RWTH Scientists Celebrate Award Win for LHC Experiments
In the summer of 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the European research center CERN, Geneva, announced the discovery of a new particle, presumably the long-sought for Higgs boson. Now, the discovery will receive the Special Fundamental Physics Prize: the three million Dollars in prize money will be distributed among the head of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Lyn Evans, the spokespersons for the ATLAS experiment, Peter Jenni and Fabiola Gianotti, and the spokespersons for the CMS experiment, Michel Della Negra, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Guido Tonelli, and Joe Incandela.
Also involved in the discovery were researcher from RWTH Aachen, who are participating in the CMS experiment. With about 70 participating scientists from three physics departments, RWTH is the largest contributing university to the CMS project.
As Professor Achim Stahl, Chair of Experimental Physics at RWTH and spokesperson for the Aachen Physicists and the German Group at CERN, explains: "We are delighted about the recognition of our CERN colleagues' accomplishments. The Large Hadron Collider project and its experiments were conceived in 1990, during an internationally noted workshop in Aachen. We have contributed significantly to the research conducted at CERN, have been involved in the planning activities for the LHC project, developed technologies and constructed and built components of the high-resolution silicon tracker and the muon chambers."
The award ceremony will take place on March 20, 2013, in Geneva.