Ames Laboratory will be 60 years old officially on May 17, 2007. To help celebrate the Lab’s achievements, a time line of significant Laboratory events has been compiled by decade, beginning with the 1940s and concluding with the 2000s in May 2007. The time line is based on historical documents and information taken from the various Ames Lab employee newsletters: Insider, Changing Scene and Ames Laboratory News. Of particular assistance in better understanding the Laboratory’s Manhattan Project foundation, its university management and its hierarchical organization was “National Science in the Nation’s Heartland,” by Joanne Abel Goldman that was published by the Society for the History of Technology in 2000. We acknowledge the contributions her report has made in helping define events and dates in the early years of the Ames Laboratory.

A temporary building left over from World War I housed uranium production on the
Iowa State campus from January 1943 until the end of World War II.