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Rubbia was born in the small town of Gorizia, Italy. After high school, he studied in the Faculty of Physics at the Scuola Normale in Pisa where he completed a thesis about cosmic ray experiments. In 1958, he went to the United States to widen his experience and to familiarize himself with particle accelerators.
Around 1960, he moved back to Europe, attracted by the newly founded CERN where he worked on experiments on the structure of weak interactions. He was appointed professor of physics at Harvard University in 1970, but continued to travel to Europe frequently to work at CERN. In 1976, he suggested adapting CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to collide protonFor alternative meanings see proton (disambiguation). Proton Classification Subatomic particle Fermion Hadron Baryon Nucleon Proton Properties Mass: 938 MeV/ c2 Electric Charge: 1. 6 × 10−19 C Spin: 1/2 In physics, the proton is a subatomic particles and antiprotonThe antiproton is the antiparticle of the proton. Antiprotons are short-lived in nature, since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy. It was discovered in the year 1955 by Emilio Segre and Owen Chambes in the same ring and the world's first antiproton factory was built. The collider started running in 1981Events January-February January Sarawak Chamber found January 1 Greece enters the EEC January 1 Palau becomes self-governing January 4 Sheffield police arrests Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper January 16 Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette D and, in January 1983Events January January 1 Beat Raaflaub became Basel Boys Choir's new conductor January 1 the ARPANET officially changes to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. January 1 compulsory wearing of seat belts becomes law in the UK. January 2 The mu, came the announcement, first from the UA1 detector, that W particles had been created. A couple of months later the even more elusive Z particles were also observed.
The following year, 1984This page is about the year 1984. For other uses of 1984, see 1984 (disambiguation). 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday (link shows calendar). Events January January 1 Brunei becomes a fully independent state January 1 AT&T is broken up into 22 indepe, Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer shared the Nobel prize for physics, one of the shortest intervals ever between discovery and award.
Rubbia continued working both on UA1 and as a professor of physics at Harvard until 1989 when he accepted the job of Director-General of CERN, a post he held until 1993.
Carlo Rubbia is currently professor at the University of Pavia, Italy and president of ENEA (Italian Instiute for Environmentally-safe Energy).