Augustine Pamplany CST
Carlo Rubbia (1934-) is an Italian particle physicist. In 1984, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Simon Van der Meer. They were awarded the Nobel Prize, according to the Nobel Committee, “for their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction.” Born in the Italian town of Gorizia, he pursued physics and obtained a doctorate research in cosmic ray experimentation. He joined the newly founded CERN, the European Hadron Collider, in 1960. There he conducted experiments on the structure of weak interactions. In 1983, the international team of physicists under Rubbia detected the W and Z bosons, which had already been central to particle physics. He became the Director-General of the CERN Laboratory in 1989. In 2013 Rubbia was appointed as a Senator for Life to the Senate of Italy. Rubbia has an Asteroid named after him.
Along with his rigorous scientific research, he was also inquisitive about the ultimate questions in life. His confessions reflect a serious philosophical blend of mind. Rubbia rejected the idea of chance as the explanation for the existence of the universe. When the Brazilian magazine Veja asked Carlo Rubbia, “Do you believe in God?” He replied, “The more you observe nature, the more you perceive that there is tremendous organization in all things. It is an intelligence so great that just by observing natural phenomena I come to the conclusion that a Creator exists.”
He reflects that his observation of order, beauty of nature leads him to the perception of a higher order: “If we count the galaxies of the universe or demonstrate the existence of elementary particles, in an analog way we can’t probably have the proof of the existence of God. But as a researcher, I am deeply moved by the order and beauty I find in the Cosmos and the interior of material of things. As an observer of nature, I can’t help thinking there is a higher order. The idea that all this is the result of fortune or pure statistic diversity for me is completely unacceptable.” The testimonies by Rubbia confirms that the mystery of matter as understood by modern physics is striking and moving even to a hardcore scientist.
