Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - History

History

The laboratory was founded as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, associated with the Physics Department, on August 26, 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a site for centering physics research around his new instrument, the cyclotron (a type of particle accelerator for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939). Throughout the 1930s, Lawrence pushed to create larger and larger machines for physics research, courting private philanthropists for funding. After the laboratory was scooped on a number of fundamental discoveries that they felt they ought to have made, the "cyclotroneers" began to collaborate more closely with the theoretical physicists in the Berkeley Department of Physics, led by Robert Oppenheimer. The lab moved to its site on the hill above campus in 1940 as its machines (specifically, the 184-inch (4.7 m) cyclotron) became too big to house on the university grounds.

Lawrence courted government as his sponsor in the early years of the Manhattan Project, the American effort to produce the first atomic bomb during World War II, and along with Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins (which helped develop the proximity fuse), and the MIT Radiation Laboratory (which helped to develop radar) ushered in the era of "Big Science". Lawrence's lab helped contribute to what has been judged to be the three most valuable technology developments of the war (the atomic bomb, proximity fuse, and radar). Using the newly created 184-inch (4,700 mm) cyclotron as a mass spectrometer, Lawrence and his colleagues developed the principle behind the electromagnetic enrichment of uranium, which was put to use in the calutrons (named after the university) at the massive Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The 184-inch (4,700 mm) cyclotron was finished in November 1946; the Manhattan Project shut down two months later.

After the war, Lawrence sought to maintain strong government and military ties at his lab, which became incorporated into the new system of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (now Department of Energy (DOE)) National Laboratories, but in the early 1950s set out that the lab's purpose would be primarily non-classified research. Classified weapon research would take place at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (established during the war) and the new Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), established by Lawrence and Edward Teller from what was originally a splinter from the original Radiation Laboratory. Some weapons-related and collaborative research continued at Berkeley Lab until the 1970s, however.

After the death of Ernest Lawrence in 1959, the Radiation Laboratory was renamed the Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, although many continued to call it the "Rad Lab." Gradually, another shortened form came into common usage, "LBL" (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory). Its formal name was amended to Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1995, when "National" was added to the names of all DOE labs. "Ernest Orlando" was later dropped to shorten the name. Today, the lab is commonly referred to as "Berkeley Lab".