Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has a proud history and heritage of almost 80 years of science and innovation. The people at LANL work on advanced technologies to provide the best scientific and engineering solutions to the nation's most crucial security challenges.
LANL designed the atomic bombs used to bring history’s most violent and devastating conflict, World War II, to an abrupt end. Since the war, LANL has ensured the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Over the past 80 years, the Laboratory has also developed into a multidisciplinary research institution, which has emerged as a world leader in scientific endeavor and technological development. This timeline will introduce you to just a few of the LANL innovations that have truly changed history.
As scientific pioneers, innovators, and the people who support those capabilities, that’s what scientists and researchers at LANL live for.
They’ve even helped create ways that technologists across the globe make their own innovations—providing the world with fundamentally new approaches to (for example) software codes and computerized simulations.
It was here, for instance, that the Human Genome Project began. . .and other crucial efforts that many people don’t associate with LANL.