Contract execution and start of accelerator construction

Construction completed and research begins

20GeV electron beam achieved

First evidence discovered for quarks

SPEAR operations begin

Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project (SSRP) started

Discovery of psi particle

Discovery of charm quark and tau lepton

Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Burton Richter for the J/psi discovery

SSRP becomes Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL)

Positron Electron Project (PEP) operations begin

Wolf Prize awarded to SLAC's Martin Perl for discovery of the tau lepton

Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) operations begin; 50 GeV electron and positron beams achieved

Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Richard Taylor for first evidence that nucleons consist of quarks

Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR) becomes a dedicated synchrotron radiation facility with its own independent injector

Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) becomes a division of SLAC

Final Focus Test Beam facility constructed

Initiation of the PEP-II project to build the Asymmetric B Factory

Nobel Prize in physics shared by Martin Perl for the discovery of the tau lepton.

Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) project initiated

First beam injected into B Factory

First B Factory particle collision occurs

First events recorded by B Factory's BaBar detector

Joint NASA-Stanford GLAST project initiated, Helen Quinn shares Dirac Medal

SLAC celebrates 40th anniversary, Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) project approved

Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology established

Roger Kornberg awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for RNA polymerase work done partly at SSRL

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope begins mapping the sky; SLAC built and operates the main instrument for the international project

LCLS sees first light

First beam delivered to the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET)

SLAC’s ATLAS technology contributes to Higgs boson discovery at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

SLAC celebrates 50th anniversary

Construction begins at Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) site in Chile (now known as Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

Responding to a call to build a revolutionary new X-ray laser, SLAC begins construction on LCLS-II

Powerful magnetic devices called soft X-ray undulators travel nearly 3,000 miles to arrive at SLAC for LCLS-II

SLAC and Stanford open one of the world’s leading centers for cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM

With Stanford, SLAC launches new initiatives in quantum information science and machine learning

After a brief pause due to the global pandemic, SSRL restarts in support of COVID-19 research

Thanks to virtual technology, public tours and remote experiments continue and thrive

SLAC celebrates 60 years of science and discovery

LCLS-II produces first light

SLAC completes construction of the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy