Bakker Succeeds Block as CERN Head

EUROPE’s nuclear research center (CERN), which has been in formal existence for less than a year, has announced the forthcoming resignation of its director general, Nobel Laureate Felix Bloch of Stanford University. Professor Bloch, who “has found the administrative duties that have fallen to him during the period of construction unexpectedly heavy and too onerous to allow him to devote sufficient time to research”, will return to Stanford in September. His successor will be C. J. Bakker, director of the Dutch Institute of Nuclear Physics and professor of physics and head of the University of Amsterdam’s Zeeman Laboratory. In the interim Professor Bakker is serving as deputy director general of CERN in place of E. Amaldi, who has found it necessary to devote most of his time to the development of the research school of high‐energy physics at the University of Rome. Professor Amaldi will continue to act as consultant to CERN in the field of cosmic‐ray research.

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