Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience by Lillian Hoddeson (PDF)

Description

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located in the western suburbs of Chicago, has stood at the frontier of high-energy physics for forty years. Fermilab is the first history of this laboratory and of its powerful accelerators told from the point of view of the people who built and used them for scientific discovery.Focusing on the first two decades of research at Fermilab, during the tenure of the laboratory’s charismatic first two directors, Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman, the book traces the rise of what they call “megascience,” the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments in a climate of limited federal funding. In the midst of this new climate, Fermilab illuminates the growth of the modern research laboratory during the Cold War and captures the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Excellent history of creation of Fermilab. I would have appreciated more discussion of the physics/engineering problems and less on the notion of “frontier”.

⭐In high energy physics, Fermilab is one of the few world centres. The sheer cost of maintaining a research level accelerator has helped make this so. To a non-physicist, the authors explain the lab’s history. Largely this is quite well done. The explanations are grounded in a general science background. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is some handwaving about the esoterica that the lab has detected.But the reason for having a large ring in which charged particles are accelerated is clear. And it is this which gives the most distinctive aspect of Fermilab.Nor should the book be neglected by physicists. Standard reports about Fermilab, that are written for physicists, tend to neglect some of the politicking and management issues that led to the lab’s location being picked, and then to fund the lab’s construction. For example, in the 60s, there were real concerns about the civil rights record of Illinois. But you rarely see this in the physics writeups, which focus on the physics and engineering, while often ignoring broader societal issues.Tangentially, the fate of proposed but never build accelerators is also tied into the story of Fermilab. Hence we see Isabelle, nicknamed Wasabelle after it failed to garner funding. And then there was the SSC – Superconducting SuperCollider, which became a hole in the ground in Texas. The reader should appreciate from this that Fermilab was lucky, in being made at a time when funding sufficed for its mission.

⭐This history of Fermilab and associated high-energy particle physics is very well written. Particularly useful is the description of the people and the political climate in which the lab was funded and grew. I wish in describing the history and demise of the SSC the role of the growth in cost had been offered. As written it sounds like Congress just changed its mind. Could the contrast between the spectacular results of Wilson’s risk-taking, seat-of-the-pants and economizing management style with the cost growth produced by the formal DoE-inspired structure teach us something? I would also prefer a little more of the engineering and science. For example, the proton-proton collider option was inconsistent with energy saving. Since the colliding particles have to come from opposite directions both the Main Ring and new superconducting-magnet rings would have been required, i.e., with opposite magnet polarities. Also, a few words about how one infers the existence of the top quark from the plethora of particles in the CDF reconstruction figure would be useful.

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