CERN Courier celebrates 50th anniversary

"(…) An information paper intended to help every staff member to feel at home in the Organization and to maintain the ideal of European co-operation and the team spirit which are essential to the achievement of our final aim: scientific research on an international scale." This quote is taken from the preface of the first issue of the CERN Courier, published in August 1959.

"In 50 years, the CERN Courier has changed a lot. It has broadened its scope to become an international magazine on high-energy physics and its readership has grown from a few thousand internal readers to more than 25 000 readers across the world", says Christine Sutton, the present editor of the magazine.

The CERN Courier is commemorating its anniversary with a special July/August issue celebrating the past 50 years. "We’ve reproduced the original edition in its entirety", explains Sutton. "It’s amazing to me how much the first editor, Roger Anthoine, achieved in just eight pages." In the anniversary issue, Roger Anthoine himself looks back at how the publication first started. It also includes a selection of highlights from the past 50 years, including the discoveries of weak neutral currents and the W and Z particles, as well as Georges Charpak’s invention of the multiwire chamber.

The magazine is available on-line at http://www.cerncourier.com and will soon appear in the usual places at CERN and around the world.