By Tom Mead

SLAC marked its 40th anniversary last week with a celebration that brought together more than 1,300 people for a series of well-orchestrated events highlighting the Lab’s past achievements and heralding exciting future possibilities.

As SLAC Director Jonathan Dorfan noted in his welcome speech, "This day is dedicated to the SLAC staff as a celebration of the accomplishments and contributions to science made by them."

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By Miriam Boon

In 1916, Victor Hess risked his life to observe cosmic radiation by riding a balloon up to 17,500 feet without oxygen. Since then, scientists have been puzzled as to where high-energy cosmic rays come from and how they got accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

The mystery recently deepened...

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The 29th Annual Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) Users’ Meeting took place in the Panofsky auditorium and on the Green October 7-9.

The Users’ Meeting provides a dynamic forum for the presentation and discussion of research activities from SSRL and the synchrotron community.

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The celebration of SLAC’s 40th Anniversary was a wonderful event. It gave us the opportunity to showcase SLAC’s remarkable achievements but also demonstrated our ability to organize a major event efficiently and imaginatively. Everyone was impressed by SLAC’s spirit and vitality. Senator Boxer’s field representative said that ours was one of the best-organized events she had attended in a long time, and added, "and I do this for a living!"

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