Thinking Small in Big Science: The Founding of Fermilab, 1960—1972

摘要

What happens when science grows larger, increasingly complex, and more expensive? This intriguing question has prompted numerous inquiries. Not surprisingly, much of this literature has focused on the increase in scale, and in particular on the innovations resulting from expansion. Recent scholarship has addressed, among other questions, the issue of how increased federal funding has led to radically new regulatory procedures, values, and definitions for scientific subfields, and how the growing size of instrumentation and teams has altered various types of scientific practice. The story of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) cuts against the grain of this historiographical trend. Recognition in the 1960s that the number of high-energy physics facilities would likely fall by about one-half, due to the enlarged scope of Fermilab and a diminishing federal budget, led to new management and siting procedures. Those building this one-of-a-kind accelerator at unprecedented expense were preoccupied with making innovations that would reduce costs, an impulse that often led them to emulate old-fashioned models. In short, the oft told story of expansion driven by innovation eclipses a more complicated reality: sometimes the development of big science is driven by contraction and shaped by a reversion to custom.