American Decades
Particle Physics
High-Energy Particle Physics.
Following World War II tremendous amounts of federal funding became available for atom-smashing physics because of its association with weapons research. This largesse was extended to high-energy particle research thoughout the 1970s, despite the fact that this work had no discernible military applications and almost all high-energy physicists had refused to do secret research or work on weapons. Particle physicists were the doves of physics, preferring to search for the smallest (or "fundamental") particles of matter rather than develop weapons. Generous funding had allowed them to build the million-dollar equipment required to find such particles.
Fermilab.
In 1972 the large accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, began operation. Named for the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who laid the ground-work for both nuclear...
[The entire page is 381 words long]
1970's Science and Technology
