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Posted on 23.10.14 in Featured

Prof. dr. Peter Jenni, CERN – Interview for Tromba

Prof. dr. Peter Jenni, CERN – Interview for Tromba

Professor Peter Jenni visited Slovenia last week to receive an honorary doctorate awarded by University of Nova Gorica for his extraordinary contribution to the field of experimental particle physics. When we interviewed him for Tromba, he told us that this is already his fifth honorary doctorate. Not his last, we’re sure!

We rarely have an opportunity to meet someone who has been working for decades at the heart of scientific activity and contributing to world-changing discoveries. In the 1980s, Professor Jenni started working on the development of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, where the Higgs boson was found in 2012.

Between 1995 and 2009, he acted as spokesperson for the international ATLAS collaboration. ATLAS, situated on the LHC, is one of the two detectors in CERN that played a key part in discovering the Higgs boson (the other detector is CMS) and is indispensable for the future research of the boson. Today, ATLAS unites approximately 3,200 scientists from 177 institutions and 38 countries. Slovenian physicists have been involved with this experiment for 20 years. Particularly fascinating about ATLAS is its emphasis on education – even high school students can join the project.

After Professor Jenni’s formal retirement, he became a Guest Scientist and Honorary Professor with the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, retaining a strong involvement in the ATLAS operation and physics activities. His thirst for new discoveries and expanding the borders of our knowledge remains as strong as proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. Who knows what he’ll surprise us with in the future?

Text & interview: Eva Domijan

Photo & video: Igor Domijan

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