Fermilab features

Next year, the country’s premier particle physics laboratory celebrates 50 years of discovery and innovation with a huge open house and many other events.

The U.S. Department of Energy supports a suite of cutting-edge science experiments at Sanford Lab. Fermilab has assumed a new role at the South Dakota facility.

The setting provided by founding Director Bob Wilson’s creative design of the laboratory and his many sculptures are an enduring source of pride for those associated with Fermilab and for the surrounding community. One of the sculptures that has gained widespread attention is “Tractricious.”

Beginning in August, Fermilab’s Batavia Road gate came under the watchful eyes of several sandhill cranes. As employees and visitors alike passed through the gate, it would be difficult to miss these stately sentinels.

Robert Wilson was a man born out of his time. He lived in America from 1914 to 2000, but he really belonged to the central Italy of the 1500s. One ever-present reminder of this is the sculpture that sits in the reflecting pond in front of Wilson Hall.

The influence and impact of physicists from Japan on Fermilab research started in the 1970s and is still strong today.

A furry critter and its four-mile trek through an accelerator pipe comes to the lab’s rescue in its early days.

Fermilab’s summer interns exchange lazy days for lab experience.

A story of the fate of some walnut trees on the laboratory site in 1979 takes us inside the Wilson Hall stairways.

The puzzle: understanding how nearly undetectable particles, called neutrinos, interact with normal matter. The solution? The clever MINERvA experiment, which shares its name with the Roman goddess of wisdom.