Enrico Fermi

University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos has been named one of this year’s winners of the Enrico Fermi Presidential Award—one of the most prestigious science and technology honors bestowed by the U.S. government.

The historic University of Chicago Accelerator Building will be taken down soon and the space will become a new, expanded building for engineering and science innovation. It once housed the cyclotron, designed by Enrico Fermi, and was the world’s most powerful particle accelerator using a 2,500-ton magnet to accelerate particles such as protons and nuclei. Read more about building and how the the cyclotron’s gigantic magnet was shipped off to become part of other experiments at what would later become Fermilab.