A History of Physics Research at Brookhaven

Begin your tour of physics discoveries made at Brookhaven >>

From its inception Brookhaven has had a major focus on physics, including the subfields of nuclear, particle and condensed matter, and five Nobel Prizes in physics have resulted. Three of those discoveries were made at the Laboratory's premiere proton accelerator, the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), and another Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for a theoretical breakthrough that showed a violation of a supposedly absolute law of physics known as parity conservation. In 2002, Brookhaven's own Ray Davis (a chemist) won the Nobel Prize in physics for the observation of neutrinos produced by the sun.

Many other important physics discoveries have been made at BNL facilities over the years, including at the AGS, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the National Synchrotron Light Source, the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor, the High Flux Beam Reactor and elsewhere. A large number of applications have come from BNL basic research in physics, including many in nuclear medical diagnostics. As we look to the future, exciting avenues of physics research are opening up at the Lab. Many of these will involve cross-disciplinary efforts among physics, chemistry, biology and medicine, with eventual applications in many areas. See a detailed description of these areas: