Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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| Motto | Bringing science solutions to the world |
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| Established | August 26, 1931 (86 years ago) |
| Research type | Unclassified |
| Budget | $785 million (2014) |
| Director | Michael Witherell |
| Staff | 3,304 |
| Students | 800 |
| Location | Berkeley, California, United States |
| Campus | 200 acres (81 ha) |
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Operating agency
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University of California |
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| Website | lbl |
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL or LBL), commonly referred to as Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory located in the Berkeley Hills near Berkeley, California that conducts scientific research on behalf of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is managed and operated by the University of California. The laboratory overlooks the University of California, Berkeley's main campus.
The laboratory was founded in August 26, 1931 by Ernest Lawrence as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, 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. 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 department's theoretical physicists, led by Robert Oppenheimer. The lab moved to its site atop the hill above campus in 1940 as its machines, specifically the 184-inch (4.67 m) cyclotron, became too large for 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 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 cyclotron was finished in November 1946; the Manhattan Project shut down two months later.
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