Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , commonly referred to as Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that conducts scientific research on behalf of the Department of Energy. Located in the hills of Berkeley, California, the lab overlooks the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

The laboratory was founded in August 26, 1931, by Ernest Lawrence, as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, associated with the Physics Department. It centered physics research around his new instrument, the cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator for which he was awarded 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. He was the first to develop a large team to build big projects to make discoveries in basic research. Eventually these machines grew too large to be held on the university grounds, and in 1940 the lab moved to its current site atop the hill above campus. Part of the team put together during this period includes two other young scientists who went on to establish large laboratories; J. Robert Oppenheimer founded Los Alamos Laboratory, and Robert Wilson founded Fermilab.

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