Herwig Schopper

Herwig Franz Schopper received a doctorate from the University of Hamburg before holding positions at Erlangen, Mainz and Karlsruhe before moving to CERN in 1970 as leader of the Nuclear Physics Division. In 1973, he returned to Hamburg, where he chaired the DESY directorate until becoming Director General of CERN in 1981, overseeing major organisational changes at the Laboratory, as well as the construction of a new flagship research facility, the Large Electron Positron collider, LEP. Following his retirement in 1989, Professor Schopper embarked on a second career as a science diplomat, working largely with UNESCO. During this time, he served at the first President of the SESAME Council.James Gillies began his career as a research physicist at CERN before moving into science communication. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Leaving research in 1992 to take up the position of Head of Science at the British Council in Paris,he returned to CERN as a science writer in 1995, going on to head the Laboratory’s communicaitons group from 2003 to 2015.

• Origins:1924 – 1939.- The War Years: 1939 – 1945.- Studies at Hamburg: 1945 – 1950.- At Stockholm with Lise Meitner: 1950 – 1951.- Erlangen and Cambridge: 1954 – 1959.-  Mainz: 1959 – 1960.- At Cornell with Robert Rathbun Wilson: 1960 – 1961.-  Karlsruhe: 1961 - 1973.- A user at DESY and CERN: 1967 – 1973.-  Director of DESY: 1973 – 1980.- Director-General of CERN: 1981 – 1988.-  A busy retirement: 1989 – now.- SESAME: 1998 – now.-  Epilogue: The place of science in the modern world.