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Por sus descubrimientos de las partículas intermediarias de la interacción débil W y Z, al doctor Carlo Rubbia le fue concedido el premio Nobel de Física en 1984 con Simon van der Meer.

Rubbia realizó sus estudios en la Escuela Normal de Pisa y en la Universidad de la misma ciudad, donde obtuvo el grado de Doctor en Física en 1957. Tras ejercer de profesor ayudante un par de años en dicha Universidad se trasladó a la Universidad de Columbia como investigador.

En 1960 retornó a su patria, estableciéndose en la Universidad de Roma y entrando a colaborar dos años más tarde con el Centre Européene de Récherche Nucleaire (CERN) en Ginebra, el Laboratorio internacional de física de partículas sito en Ginebra (Suiza). En 1970 consiguió la plaza de profesor de física en Harvard, y desde entonces alternó sus estancias en Ginebra con su labor pedagógica.

En 1973, Rubbia, a cargo de un grupo de experimentadores del CERN, detectó las llamadas corrientes neutras débiles, interacciones débiles en las que la carga eléctrica no se transfiere entre las partículas afectadas. La teoría electrodébil establecida por Weinberg y Salam a partir de esta observación afirmaba que dicha interacción débil se transmitiría por medio de unas partículas llamadas Bosones Vectoriales Intermediarios, tres partículas llamadas W+, W- y Z0 cuyas masas serían unas cien veces mayores que las de un protón.

CARLO RUBBIA
Brief biography

Carlo Rubbia was born in Gorizia, Italy, on 31st March 1934. He graduated at Scuola Normale in Pisa and holds a PhD of Columbia University. He has been working at CERN since 1961. In 1976, he suggested adapting CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to collide protons and antiprotons in the same ring and the world's first antiproton factory was built. The collider started running in 1981 and, in early 1983, an international team of more than 100 physicists headed by Rubbia and known as the UA1 Collaboration, detected the intermediate vector bosons. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Carlo Rubbia has served as Director-General of CERN from January 1989 till
December 1993.

Rubbia has also been one of the leaders in a collaboration effort based in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory (INFN), designed to detect any sign of decay of the proton. The experiment seeks evidence that would disprove the conventional belief whereby matter is stable. The experiment, known as ICARUS and based on a new technique of electronic detection of ionizing events in ultra-pure liquid Argon, is aiming at the direct detection of the neutrinos emitted from the Sun, a first rudimentary neutrino telescope to explore neutrino signals of cosmic nature.

From 1970 to December 1988 Rubbia has spent one semester per year at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was Higgins Professor of Physics. From 1986 till 1994 he has been the President of Sincrotrone Trieste (Synchrotron Light Radiation Source), the company in charge of building ELETTRA, one of the first third-generation synchrotron radiation sources in the world, together with Berkeley and Grenoble. Construction of ELETTRA began in 1991 and was completed in 1993, with the first experiment carried out in October 1993, under the leadership of Prof. Rubbia.

More recently he proposed the concept of an Energy Amplifier – a novel and safe way of producing nuclear energy exploiting present-day accelerator technologies, which is actively being studied world-wide in order to incinerate high activity waste from accelerators and to produce energy from natural thorium. The energy resources potentially deriving from these fuels will be practically unlimited and comparable to those from Fusion.

From 1999 to 2005 he has been President of ENEA (Italian National Agency for Energy and the Environment). His research activities are presently concentrated on the problem of energy supply for the future, with particular focus on the development of new technologies for renewable energy sources. During his term as president of ENEA he has developed a novel method for concentrating solar power at high temperatures for energy production, known as the Archimedes project, which is presently being developed by industry for commercial use.

Prof. Rubbia is currently principal Scientific Adviser of CIEMAT (Spain and one of the members of the High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change set up by EU's President Barroso in 2007. In March 2009 he has been appointed Special Advisor for Energy to the Secretary General of the United Nations’ ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carribean.

Honorary Degrees
University of Geneva (Switzerland), 1983
Carnegie Mellon University (U.S.A.), 1985
University of Genoa (Italy), 1985
University of Udine (Italy), 1985
University of La Plata (Argentina), 1986
Northwestern University (U.S.A.), 1986
University of Camerino (Italy), 1987
University of Chicago (U.S.A.), 1987
Loyola University (U.S.A.), 1987
Boston University (U.S.A.), 1988
University of Sofia (Bulgaria), 1990
University of Moscow (USSR), 1991
University of Chile, Santiago, 1991
Polytechnic University of Madrid, 1992
University of Padova ( 1992)
Technical University of Rio de Janeiro (1993)
University of Trieste (1994)
University of Oxford (1994)
Catholic University of Lima, Peru (1994)
National University of St. Antonio Abad of Cusco, Peru (1994)
University of Bordeaux (1998)
University of Haute Savoie (1999)
St. John’s University, Rome (2003)
Università di Torino (2004)
University of Aachen (2004)
University of Technology , Beijing (2007)
Universidad Catolica, Santiago (Chile) 2008

He is member of numerous academies, among which:
The Accademia dei Lincei
The Accademia dei XL
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American. National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member
The Austrian Academy of Sciences
The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The European Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Polish Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences
The Royal Society, Foreign Member
The Russian Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member

Publications: He is the author of more than 450 scientific publications.

Honours:
He has received numerous honours amongst which: the Italian "Cavaliere di Gran Croce" (Knight Grand Cross) in 1985 and the French "Officier de la Légion d'Honneur" in 1989. At the conclusion of his mandate as Director General of CERN in 1993, he received the Polish Order of Merit.