The Long Island Museum (LIM) is proud to announce a collaborative exhibition exploring the history of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), one of our nation’s most dynamic and internationally influential scientific research institutions. Atoms to Cosmos: The Story of Brookhaven National Laboratory will be on view in the Main Gallery of the LIM’s History Museum.
Home to seven Nobel Prizes and five National Medals of Science BNL is one of 10 national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. It is the only multidisciplinary national lab in the northeastern United States. Situated on Long Island and just 18 miles from the LIM sits this center of discovery where scientists from around the world are unlocking the mysteries of the universe and developing new technologies that impact lives across the globe. Now in its 75th year, BNL has been an international leader in scientific research and development.
In partnership with BNL, the LIM will explore and present the Lab’s pivotal story to Museum visitors through a combination of more than 100 artifacts, historic photographs, film, and interactive components. Objects such as a 95” long magnet lamina from the Cosmotron, 1952, on loan from the Smithsonian National American History Museum and two early PETT (positron emission tomography) scanners, 1961 and 1981, on loan from the Lab, will be on display.
Located in Upton, BNL’s 5,300-acre site in the Long Island Pine Barrens is one of Suffolk County’s leading employers and a vital economic and cultural center with a long, complex, and sometimes misunderstood past. A substantial section of the exhibition showcases how science currently being explored at BNL will have significant implications for the world in the future. This exhibition is especially timely given the recent announcement by the Department of Energy that BNL will become home to the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a future facility that will open up a new frontier in nuclear physics. With an estimated completion date of 2030, the EIC will reveal unprecedented details about how the atomic nucleus is bound together, potentially leading to new discoveries with benefits for the economy and humanity.
