The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities congratulates Professor Eliezer Rabinovici on being elected President of the CERN Council.

 

The CERN Council elected Professor Eliezer Rabinovici the 24th President of the CERN Council on September 24, 2021. Professor Rabinovici is a professor at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former head of the National Higher Energy Committee of the Israel Academy of Sciences.

 

CERN, which is located in Geneva, Switzerland, is the leading infrastructure complex in the world for the study of elementary particles. At CERN, the basic particles of matter, including the nucleus of the atom and the forces that operate within it, are studied and revealed using generations of ultra-high-energy particle accelerators.

 

This is the first time that an Israeli researcher has occupied such a high position in the world’s most important scientific organization for the study of high-energy physics.

 

Professor Rabinovici’s main field of research is theoretical high-energy physics and, in particular, quantum field theory and string theory. He contributed greatly Israel’s election as a full member of CERN in 2014 and was elected vice president of the CERN Council in 2016, a post that he held until 2018.

 

He served as chairman of the Israeli Committee for the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME), which is located in Jordan and in which Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, are partners, leading to scientific collaboration among researchers in the region. For his work in this area, Professor Rabinovici was chosen by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as one of the five joint recipients of its 2019 Award for Science Diplomacy.