SLAC timeline

Explore SLAC’s 60 year timeline.

1962

Contract execution and start of accelerator construction

1966

Construction completed and research begins

1967

20GeV electron beam achieved

1968

First evidence discovered for quarks

1972

SPEAR operations begin

1973

Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project (SSRP) started

1974

Discovery of psi particle

1976

Discovery of charm quark and tau lepton

1976

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

1977

SSRP becomes Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL)

1980

Positron Electron Project (PEP) operations begin

1982

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

1989

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

1990

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

1990

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

1992

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

1993

Final Focus Test Beam facility constructed

1994

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

1995

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

1996

Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) project initiated

1997

First beam injected into B Factory

1998

First B Factory particle collision occurs

1999

First events recorded by B Factory's BaBar detector

2000

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

2002

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

2003

Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology established

2006

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

2008

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

2009

LCLS sees first light

2011

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

2012

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

2012

SLAC celebrates 50th anniversary

2015

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

2016

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

2017

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

2018

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

2019

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

2020

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

2021

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

2022

SLAC celebrates 60 years of science and discovery

2023

LCLS-II produces first light

2024

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

Dig deeper

Explore SLAC

Get the latest SLAC news, explore news collections and archives, access media resources and connect with us.

Electron transfer atomic motions concept illustration

The lab honors its remarkable past while continuing its quest for a brighter future.

SLAC 60th anniversary graphic

In 1962, in the rolling hills west of Stanford University, construction began on the longest and straightest structure in the world.

BABAR