Carlo Rubbia is an Italian particle physicist and inventor who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Simon van der Meer for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN.

In particle physics, the W and Z bosons are vector bosons that are together known as the weak bosons or more generally as the intermediate vector bosons. These elementary particles mediate the weak interaction; the respective symbols are W+, W−, and Z0. The W± bosons have either a positive or negative electric charge of 1 elementary charge and are each other's antiparticles. The Z0 boson is electrically neutral and is its own antiparticle. The three particles each have a spin of 1. The W± bosons have a magnetic moment, but the Z0 has none. All three of these particles are very short-lived, with a half-life of about 3×10−25 s. Their experimental discovery was pivotal in establishing what is now called the Standard Model of particle physics.