Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics with the Dutch physicist Simon van der Meer for their discovery of the subatomic W and Z particles.
The W and Z particles was proven existence by Rubbia which used a new proton-antiproton collider with sufficient energy for production of these of these very heavy particles.
W and Z bosons existence strongly confirms the availability of the electroweak theory, proposed in the 1970s, that the weak force and electromagnetism are different manifestations of a single basic kind of physical interaction.
Rubbia was born in Gorizia and obtained his doctorate from the University of Pisa in 1957.
He helped develop pulsed gas particle detectors and gained his degree with a thesis on cosmic ray experiments.
He taught there for two years before moving to Columbia University as a research fellow.
In 1960 he became a physicist and CERN Geneva and in 1970 he also was appointed a physics professor at Harvard University.
Rubbia divided between teaching at Harvard and research at CERN in Geneva, where a beam particle beam accelerator used counter-rotating beams of protons colliding against each other.
The experiment began in 1981 and the discovery of W and Z bosons obtained in 1983 led to conclude that in some decays of the W particles, the first evidence for the six quark, called top, had been found.
Rubbia served as director general of CERN from 1989-93 and as President of ENEA until July 2005.
Carlo Rubbia – Nobel Prize Winner in Physics
