Dr Robert Aymar (born 1936), Director-General of CERN (the European particle physics laboratory), which is near Geneva, Switzerland. Aymar, who was born in France, studied physics at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. Between 1959 and 2004 he worked at a number of research centres and government agencies, designing, developing and overseeing a wide variety of research programmes and projects, including the Tore Supra Project at Cadarache, France. A large proportion of his work has concerned nuclear fusion. He became Director- General of CERN in January 2004.