment 1A multuous and painful of Rubbia's ca Although Rubbia has taught at Har was to discover the W, but that changed reer. By the time his beam discovered vard since 19*70, he remains an Italian in 1971 when physicists began to believe the W, he had learned his lesson well. citizen and lives with his wife and family that the electroweak theory might be `The definition of an expert that I like in a plush apartment in Geneva. His correct. The theory predicted a new best," he says, "is one who has already wife teaches high school physics, and kind of weak interaction, lmown as neu made all the mist.¤.kes." Thus, when

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