Awards aplenty in Krakow

CERN will be well represented this year at the award ceremony organized by the European Physical Society (EPS) in Krakow. The Gargamelle Collaboration is being awarded the High Energy and Particle Physics prize, while Maurizio Pierini shares the Young Physicist Prize. Both Mick Storr and Andrzej Siemko will be awarded the Medal of the Polish Commission of National Education.

This year’s EPS-High Energy and Particle Physics Prize is being awarded to the Gargamelle Collaboration for the discovery of the weak neutral current. Gargamelle’s large bubble chamber is now displayed in the Microcosm garden at CERN in commemoration of the discovery that led to the acceptance of the electroweak theory and the award of the Noble prize to Glashow, Salam and Weinberg in 1979. On 3 September 1973 the collaboration published two papers in the same issue of Physics Letters, one on neutral currents involving electrons, the other on neutral current interactions with hadrons (protons and neutrons), signed by a total of 59 scientists from groups throughout Europe; two of them, A. Pullia (from the CERN group) and J.P. Vialle (from the Orsay group), will be present in Krakow to accept the award.

Maurizio Pierini, now at CERN, shares the EPS High Energy and Particle Physics Young Physicist Prize with Niki Saoulidou of Fermilab. While both are members of the CMS collaboration, the prize is for earlier work, in Pierini’s case on the study and analysis of B mesons on the BaBar experiment at SLAC. Saoulidou is rewarded for her contribution to neutrino physics, through experiments at Fermilab. "This prize will certainly give my career a strong, confident boost", says Pierini. "Reflecting on the previous recipients of this award, I feel really honoured".

Furthermore, during the same conference, Mick Storr (CERN Education Group) and Andrzej Siemko (CERN TE Department) will be awarded the Medal of the Commission of Polish National Education, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the organization of the Programme for Polish Teachers.

More information on Gargamelle and the neutral current available in the CERN Courier: here and here