Rolf-Dieter Heuer built a strong career at the leading edge of particle physics, in part by listening to advice — for example, his high-school teacher confirmed his notion that a career in anything other than physics would be a mistake. As he prepares for his biggest career challenge yet — taking over in 2009 as director-general of CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva — he plans to continue listening to his colleagues to better guide the future of international particle physics. See CV

Heuer started off with a diploma in nuclear physics from the University of Stuttgart. But the detection of a subatomic particle, dubbed the J/ψ particle, intrigued him enough to alter his graduate plans. He subsequently worked on the neutral decays of the ψ' particle, the heavier sister of J/ψ, for his PhD at the University of Heidelberg. He was soon made a member of the JADE experiment (a collaboration between Japan, Germany and Britain) at DESY, the particle-physics centre in Heidelberg — one of the four experiments necessary to detect the gluon, the elementary particle that causes quarks to interact. “I was always motivated to work at the energy frontier — wherever that was,” says Heuer. That frontier soon moved to the Omni-Purpose Apparatus (OPAL) at CERN's Large Electron–Positron collider, taking Heuer with it.

Heuer says his recipe for success as OPAL's spokesman was simple: give people enough freedom to do their job, which instils more motivation. After four years, Heuer moved to the University of Hamburg before becoming research director for the national particle-physics programme at DESY in 2004. There, he decided that working at the energy frontier meant expanding the energy frontier. So he focused the particle-physics efforts on CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and preparations for the International Linear Collider.

Heuer was an obvious choice to lead CERN, says former OPAL colleague Austin Ball. He says that as the LHC moves from construction to operation, it needs a physicist motivated by curiosity to pursue new science, including the Higgs boson, the missing piece of the standard model of particle physics, which is needed to explain how mass exists. Its detection is Heuer's top priority, as it will set the future of particle-physics research. Once that trajectory is set, Heuer must determine how to position CERN — taking into account preparations for the next colliders, decisions he doesn't take lightly. “Whatever CERN decides affects the worldwide community,” he says.