Welcome to the website of DESY.

Here you will find information in Easy Language.

All people can understand Easy Language well.

What is DESY ?

DESY is a research centre.

The research centre is located in Hamburg and Zeuthen.

Zeuthen is near Berlin.

DESY was founded in Hamburg in 1959.

DESY is short for:

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (German Electron Synchrotron)

An electron synchrotron is a particle accelerator .

With a particle accelerator you can explore matter.

Matter is everything that has mass.

For example:

• Everything you can touch.
• Air and water

So the whole world consists of matter.

And matter consists of very small particles and atoms.

Research with particle accelerators

A particle accelerator is used to study very small particles and atoms.

For example:

• How is matter structured?
  And what can you do with it?
• What are the smallest particles?
  And what is special about them?

There are also natural particle accelerators in space.

At DESY we are investigating where they are and how they work.

Particle accelerators accelerate particles to very high speeds.

You can do different things with the fast particles.

For example:

• You can make them collide and observe what happens.
  Does this create new particles?
• You can use particle accelerators to produce very bright X-ray light.
  You can use the X-ray light to study matter more closely.

Best conditions for researchers

DESY has several large particle accelerators.

The particle accelerators are among the best in the world.

They are very special:

• They accelerate particles to a very high speed.
• They generate the strongest X-ray light in the world.

DESY also develops and builds new tools for research.

For example:

DESY develops and builds new particle accelerators.

With the particle accelerators, completely new things can be researched.

And they can also be used in medicine.

Researchers from all over the world

This makes DESY a very good research centre.

More than 3,000 researchers come to DESY every year.

We say to them: Guest researchers.

The researchers work in different areas.

For example in the following areas:

• physics
• Biology
• Chemistry

Working at DESY

Almost 3,000 people work at DESY.

More than half of them are researchers.

130 young people are undergoing training.

For example in the field of industrial mechanics.

About 250 people are doctoral students.

Doctoral students are students writing a doctoral thesis.

DESY cooperates with companies and institutions all over the world.

Institutions are for example:

• Universities
• other research centres

DESY belongs to the Helmholtz Association.

There are 19 research centres in the Helmholtz Association.

The research centres conduct research in various fields.

DESY gets money:

• from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research,
• from the City of Hamburg,
• from the State of Brandenburg.