Like many central and eastern European countries, Hungary became a CERN Member State following the fall of the Iron Curtain. The country’s president, János Áder, came to CERN on 8 March 2022 on an official visit to see for himself the fruits of thirty years of shared history. Accompanied by his wife, Anita Herczegh, and his delegation, the President met the Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti, and several CERN Directors, as well as the spokesperson of the CMS collaboration, Luca Malgeri, at Point 5 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Following preliminary discussions, the President visited the CMS experiment cavern and learned all about the research being carried out at CERN. His delegation then visited the Globe of Science and Innovation, where he participated in a roundtable discussion with Hungarian scientists. Following an exchange of gifts, the President rounded off his visit with a stop at the Science Gateway site, where work continues in front of the Globe.
Since Hungary became a CERN Member State in 1992, its relationship with the Laboratory has gone from strength to strength, with many Hungarian scientists involved in the ALICE and CMS experiments at the LHC, as well as in research programmes on antimatter and the development of new accelerator technologies. The country also hosts, at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Budapest, a major Worldwide LHC Computing Grid centre, where data collected by the collider is processed.