MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) - The...
The $5.8 billion international project, which will be officially unveiled on October 21 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN, has involved more than 2,000 physicists from hundreds of universities and laboratories in 34 countries since 1984.
"The project involved a total of 700 people [physicists from Russia] from 12 institutes," said Viktor Savrin, deputy director of the Research Institute of Nuclear Physics at Moscow State University.
Only several dozen Russian researchers reside at CERN, but working visits mean there could be at any one time around 200 Russian researchers at the center.
Back in 2000, then CERN director Roger Cashmore said "we would not have been able to create the LHC without them [the Russians]."
Savrin said the project had given a substantial boost to 30 manufacturers which were also involved. The navy's Baltic Fleet even provided unused brass.