1980

 
1981
   1982   1983   1984   1985   1986   1987   1988   1989
• Hot Dry Rock program produces electricity.
• Six Los Alamos women included in Time magazine’s list of “80 Women to Watch in the 80s.”

 
• Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory becomes Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
• Center for Materials Science established.

• Women in Science initiate a work-study internship program with the University of New Mexico–Los Alamos (UNM-LA) and LANL.

 

 

• Antares laser fusion facility becomes operational.
• Proton storage ring provides beam to Lujan Center.
• Global positioning system (GPS) satellite launched with Los Alamos x-ray detector on board.
• National Laboratory Gene Library Project initiated.
• Solid storage system of boost gas demonstrated.
• Giotto spacecraft with Los Alamos experiments on board launched to study Halley’s comet.
• Siegfried S. Hecker becomes Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• AIDS database established.
• High-performance parallel interface (HIPPI) developed.
• First edition of nucleotide-sequence data for HIV samples published.
• U.S. and Soviet Union conduct joint verification experiment.
• Superconductivity Technology Center established.
• Advanced Computing Laboratory (ACL) established.
• Los Alamos designated as one of three national centers for human genome studies.
• Human telomere is discovered.
• Successful Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) test on Aries rocket.
• Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center dedicated.
• Los Alamos acquires the CM-2 massively parallel computer from Thinking Machines Corp.
• Joint U.S. - Soviet underground test, Kersarge, conducted.

• Iran - Iraq war commences.
• The Polish labor union Solidarity is founded by Lech Walsea.
• Leonard Adleman and Robert Rumely develop test for prime numbers.
• Charles Weissman produces human interferon in bacteria.
• The VLA - Very Large Array radio telescope begins operation in Socorro, New Mexico.
President Reagan
President Reagan

• Ronald Reagan becomes President of the United States.
• American hostages are released from Iran.
• Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated.
• France elects first Socialist president, Francois Miterrand.
• MTV and CNN begin broadcasting.
• First space shuttle, Columbia, is launched.
• The new inflationary universe, a theory of the origins of the universe, is developed by A.D. Linde, and, independently, Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt.

• Great Britain defeats Argentina in the Falkland Island war.
• GenBank, the national database for nucleic-acid sequences, begins operation.
• Yucca Mountain at the NTS selected as candidate site for geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.
• A single atom of element 109 is created by a German team.
• William Mason and Jesse Summers demonstrate that the hepatitis B virus replicates with the aid of reverse transcriptase.
• Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union dies.

• President Reagan initiates the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars”.
• Research and development efforts gear up at national laboratories.
• President Reagan signs the Nuclear Waste Policy Act into law.
• Yuri Andropov becomes president of the USSR.
• U.S. invades Grenada.
• Carlo Rubbia's team at CERN confirm the electroweak theory.
• The gene marker for Huntington's disease is discovered by James Gusella.

• Konstantin Chernenko becomes general secretary of the Communist Party and president of the USSR.
• Indian prime minister Indira Ghandi is assassinated.
• Eric Block and Saleem Ahmad synthesize ajoene, believed to be a blood thinner.
• The Macintosh computer is introduced by Apple.
• Alec Jeffreys discovers genetic fingerprinting technique.
• Fermilab's particle accelerator reaches 800 billion electron volts.

Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev

• Gorbachev becomes general secretary of the Communist Party and begins promoting glasnost and perestroika—economic, political, and social reform in the USSR.
• The Soviet Union announces a nuclear testing moratorium.
• A hole in the ozone layer is detected over Antarctica.
• A nuclear x-ray laser explodes underground.
• Developed countries respond to famine in Africa.

• Accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, Ukraine occurs.
• Core module of Russian space station Mir launched.
• Space shuttle Challenger explodes killing 7.
• U.S. bombs Libya in retaliation for terrorist attacks.
• Corazon Aquino defeats Ferdinand Marcos in elections in the Philippines.

• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the U.S. and Soviet Union.
• Superconductivity Pilot Centers announced by President Reagan.
• Japanese economy booms.
• Yuri Romanenko establishes new records after 362 days in space aboard the Soviet Mir space station.
• Michael Moe, Alan Hahn, and Steve Elliot report the double beta decay of selenium 82.

President Bush
President Bush

• George H. W. Bush elected President of the United States.

• Chinese students lead peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
• Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan.
• Cold War ends; Berlin wall is opened.
• Rocky Flats Plant closed for environmental law violations.
• Tanker Exxon-Valdez causes largest U.S. oil spill in Gulf of Alaska.