Top job for Oxford scientist

The head of Oxford University's physics department has landed the top job in European science.

Professor Chris Llewellyn Smith, 49, has been nominated as director general of Cern, the European particle physics laboratory, near Geneva. He will succeed the Nobel Prize-winning Italian scientist Carlo Rubbia at the beginning of 1994. The laboratory employs more than 3,000 people and has an annual budget of 945 million Swiss francs ( pounds 410m).