Famous French nuclear physicist and Global Energy Prize Laureate of 2006 Robert Aymar is celebrating his 75 birthday.

The ceremony in Geneva will be attended by eminent European scientists, and the hero of the day has also been congratulated by ex-president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev.

On May, 24 a symposium will be held at CERN to celebrate Robert Aymar`s 75 birthday. The event will be opened by Professor Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General. Other outstanding specialists in nuclear and thermonuclear physics will participate in the symposium.

Robert Aymar was congratulated by letter by Global Energy Prize Board of Trustees member and President of The Gorbachev Fund Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1985 Mr. Gorbachev was one of the political ideologists of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Project (ITER). Thereafter Robert Aymar was the head of the project for more than 10 years. "It is very important to me that in 1985 I was at the origins of The ITER Project. I`m sure that the project has a great future," said Mr. Gorbachev`s letter. Now Mr. Gorbachev remembers: "When I became the leader of the USSR I understood very well the necessity of widening international cooperation in the field of energy. Fusion research experiments were held in many countries but it was impossible to reach the necessary results. And that is why, understanding the necessity of collaborating efforts in this vital sphere for all mankind I addressed the French president Mitterrand, who approved this initiative. Then I appealed to the president of the USA, Ronald Reagan, who in his turn supported this idea."

The address, along with Mr. Gorbachev`s signature will be presented to Professor Aymar by the president of the Global Energy Prize Non-commercial Partnership, Igor Lobovsky.

The name of Robert Aymar is connected with two of the most prominent scientific projects of today. The first of them is the famous ITER, where Professor Aymar was the general director of the project from 1994 till 2004. The thermonuclear reactor uses the energy of the hydrogen isotopes nuclear fusion. The isotopes burn away in the reactor without leaving any radioactive waste. The reaction takes place in high-temperature plasma at the temperature of 150 million degrees One unit of weight of the thermonuclear fuel gives 10 million times more energy than the combustion of organic fuel and 100 times more energy than splitting of the uranium nucleus.

The ITER construction will be the next step in the development of the controlled thermonuclear fusion research program. Now the reactor is under construction in Cadarache, the French research centre. Participating in the project are the EU, India, China, Russia, the USA, South Korea and Japan, and its estimated cost is 12 billion Euros. The scientists believe that controlled thermonuclear reaction is possible and it is a reliable and safe energy source with inexhaustible supply of fuel.

In 2006 Professor Aymar with academician Evgeny Velikhov and Professor Masaji Yoshikawa received the golden medal of the Global Energy Prize from the President of the Russian Federation for his contribution to the ITER project.

From 2004 till 2009 Robert Aymar was the head of another famous scientific organization - European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Most people usually associate CERN with the charged-particle accelerator project known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The media called the Collider the "most complex scientific instrument ever built" It is expected that the data accumulated with the help of the LHC will change the elementary knowledge of particle physics, strongly influencing how scientists understand the universe.

Now Professor Aymar is a Global Energy Prize International Award Committee Member. As it is noted in the congratulation address from Evgeny Velikhov, chairman of the board of trustees of the Prize: "Now the efforts of Professor Aymar are focused on the research and development of energy efficiency, and on ecologically safe ways to produce energy resources."

For more information, please, contact the Global Energy Prize press-service

Julia Zalesskaya

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