Carlo Rubbia (born 31 March 1934)
is an Italian
particle physicist and
inventor who shared the
Nobel Prize in Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
in 1984 with
Simon van der Meer for work leading to the discovery of the
W and Z particles at
CERN.
Early life and education
Rubbia was born in 1934 in
Gorizia, an Italian town on the border with
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
. His family moved to
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
then
Udine
Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with t ...
because of wartime disruption. His father was an electrical engineer and encouraged him to study the same, though he stated his wish to study physics. In the local countryside, he collected and experimented with abandoned military communications equipment. After taking an entrance exam for the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa to study physics, he failed to get into the required top ten (coming eleventh), so began an engineering course in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
in 1953. Soon after, a Pisa student dropped out, presenting Rubbia with his opportunity. He gained a degree and doctorate in a relatively short time with a thesis on cosmic ray experimentation; his adviser was
Marcello Conversi. At Pisa, he met his future wife, Marisa, also a Physics student.
Career and research
Columbia University
Following his degree, he went to the United States to do
postdoctoral research
A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...
,
where he spent about one and a half years at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
performing experiments on the decay and the nuclear capture of
muons. This was the first of a long series of experiments that Rubbia has performed in the field of
weak interaction
In nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, which is also often called the weak force or weak nuclear force, is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the strong interaction ...
s and which culminated in the Nobel Prize-winning work at CERN.
CERN
He moved back to Europe for a placement at the
University of Rome before joining the newly founded
CERN in 1960, where he worked on experiments on the structure of weak interactions. CERN had just commissioned a new type of accelerator, the
Intersecting Storage Rings, using counter-rotating beams of
protons colliding against each other. Rubbia and his collaborators conducted experiments there, again studying the weak force. The main results in this field were the observation of the structure in the elastic scattering process and the first observation of the
charmed baryons. These experiments were crucial in order to perfect the techniques needed later for the discovery of more exotic particles in a different type of particle collider.
In 1976, he suggested adapting CERN's
Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to collide protons and antiprotons in the same ring – the
Proton-Antiproton Collider. Using
Simon van der Meers technology of
stochastic cooling, the
Antiproton Accumulator was also built. The collider started running in 1981 and, in early 1983, an international team of more than 100 physicists headed by Rubbia and known as the UA1 Collaboration, detected the intermediate vector bosons, the
W and Z bosons, which had become a cornerstone of modern theories of
elementary particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and b ...
long before this direct observation. They carry the weak force that causes
radioactive decay in the
atomic nucleus
The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron ...
and controls the combustion of the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
, just as
photons, massless particles of light, carry the
electromagnetic force
In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...
which causes most physical and biochemical reactions. The weak force also plays a fundamental role in the
nucleosynthesis
Nucleosynthesis is the process that creates new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons (protons and neutrons) and nuclei. According to current theories, the first nuclei were formed a few minutes after the Big Bang, through nuclear reactions in ...
of the elements, as studied in theories of stars evolution. These particles have a mass almost 100 times greater than the proton. In 1984 Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer were awarded the Nobel Prize "for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction".
To achieve energies high enough to create these particles, Rubbia, together with David Cline and Peter McIntyre, proposed a radically new particle accelerator design. They proposed to use a beam of
protons and a beam of
antiproton
The antiproton, , (pronounced ''p-bar'') is the antiparticle of the proton. Antiprotons are stable, but they are typically short-lived, since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy.
The exis ...
s, their
antimatter
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioac ...
twins, counter rotating in the vacuum pipe of the accelerator and colliding head-on. The idea of creating particles by colliding beams of more "ordinary" particles was not new: electron-positron and proton-proton colliders were already in use. However, by the late 1970s / early 1980s those could not approach the needed energies in the centre of mass to explore the W/Z region predicted by theory. At those energies, protons colliding with anti-protons were the best candidates, but how to obtain sufficiently intense (and well-collimated) beams of anti-protons, which are normally produced impinging a beam of protons on a fixed target? Van den Meer had in the meantime developed the concept of "stochastic cooling", in which particles, like anti-protons could be kept in a circular array, and their beam divergence reduced progressively by sending signals to bending magnets downstream. Since decreasing the divergence of the beam meant to reduce transverse velocity or energy components, the suggestive term "stochastic cooling" was given to the scheme. The scheme could then be used to "cool" (to collimate) the anti-protons, which could thus be forced into a well-focused beam, suitable for acceleration to high energies, without losing too many anti-protons to collisions with the structure. Stochastic expresses the fact that signals to be taken resemble random noise, which was called "Schottky noise" when first encountered in vacuum tubes. Without van der Meer's technique, UA1 would never have had the sufficient high-intensity anti-protons it needed. Without Rubbia's realisation of its usefulness, stochastic cooling would have been the subject of a few publications and nothing else. Simon van de Meer developed and tested the technology in the proton Intersecting Storage Rings at CERN, but it is most effective on rather low intensity beams, such as the anti-protons which were prepared for use in the SPS when configured as a collider.
