Matthew Eyton-Jones

One of the most important number crunchers at CERN is responsible for pensions rather than colliding protons

The World Today
2 minute READ

My mornings typically start with a short run by the crystal clear waters of Lake Geneva or a trip to the gym on the way to the campus of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a few miles outside the city centre.

There are more than 100 inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations based in Geneva, including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. But CERN is somewhat different: beneath its campus straddling the Swiss-French border lies the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest machine through which the elusive Higgs boson particle was discovered in 2012. It is also the place where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Founded in 1954, it now has 22 member states and four associate member states.

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