Argonne National Laboratory history

In 1955, Argonne chemists co-discovered the elements einsteinium and fermium, elements 99 and 100 in the periodic table.

While designing a scanner for reactor fuel elements in 1957, Argonne physicist William Nelson Beck put his own arm inside the scanner and obtained one of the first ultrasound images of the human body.

On October 2, 1962, Argonne announced the creation of xenon tetrafluoride, the first simple compound of xenon, a noble gas widely thought to be chemically inert.

High-energy physics made a leap forward when Argonne was chosen as the site of the 12.5 GeV Zero Gradient Synchrotron, a proton accelerator that opened in 1963.

In 1964, the "Janus" reactor opened to study the effects of neutron radiation on biological life, providing research for guidelines on safe exposure levels for workers at power plants, laboratories and hospitals.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Weak Interactions : October 25-27, 1965 / sponsored by Argonne National Laboratory and IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics).

Formed in 1966 by 26 universities to manage Argonne National Laboratory.

Oral history interview with Maurice Goldhaber, 1967 January 10.

A bubble chamber allowed scientists to track the motions of subatomic particles as they zipped through the chamber; in 1970, they observed the neutrino in a hydrogen bubble chamber for the first time.

Oral history interview with Robert S. Shankland, 1974 August 20 and 21.

Oral history interview with Vera Kistiakowsky, 1976 April 27, May 11, 26, June 15, August 26, and September 1.

Oral history interview with David Rittenhouse Inglis, 1977 May 9 and 10.

1978 – presentNuclear engineers began working to convert reactors around the world to run on low- rather than high-enriched uranium.

Proceedings of the Workshop on Foundations of the Relativistic Theory of Atomic Structure, held at Argonne National Laboratory, December 4-5, 1980.

Oral history interview with Robert Joseph Maurer, 1981 March 10 and 15.

Oral history interview with Oliver Cecil Simpson, 1982 August 13.

In 1987, the laboratory was the first to successfully demonstrate a pioneering technique called plasma wakefield acceleration, which accelerates particles in much shorter distances than conventional accelerators.

John R. Huizenga response to 1988 History of Nuclear Physics Survey, 1988.

Oral history interview with Jack Jagger, 1990 June 15.

In 1994, however, the United States Congress terminated funding for the bulk of Argonne's nuclear programs.

Following a major push by then-director Alan Schriesheim, the laboratory was chosen as the site of the Advanced Photon Source, a major X-ray facility which was completed in 1995 and produced the brightest X-rays in the world at the time of its construction.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS), dedicated in 1996, produces extremely bright x-ray breams for scientific research.

Oral history interview with Akira Kasahara, 1998 November 2 and 3.

Oral history interview with Reimar Lust, 2000 December 2.

Oral history interview with Philip Morrison, 2003 February 22 and August 1.

The laboratory’s former western campus, Argonne-West, became the Idaho National Laboratory in 2005.

In 2006, Argonne developed another national user facility, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.

Oral history interview with Alan Schriesheim, 2008 December 19.

Oral history interview with Frank Fradin, 2012 June 18.

JCESR was renewed in 2017 for another five years with a renewed mission to improve the affordability of batteries both for transportation and for the electric grid.

In 2020, Argonne was identified as a major player in the nation’s quantum efforts, as the laboratory was awarded Q-NEXT, a primary quantum information science research center that will, like JCESR, form a hub of research dedicated to a specific topic.