Rolf-Dieter Heuer - Biography#

Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer was born 1948 in Boll/Goeppingen. He studied physics at the University of Stuttgart where he graduated in 1974, and obtained his PhD at the University of Heidelberg in 1977 under the supervision of Prof. Joachim Heintze. Prof. Heuer is an experimental particle physicist. Most of his scientific work has been related to the study of electron-positron reactions, development of experimental techniques, as well as construction and running of large detector systems.

In 1977 he became research scientist at the University of Heidelberg working for the JADE experiment at the electron-positron storage ring PETRA, situated at the Deutsche Elektronen- Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg. From 1984 to 1998, Prof. Heuer was a Staff member at CERN, working for the OPAL experiment at the electron-positron storage ring LEP. He was responsible for the coordination of design and construction of the tracking jet chamber and coordinated the whole tracking system during the experiment construction phase. He then became the run coordinator during the start-up phase of LEP1 in 1989-1992 and the OPAL spokesperson in 1994-1998, responsible for all aspects of the collaboration, comprising over 300 physicists, and for its scientific output. His term of office covered LEP1 data analysis and the LEP2 energy upgrade.

In 1998, Rolf-Dieter Heuer was appointed to a chair at the University of Hamburg (C4 professor). He established a group working on the preparations for experiments at an electron-positron Linear Collider which quickly became one of the leading groups in this area world wide. December 2004, Prof. Heuer became research director for particle and astroparticle physics at the DESY laboratory, a member of the Helmholtz association. The main emphasis was to maintain DESY as the central particle physics laboratory in Germany, and to strengthen the links to the German Universities and to CERN. To this extent he initiated the restructuring and focusing of German particle physics at the energy frontier with particular emphasis on the LHC.

From January 2009 to December 2015 he was Director General of CERN.

Prof. Heuer has been member in many scientific committees and advisory bodies.