Making Physics

From Nobel Prize-winning work in atomic physics to community concerns over radiation leaks, Brookhaven National Laboratory's ups and downs track the changing fortunes of "big science" in the United States since World War II. But Brookhaven is also unique; it was the first major national laboratory built specifically for basic civilian research. This text brings to life the people, the instruments, the science, and the politics of Brookhaven's first quarter-century. The book shows the experimental energy of Brookhaven's researchers, competing among themselves as well as with other laboratories around the world. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, from oral interviews and internal memos to lab notebooks and transcripts of security clearance hearings, Robert P. Crease recounts the difficult founding and siting of Brookhaven, the successful resolution of immense engineering and technical problems in the design and construction of experimental apparatus, and changing relations with the surrounding Long Island community. But most of all, Crease tells the stories of Brookhaven's scientists and their research, which has included detailed descriptions of the structure of the nucleus, early attempts at radiotherapy for inoperable tumours, and studies of strange particles and the weak and strong interactions.