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Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located in the western suburbs of Chicago, has stood at the frontier of high-energy physics for forty years. Fermilab is the first history of this laboratory and of its powerful accelerators told from the point of view of the people who built and used them for scientific discovery.
Focusing on the first two decades of research at Fermilab, during the tenure of the laboratory’s charismatic first two directors, Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman, the book traces the rise of what they call “megascience,” the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments in a climate of limited federal funding. In the midst of this new climate, Fermilab illuminates the growth of the modern research laboratory during the Cold War and captures the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science.
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Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located in the western suburbs of Chicago, has stood at the frontier of high-energy physics for forty years. Fermilab is the first history of this laboratory and of its powerful accelerators told from the point of view of the people who built and used them for scientific discovery.
Focusing on the first two decades of research at Fermilab, during the tenure of the laboratory’s charismatic first two directors, Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman, the book traces the rise of what they call “megascience,” the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments in a climate of limited federal funding. In the midst of this new climate, Fermilab illuminates the growth of the modern research laboratory during the Cold War and captures the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located in the western suburbs of Chicago, has stood at the frontier of high-energy physics for forty years. Fermilab is the first history of this laboratory and of its powerful accelerators told from the point of view of the people who built and used them for scientific discovery.
Focusing on the first two decades of research at Fermilab, during the tenure of the laboratory’s charismatic first two directors, Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman, the book traces the rise of what they call “megascience,” the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments in a climate of limited federal funding. In the midst of this new climate, Fermilab illuminates the growth of the modern research laboratory during the Cold War and captures the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science.
Lillian Hoddeson, the Thomas Siebel Professor Emerita of the History of Science at the University of Illinois, is coauthor of Crystal Fire, Critical Assembly, True Genius, and Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience.
Adrienne W. Kolb was, until her retirement in mid-2015, the Fermilab archivist. She is coauthor of Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience.
Catherine Westfall is visiting associate professor at Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University.
Table of Contents
Acronyms and Abbreviations Introduction
1 The Call of the Frontier
PART ONE An American Dream 2 The Several Hundred GeV Accelerator, 1959–1963 3 The Berkeley Design, 1963–1965 4 Midwest Passage, 1965–1967
PART TWO A New Frontier on the Illinois Prairie 5 Wilson’s Vision 6 Constructing the Ring, 1968–1972 7 A Users’ Paradise, 1968–1978 8 Beyond the Horizon: The Energy Doubler, 1967–1978
PART THREE The Road to Megascience 9 Lederman’s Vision 10 Completing the Doubler, 1978–1984 11 Bigger Science: Experiment Strings, 1970–1988 12 Megascience Realized: Colliding Beams, 1967–1989 13 The Super Collider Affair, 1982–1989
Epilogue: Light on the Horizon, 1989–1995
Authors’ Statements and Other Acknowledgements Appendix: Fermilab Experiments, 1970–1990 Notes Bibliography Index
