Inspired at a book fair
During the Frankfurt book fair last October, the CERN stand drew quite the crowd. Director-General Rolf Heuer was there to promote CERN’s mission and the "LHC: the Large Hadron Collider" book. He met a lot of visitors and for one of them there was also a nice follow-up…
Marcus and his father visiting the LINAC facility.
Fifteen year-old Marcus lives in Lauterecken near Frankfurt. The popular book fair last autumn was for him a nice opportunity to get in touch with the CERN environment. Inspired by the stand and what the CERN people were describing, he started to ask more and more questions… So many, that Rolf Heuer decided to invite him to come to CERN and find out some of the answers for himself.
A few weeks later, while recovering from an exciting visit to the ATLAS underground cavern and other CERN installations with a cup of tea in Restaurant 1, Marcus shared his enthusiasm about the Organization: “When I was younger, my mother gave me A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The first part of the book dealt with particle physics and sparked my interest in the subject. Today, I have been able to visit LINAC4, SM18, the CCC, the Computing Centre and the Globe. I even had the opportunity to go underground to see the ATLAS cavern, and I have been very impressed by how huge the detector is. It's gigantic!”
Determined to study particle physics at university, Marcus may soon be pacing up and down the CERN corridors as a physicist. He would then be adding his own German flavour to the international melting pot that charmed him so much during his visit.
