Israel joins CERN

Following a decision in 2010 by the CERN council to open membership to all countries and then a unanimous and anonymous vote this past December, Israel has become the 21st—and first non-European—member of the nuclear and particle physics laboratory. A flag-raising ceremony to mark Israel’s accession was held at CERN on 15 January.

“For me, and I think for everyone that was there, it was a very moving event,” says Eliezer Rabinovici, a string theorist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who heads the Israel Academy of Sciences committee for high energy physics. Israeli scientists had been involved in experiments at CERN since the 1980s, and the country formally became an observer in 1991.

As a full member, Israel has voting rights, its industries are eligible to compete for all contracts put out by CERN, and its technicians, administrators, and engineers can be employed at the lab. In 2014 Israel’s contribution will be about 13.1 million Swiss francs ($14.4 million), up about fourfold from what it paid previously.

A handful of other countries are applying for various types of formal relations with CERN. A new agreement between the US and CERN is needed before the current one expires in December 2017.