The Vault | Issue 2020 Issue

After opening our doors in June 2019, the Center had a truly extraordinary year.

The Lab’s National Security Research Center is a dynamic facility accessed by the nation’s top scientists and engineers as they solve global challenges.

One of history’s greatest scientific breakthroughs was achieved in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, helping to end World War II just weeks later.

Handwritten notebooks from scientific geniuses. Blueprints of the world’s first atomic weapons. Fascinating finds fill the National Security Research Center.

A fourth World War II-time spy at Los Alamos was recently confirmed by historians just months ago.

She was hired as the secretary to the Lab’s first director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, but Dorothy McKibbin was much more.

Expert staff and high-tech equipment in six labs at the National Security Research Center preserve materials dating back to the beginning of the nuclear enterprise.