Page "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" Paragraph 1

The laboratory was founded as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, associated with the Physics Department, on August 26, 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a site for centering physics research around his new instrument, the cyclotron ( a type of particle accelerator for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 ).

Throughout the 1930s, Lawrence pushed to create larger and larger machines for physics research, courting private philanthropists for funding.

After the laboratory was scooped on a number of fundamental discoveries that they felt they ought to have made, the " cyclotroneers " began to collaborate more closely with the theoretical physicists in the Berkeley Department of Physics, led by Robert Oppenheimer.

The lab moved to its site on the hill above campus in 1940 as its machines ( specifically, the cyclotron ) became too big to house on the university grounds.