Director-General of CERN

On 1 January 1981, Herwig Schopper became Director-General of CERNCERN. It was a role that his entire career had prepared him for. Years of experience in managing and establishing laboratories across Germany, culminating with his time as chair of the DESYDESY directorate gave him the managerial experience he needed, while his sojourns in Stockholm, Cambridge and Cornell had kept his research instincts sharp. The final ingredient in his preparation for what is arguably the biggest job in particle physics is the time he’d spent at CERNCERN in the 1960s and 1970s learning about this unique institution and its equally unique culture. “Before being able to take full responsibility for an organisation as diverse and complicated as CERN.