Léon Charles Prudent Van Hove was a Belgian physicist and a former Director General of European Organization of Nuclear Research.
Education
Van Hove studied mathematics and physics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Université libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels)). In 1946 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels).
Career
He developed a scientific career spanning mathematics, solid state physics, elementary particle and nuclear physics to cosmology. From 1949 to 1954 he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey by virtue of his meeting with Robert Oppenheimer. Later he worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and was a professor and Director of the Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
In the 1950s he laid the theoretical foundations for the analysis of inelastic neutron scattering in terms of the dynamic structure factor.
In 1958, he was awarded the Francqui Prize in Exact Sciences. In 1959, he received an invitation to become the head of the Theory Division at European Organization of Nuclear Research in Geneva.
In 1975 Professor Van Hove was appointed European Organization of Nuclear Research Director-General, with John Adams, responsible for the research activities of the Organization.
The LEP project was proposed during Van Hove"s tenure as Director General.