1962
Contract execution and start of accelerator construction
1966
Construction completed and research begins
1967
20GeV electron beam achieved
1968
First evidence discovered for quarks
1972
SPEAR operations begin
1973
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project (SSRP) started
1974
Discovery of psi particle
1976
Discovery of charm quark and tau lepton
1976
Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Burton Richter for the J/psi discovery
1977
SSRP becomes Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL)
1980
Positron Electron Project (PEP) operations begin
1982
Wolf Prize awarded to SLAC's Martin Perl for discovery of the tau lepton
1989
Stanford Linear Collider (SLC) operations begin; 50 GeV electron and positron beams achieved
1990
Nobel Prize shared by SLAC's Richard Taylor for first evidence that nucleons consist of quarks
1990
Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR) becomes a dedicated synchrotron radiation facility with its own independent injector
1992
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) becomes a division of SLAC
1993
Final Focus Test Beam facility constructed
1994
Initiation of the PEP-II project to build the Asymmetric B Factory
1995
Nobel Prize in physics shared by Martin Perl for the discovery of the tau lepton.
1996
Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) project initiated
1997
First beam injected into B Factory
1998
First B Factory particle collision occurs
1999
First events recorded by B Factory's BaBar detector
2000
Joint NASA-Stanford GLAST project initiated, Helen Quinn shares Dirac Medal
2002
SLAC celebrates 40th anniversary, Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) project approved
2003
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology established
2006
Roger Kornberg awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for RNA polymerase work done partly at SSRL
2008
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope begins mapping the sky; SLAC built and operates the main instrument for the international project
2009
LCLS sees first light
2011
First beam delivered to the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET)
2012
SLAC’s ATLAS technology contributes to Higgs boson discovery at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider
2012
SLAC celebrates 50th anniversary
2015
Construction begins at Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) site in Chile (now known as Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
2016
Responding to a call to build a revolutionary new X-ray laser, SLAC begins construction on LCLS-II
2017
Powerful magnetic devices called soft X-ray undulators travel nearly 3,000 miles to arrive at SLAC for LCLS-II
2018
SLAC and Stanford open one of the world’s leading centers for cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM
2019
With Stanford, SLAC launches new initiatives in quantum information science and machine learning
2020
After a brief pause due to the global pandemic, SSRL restarts in support of COVID-19 research
2021
Thanks to virtual technology, public tours and remote experiments continue and thrive
2022
SLAC celebrates 60 years of science and discovery
