CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (sɜːrn; sɛʁn; Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 23 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer. The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory; in 2019, it had 2,660 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. In 2016, CERN generated 49 petabytes of data. CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research — consequently, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. CERN is the site of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is primarily used to store and analyze data from experiments, as well as simulate events. As researchers require remote access to these facilities, the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire ('European Council for Nuclear Research'), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. During these early years, the council worked at the University of Copenhagen under the direction of Niels Bohr before moving to its present site in Geneva.