CERN

Particle physics research organization founded in 1954 as a cooperative enterprise among European governments. It has laboratories at Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland. It houses the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will become operational in 2007.

CERN is the acronym of its original name, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, but has undergone several name changes since then. Its official English name is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, though it is commonly called the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. In 1965, the original laboratory was doubled in size by extension across the border from Switzerland into France. In 1994, the 19 member nations of CERN approved the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. It is built in the tunnel previously occupied by the Large Electron Positron Collider(LEP), operational 1989-2000, with which notable advances were made in particle physics.