Physicist Carlo Rubbia led the team that identified, in 1983, the W and Z0 particles at CERN.

The existence of these particles was required by the so-called “Standard Model” of particle physics, which explains the zoo of elementary particles, and defines the electromagnetic and nuclear forces as different manifestations of a single fundamental force.

Ten years earlier, another CERN experiment had indirectly stumbled upon the existence of the Z0 particle, starting a frantic race between CERN and Fermilab in the United States for its direct detection and measurement of its mass. Since the detection required more energetic collisions, the Americans built a new accelerator, but it was Carlo Rubbia who suggested modifying the existing accelerator to make it capable of producing the new particles.

Thirty years later, the brand new accelerator at CERN, the LHC, has identified the last brick of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson – the Holy Grail of modern particle physics.