Harvard University
In 1970, Rubbia was appointed Higgins Professor of Physics at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, where he spent one semester per year for 18 years,
while continuing his research activities at CERN. In 1989, he was appointed Director-General of the CERN Laboratory. During his mandate, in 1993, "CERN agreed to allow anybody to use the Web protocol and code free of charge … without any royalty or other constraint".
Gran Sasso Laboratory
Rubbia has also been one of the leaders in a collaboration effort deep in the
Gran Sasso Laboratory
Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the largest underground research center in the world. Situated below Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, it is well known for particle physics research by the INFN. In addition to a surface portion of the ...
, designed to detect any sign of decay of the proton. The experiment seeks evidence that would disprove the conventional belief that matter is stable. The most widely accepted version of the unified field theories predicts that protons do not last forever, but gradually decay into energy after an average lifetime of at least 10
32 years. The same experiment, known as
ICARUS and based on a new technique of electronic detection of ionizing events in ultra-pure liquid
argon
Argon is a chemical element with the symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third-most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as ...
, is aiming at the direct detection of the neutrinos emitted from the Sun, a first rudimentary neutrino telescope to explore neutrino signals of cosmic nature.
Rubbia further proposed the concept of an
energy amplifier, a novel and safe way of producing nuclear energy exploiting present-day accelerator technologies, which is actively being studied worldwide in order to incinerate high activity waste from nuclear reactors, and produce energy from natural
thorium
Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high ...
and depleted
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
. In 2013 he proposed building a large number of small-scale thorium power plants.
Other organisational affiliations
Rubbia was principal Scientific Adviser of
CIEMAT (Spain), a member of the high-level Advisory Group on
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
set up by EU's President Barroso in 2007 and of the board of trustees at the
IMDEA Energy Institute. In 2009–2010, he was Special Adviser for Energy to the Secretary General of ECLAC, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, based in Santiago (Chile). In June 2010, Rubbia has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam (Germany). He is a member of the
Italy-USA Foundation. During his term as President of
ENEA (1999–2005) he has promoted a novel method for
concentrating solar power
Concentrated solar power (CSP, also known as concentrating solar power, concentrated solar thermal) systems generate solar power by using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight into a receiver. Electricity is generated when ...
at high temperatures for energy production, known as the
Archimede Project, which is being developed by industry for commercial use.
Personal life
Marisa and Carlo Rubbia have two children.
Awards and honors
In December 1984, Rubbia was nominated Cavaliere di Gran Croce
OMRI
Omri ( ; he, , ''‘Omrī''; akk, 𒄷𒌝𒊑𒄿 ''Ḫûmrî'' 'ḫu-um-ri-i'' fl. 9th century BC) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the sixth king of Israel. He was a successful military campaigner who extended the northern kingdom of ...
.
On 30 August 2013, Rubbia was appointed to the
Senate of Italy as a
Senator for Life by President
Giorgio Napolitano.
Asteroid
8398 Rubbia is named in his honor. He was elected a
Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1984.
In 1984, Rubbia received the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...
.
References
External links
* including the Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1984 ''Experimental Observation of the Intermediate Vector Bosons W+, W– and Z0''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubbia, Carlo
1934 births
People associated with CERN
Columbia University people
Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
Experimental physicists
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Harvard University faculty
Italian Nobel laureates
20th-century Italian physicists
Italian life senators
Living people
Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Nobel laureates in Physics
Particle physicists
People from Gorizia
People from the Province of Gorizia
University of Pisa alumni
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa alumni