SPECIAL COLLOQUIUM:

Bob Wilson and the Birth of Fermilab

Ned Goldwasser

Fermilab and the University of Illinois (retired)

In the 1960’s the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (then The Lawrence Radiation Laboratory) submitted two proposals to build the next high energy physics research laboratory. The first included a 200 GeV accelerator and associated experimental facilities. The cost was $350 million. The Bureau of the Budget rejected that proposal as a “budget buster”. It ruled that $250 million was the maximum that could be accepted. The second proposal was for a reduced scope laboratory that met the Bureau of the Budget’s cost limitation, but it was for a lower energy accelerator and somewhat smaller and fewer experimental facilities. The powerful Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy rejected the reduced scope proposal as inadequate to provide physics results of sufficient interest to justify the cost. It was then that Bob Wilson came forth with a third proposal, coping with that “Catch 22” and leading to the creation of Fermilab. How he did it will be the subject of this colloquium.