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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory history
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory company history timeline
The accelerating chamber of this cyclotron measured 5 inches in diameter and on January 2, 1931, it was successfully used to boost hydrogen ions (protons) to an energy of 80,000 electron volts.
In August 1931 the building was turned over to Lawrence and renamed the "Radiation Laboratory."
1931 -- Radiation Laboratory opens on UC Berkeley campus.
Founded in 1931 by Nobel Prize winning physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of 17 Energy Department National Labs.
26 — the day three-quarters of a century ago when, in 1931, physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence received official sanction for his “radiation laboratory.”
Established in 1931 in the formative years of the nuclear age, the Laboratory has made a transition from its original role as a particle physics accelerator facility to a much more diverse laboratory.
Left: Notebook entry of the first MeV reading: January 8, 1932, 11-inch cyclotron.
1935 -- John Lawrence comes to Lab, begins field of nuclear medicine.
In 1935, he invited his brother John, a physician, to join the Lab and explore the use of cyclotron-produced radioisotopes in biology and medical research.
In recognition of its departure from the traditional academic lines of departmental science, the University officially established the Radiation Laboratory as an independent entity within the Physics Department on July 1, 1936.
By 1936, the 37-inch cyclotron, which could accelerate deuterons to 8 MeV and alpha particles to 16 MeV, had been used to create radioisotopes and the first artificial element, technetium.
John Lawrence, brother of the laboratory's founder, had started Donner Laboratory circa 1936.
Back in January 1939, Luis Alvarez had been sitting in a barber’s chair reading the San Francisco Chronicle when, buried deep inside it, he found an article reporting Niels Bohr’s announcement that German chemists had split the uranium nucleus.
Ed McMillan recreating the search for neptunium at the time of the announcement of the discovery, June 8, 1940.
In November of 1940 Lawrence sent some of his best people, including Alvarez and McMillan, to MIT’s Radiation Laboratory — so named partly to honor Lawrence and partly to “confuse the enemy” — where they would help perfect radar in many forms.
In the spring of 1940 the Rockefeller Foundation agreed to fund the new machine to the tune of $1.4 million.
In the spring of 1940 construction of the giant cyclotron began in earnest; meanwhile Lawrence became increasingly worried about the war.
By February, 1941, Glenn Seaborg, J.W. Kennedy, and graduate student Arthur Wahl, continuing McMillan’s work and aided by Emilio Segrè, had made and purified element 94.
On December 6, 1941, one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the 37-inch cyclotron succeeded in separating a few micrograms of fissionable U-235 from heavier U-238.
In early 1941 the war had not yet completely engulfed Berkeley’s Rad Lab.
In mid-February, 1942, the 37-inch cyclotron produced 75 micrograms of 30-percent U-235 for research purposes.
The big magnet’s separators didn’t work dependably until the end of 1942 — when a Rad Lab administrator suggested they be dubbed Calutrons — but a site for a pilot separation plant had already been chosen in Tennessee.
In 1942, the Manhattan Engineering District was established within the purview of the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design and build an atomic weapon.
Tennessee Eastman officials and General Leslie R. Groves with Lawrence at the magnet for the 184-inch cyclotron in 1943.
In July 1944 the 60-inch cyclotron finished testing the stability of graphite rods destined for the giant plutonium-producing reactors at Hanford; it was time to return the machine to basic research.
On July 16, 1945, a desert test, code-named Trinity, successfully was performed in New Mexico.
Then, in August, 1949, the Soviet Union startled the world, detonating an atomic bomb.
Years later, in 1951, McMillan and Seaborg were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of these first transuranic elements.
In 1952, the Atomic Energy Commission granted Teller's request, establishing a Livermore Laboratory as a branch of the Berkeley-based University of California's Radiation Laboratory.
When completed in 1954, the Bevatron could accelerate protons through four million turns in 1.85 seconds.
An upgraded version of an accelerator built in 1957, the SuperHILAC opened the door to the creation of synthetic elements beyond uranium, also known as transuranium elements.
1958-71, Edwin McMillan (Berkeley).
1958-60, Edward Teller (Livermore).
After his death in 1959, the Lab was officially renamed the Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
1960-61, Harold Brown (Livermore).
Oral history interview with Raymond Thayer Birge, 1960.
1961-65, John Foster (Livermore).
Berkeley Lab scientist Melvin Calvin identified the path that carbon takes in photosynthesis, a discovery for which he won the 1961 Nobel prize in chemistry.
