Los Alamos National Laboratory was founded during the darkest days of World War II to beat Hitler’s Germany to the atomic bomb. After Nazi Germany collapsed, atomic bombs were used against Imperial Japan to bring the war to an abrupt and victorious conclusion. Though viewed by many as a temporary military outpost after the war, Los Alamos emerged as a permanent multidisciplinary institution in the years and decades that followed. Although the Laboratory has changed in many respects, it has consistently yielded world-changing science and technology. This lecture is an introduction to the history of the nation’s premier scientific laboratory.
