The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

From Periphery to Center: Synchrotron Radiation at DESY, Part II: 1977—1993

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

In its fifty-year history, the German national research laboratory DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, German Electron Synchrotron) has undergone a gradual transformation from a single-mission particle physics laboratory to a multi-mission research center for accelerator physics, particle physics, and photon science. The last is an umbrella term for research using synchrotron radiation and, in later years, free-electron laser. Synchrotron radiation emerged initially as a peripheral part of the laboratory activities but grew to become a central experimental activity at DESY via a series of changes in the organizational, scientific, and infrastructural setup of the lab, and in its contextual scientific, political, and societal environment. Together with an earlier publication on the issue in this journal,1 this article chronicles the first thirty years in the history of synchrotron radiation at DESY. The focus is on the gradual transformation of DESY’s research program in synchrotron radiation from peripheral and parasitic into mainstream and mission. We provide insights about the crucial renewal of Big Science laboratories toward the end of the twentieth century. This renewal culminated in the close-down of several particle physics machines in the early 2000s and their replacement by facilities dedicated to the study of the structure, properties, and dynamics of matter by the interaction with vacuum ultraviolet and X-ray photons. Therefore, we contribute to better understanding the growth of synchrotron radiation as a laboratory resource, and processes of renewal in Big Science as part of the general history of late-twentieth-century science.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

513-548

Publication/Series

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences

Volume

45

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

University of California Press

Topic

  • History

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1939-182X