1962 -- 88-Inch Cyclotron commissioned.
1965-71, Michael May (Livermore).
Oral history interview with Mary Lea Heger Shane, 1967 July 15.
An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence by Herbert Childs, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1968:
Oral history interview with Robert Marshak, 1970 June 15, 16, September 19, and October 4.
The Livermore Laboratory remained a branch of the Berkeley facility until that administrative arrangement ended in 1971.
Oral history interview with Edwin M. McMillan, 1972 June 1, 2, and October 30, 31.
Andy Sessler became the Lab’s third director just two weeks after the start of the 1973 oil embargo, when gas prices soared and lines at gas stations snaked for several blocks.
1, 1973, he established the Energy and Environment Division.
SLAC Director's Office records of Burton Richter, 1974-[ongoing].
Seaborgium, one such element, was discovered in 1974 in an experiment conducted at Berkeley Lab by a team of researchers led by Lab physicist Albert Ghiorso and Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Kenneth Hulet.
Oral history interview with Andrew M. Sessler, 1975.
In 1975, the Atomic Energy Commission slipped into history when President Ford signed a measure to form the Energy Research and Development Agency, which began oversight of Berkeley Lab and all AEC Labs.
Oral history interview with Raemer Edgar Schreiber, 1976 February 13.
In 1976, their investigations culminated in an intensive cancer treatment program in collaboration with physicians at the University of California, San Francisco.
Oral history interview with John J. Livingood, 1977 May 16.
In 1977, the Energy and Environment Division (later renamed to today’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division) was split into two, one for energy and environment research and one for Earth Sciences, where scientists tackled seismic research, geothermal energy and the disposal of nuclear wastes.
Also in 1977, the Lab’s fusion energy research activities were incorporated into today’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division.
Oral history interview with Herbert F. York, 1978 August 20.
Oral history interview with John S. Hall, 1979 February 21.
One of these “interesting” projects led to the 1979 discovery by Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs.
Sessler resigned the directorship on April 1, 1980, resuming a productive research career that lasts to this day.
1980 -- Mina Bissell proposes ECM theory on breast cancer; superwindows developed.
Oral history interview with David Bohm, 1981 May 8.
1982 -- National Center for Electron Micropscopy opens.
Oral history interview with Nicolaas Bloembergen, 1983 June 27.
These machines have since given way to much more advanced microscopes at the Lab’s National Center for Electron Microscopy, which was established in 1983.
Oral history interview with William Aaron Nierenberg, 1986 February 6 and June 26, 30.
Oral history interview with Robert Le Levier, 1987 April 22.
The most sophisticated accelerator ever to be built in Berkeley, its construction began in 1987.
1988 -- Material harder than diamond predicted; first direct image of DNA double helix created.
LBL Physics Division oversize scientific files of George Smoot, 1989.
Historical information from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory website and J. L. Heilbron and Robert W. Seidel, Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
Oral history interview with Berni J. Alder, 1990 June 18.
1990 -- First genetic links to atherosclerosis identified.
Oral history interview with John S. Foster, Jr., 1991 August 7.
1991-- SNO Collaboration begins.
In 1995, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was officially designated a national laboratory and was renamed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
1995 – presentFrank Stephens has been on staff.
Oral history interview with Cecil E. "Chuck" Leith, 1997 July 2.
Oral history interview with Barry C. Barish, 1998 May-June.
Oral history interview with Michael A. Kelly, 2002 March 19.
Andrew Sessler and Stephen Libby biographical memoir on Edward Teller, 2007.
Oral history interview with Herbert F. York, 2008 April 24.
Berkeley Lab physicist Carl Haber(link is external) developed a way to digitally restore old audio recordings that are too fragile to play, an innovation for which he was named a MacArthur Fellow(link is external) in 2013.
FY 2019 contracts to small businesses: $177 million
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | 1943 | $25.0M | 3,500 | 92 |
| Argonne National Laboratory | 1946 | $180.0M | 4,370 | 261 |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | 1943 | $15.5M | 10,001 | 381 |
| Jefferson Lab | 1984 | $98.0M | 700 | 16 |
| Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | 1952 | $8.8M | 7,411 | 189 |
| Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute | 1976 | $82.0M | 760 | 4 |
| Ames Laboratory | 1947 | $4.1M | 125 | - |
| NanoScale Corporation | 1995 | $4.8M | 50 | - |
| Joint BioEnergy Institute | 2007 | $20,000 | 93 | - |
| Carnegie Institution for Science | 1902 | $370,000 | 5 | - |
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