60 years old | The vice-rector of the University of Helsinki considers physics easier than social issues

In Switzerland The renowned Cern is the European Center for Particle Physics. When Paula Eerola, one of the current vice-rectors of the University of Helsinki, got there for a summer job as a 22-year-old student, living in exciting times in Cern. At the end of the same year, one of its research groups received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of W and Z particles.

“There were two competing exams on the subject, and I was in the summer for that smaller exam group. The prize went to the director of the second experiment Carlo Rubbia and accelerator developer Simon Van der Meer”Eerola says.

“It was really interesting and really new – I learned a lot – but it was also really equal.”

When a student had to find a place, it was found in the office where the exam director also sat. The research team had lunch together, and a summer worker was welcome to join.

“It is quite typical in my field of research that research is done in groups. It’s kind of kind of learning, where people at different stages of their research careers can play different roles. It means helping each other. ”

Helsinki Eerola’s role as vice-rector for university research is now very different. Yes, he is still involved in Cern’s experiments and supervising the authors of the dissertation, but the biggest part of his work is leadership.

Physics was not an obvious career option for Eerola. As a young man, he was widely interested in a variety of subjects, both science and science, and attended elementary school music classes. Political history and physics were limited to study options.

“It was, in the end, a matter dictated by chance: physics could be read directly on paper, when the entrance exams in political history should have started right after the student writings. At that point, it felt like the readings had now been read. I went to interreil and then to summer work in Sweden. ”

The studies began in the fall and took with them, however.

“All in all, why I became interested in physics was the desire to get to know what everything is really built on.”

This meant that studies soon focused on elementary particles and quantum physics. Through them, Eerola got to the “core of things”.

Now, in the same year that Eerola celebrates her 60th birthday, she can also celebrate one milestone in her career. Eerola participated in Cern’s CMS experiment, which found Higgs’ boson, an elementary particle long sought by physicists. The discovery will be ten years old in the summer.

“I actually place the highlights of my research career a little earlier, when I was an even younger researcher. For example, when I finished my dissertation, it was then that the accelerator of the previous generation started working in Cern, and the right data started to come from there. It felt dizzy. ”

For the most exciting Eerola also lists it when he began to become acquainted with the symmetry properties of elementary particles. It became his specialty. Since then, his report on the subject has influenced the way in which the next-generation experiments, which have been running since 2010, were designed. Science often has far-reaching consequences.

“I think all top-level research is usable in some way, but we just don’t know when. It can take a year or a hundred years – or more, ”says Eerola.

The vice-rector calls for perseverance in both finance and research and gives an example:

“I was just involved in developing a European strategy for particle physics that looked at this until 2080.”

Perseverance one victory was recently made in the field. The parliamentary working group, which was to consider funding for research, development and innovation, completed its work in December. It proposed enacting a separate funding law to raise public research spending to a higher level.

“The fact that the importance of the issue has been recognized by proposing such a financing law is certainly a good thing. Another good thing is that there was such a broad parliamentary consensus behind it. ”

All parliamentary parties were represented in the working group.

Commenting on parliamentary decisions and reflecting on the societal status of the university as a whole fall more into the realm of political history than physics. Eerola’s interest in social issues has helped the vice-rector.

However, he has a clear answer as to which is more difficult to understand.

“Social issues are much more chaotic, they have so many different variables. In physics, things are more predictable and controllable: there can be no similar debate about what is right. ”