Unlock the Publisher’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The race is on to bring CERN, the international investigation into the mysteries of the universe, with the UK backing a leading physicist who backs plans to build a €16 billion particle accelerator.
London on Tuesday announced the appointment of Professor Mark Thomson to lead the 70-year-old CERN project near Geneva as member states decide on a historic expansion proposal.
The 23 countries of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, are evaluating whether to build a factory to produce and study the Higgs boson, the so-called divine particle discovered in the structure in 2012 which gives mass to planets, stars and life .
“There is a huge consensus, I would say, at a scientific level in Europe that a Higgs factory is the right thing to do next,” Thomson said in an interview. “It will ultimately all come down to cost and affordability – and the willingness of member states to actually build that machine.”
The British government has formally submitted the nomination of Thomson to succeed Italy’s Fabiola Gianotti as director general of CERN when her second five-year term ends next year. He is the first high-profile name to officially join the succession race which is likely to be decided later this year.
Cern said it would not provide information on the candidates during the trial. No public announcement is expected before October.
Thomson is professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge and executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, a UK research organisation. Previously he worked at CERN for six years.
Cern executives have proposed building a structure known as the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which would be more than three times the circumference of the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The LHC is a 27km ring of superconducting magnets where beams of subatomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light collide.
Some critics have questioned whether the FCC’s investigation into the universe’s past and possible future would be value for money, since its benefits are uncertain.
Thomson responded by pointing out how past theoretical discoveries had led to unexpected practical benefits. The role of Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the development of the Global Positioning System that revolutionized navigation was a “great example,” he said.
“There is clearly scientific and, I would also argue, cultural value in exploring the universe,” he said. “But really, I don’t think you know what you’re going to discover, what technology you’re going to develop, or where it’s actually going to lead when you do it.”
CERN’s other member states are 18 EU countries, Israel, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland. The UK is the organisation’s second largest funder after Germany, accounting for more than 15% of member states’ contributions in 2024. The last British citizen to serve as director general was physics professor Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith , who resigned in 1998.
Cern’s global reach includes associate members such as India, Brazil, Pakistan and Turkey, while the United States and Japan have observer status at the LHC. CERN has international cooperation agreements with dozens of other nations, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
“Cern. . . it is currently the world’s particle physics laboratory,” Thomson said. “It has capabilities that are not available elsewhere, based on almost 70 years of tradition.”
The next CERN chief’s other major tasks would include completing a planned upgrade of the existing LHC to allow it to collect more data, said Tara Shears, vice president for science and innovation at the UK Institute of Physics.
Beyond this was the question of whether CERN could help develop the new understanding of physics long promised by the discovery of the Higgs boson.
“The next five years will be critical in defining the future direction of the topic and whether CERN will remain at the center of it,” Shears said.