Angela Merkel comes to CERN
On Tuesday 29th April, Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, visited CERN.
With the start of the LHC imminent, Angela Merkel made a short but significant visit to show her support for the project, making her the first German Chancellor ever to come to CERN.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, was welcomed by Robert Aymar, Director-General of CERN.
On arrival she was warmly welcomed by the Director-General, Robert Aymar, and also introduced to the next Director-General, Rolf-Dieter Heuer and the members of CERN’s top management.
Angela Merkel and members of CERN’s top management. From left to right: Maximilian Metzger, Secretary-General; Robert Aymar, Director-General; Angela Merkel, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director-General for 2009-2013; Jos Engelen, Chief Scientific Officer; Sigurd Lettow, Chief Financial Officer.
The first stop on the German Chancellor’s whirlwind tour of CERN was the ATLAS control room, where she was greeted by Peter Jenni, the ATLAS spokesperson. The whole party then travelled 100 metres underground to show her some of the jewels in CERN’s crown - ATLAS, the largest particle physics experiment in the world, and the LHC tunnel, which will be the most powerful particle accelerator ever when it is switched on later this year.
The Chancellor asked questions and showed strong interest throughout, undoubtedly aided by her own PhD in physics.
Angela Merkel with CERN’s German community.
During her visit, Angela Merkel also had the opportunity to meet young German scientists working at CERN. Completely surrounded by journalists, photographers, members of the CERN management and German staff, the German Chancellor seemed completely at ease and numerous bursts of laugher erupted from the centre of the crowd during the meeting.
"She was very relaxed, and seemed to be at home among scientists," says Dieter Schlatter, who organised the meeting with the 13 young German scientists. "We wanted to get across the excitement and challenge of working at CERN, and the young scientists did this very well."
Before leaving, the German Chancellor signed the Guest Book and posed for a photograph with members of CERN’s large German community.
In total her trip lasted just an hour and a half, but her presence at CERN will not be so quickly forgotten.
Germany and CERN
Germany was one of the twelve founding Member States of CERN. The Nobel prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg represented the Federal Republic of Germany at the first Council, and was a firm advocate of having Geneva as the seat of a new European centre for science. It was the first time since the Second World War that Germany had become a fully-fledged member of an international organisation.
Since that time German scientists have made important contributions to CERN’s development at every level. For example, Herwig Schopper served as Director-General from 1981 to 1988 and successfully oversaw the construction of the Large Electron-Positron Collider, the forerunner of the Large Hadron Collider. More recently, Rolf-Dieter Heuer has been appointed to serve as Director-General for a five-year term of office from 2009 to 2013. There are around 200 German scientists and engineers in the CERN personnel and of all the Member States, Germany pays the largest contribution – around 20% of the total Budget, which corresponds to around 130 million euros.
Of the 9,000 visiting scientists at CERN from around the world, more than 900 come from Germany. German physicists thus represent one of CERN’s largest user groups and have made important contributions to the construction of the LHC experiments. CERN is also an important centre for the training of future scientists and technical experts: every year between 50 and 100 doctoral theses prepared in the framework of CERN projects are completed at German universities.
