Magnetic pencils with the CERN logo.

The CERN logo is made up of two components : 

The word "CERN", which is the acronym derived from the Organization's first official title : Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or European Council for Nuclear Research. Today, our understanding of matter goes much deeper than the nucleus, and CERN's main area of research is particle physics. Because of this, the laboratory operated by CERN is often referred to as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

The interlaced rings, which are a simplified representation of the accelerator chain. The CERN’s current logo dates from 1968, when a decision was made to change the original one. Some 114 new designs were proposed, many of which used CERN’s experiments as inspiration. The final design used the original lettering, surrounded by a schematic of a synchrotron, beam lines and particle tracks. Today’s logo is a simplified version of this.

Discover more about the CERN Laboratory at home.cern