Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

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The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) at the Chilton/Harwell Science Campus is a scientific research laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire, England. It has a staff of approximately 1,200 people who support the work of over 10,000 scientists and engineers, chiefly from the university research community.

RAL is run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It is named after the physicists Ernest Rutherford and Edward Appleton.

The Rutherford High Energy Laboratory was set up on the former RAF Harwell airfield between Chilton and Harwell in 1957, and merged with the Atlas Computer Laboratory and Appleton Laboratory in 1975 and 1979 respectively, to form the current laboratory.

The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) was set up to run RAL and Daresbury Laboratory in 1996. In 2007, the CCLRC became part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

RAL hosts ISIS, the brightest spallation neutron source in the world, which uses neutron scattering to study the structure and behaviour of materials, providing research capabilities for around 1600 scientists from a range of disciplines, and has been operating since 1985.

RAL was chosen as the site for the synchrotron light source Diamond, which officially opened in January 2007.

The Central Laser Facility, which houses the Vulcan and Astra lasers, is also located in RAL.

RAL also hosts a number of other resources and services in particle physics, microelectronics, atmospheric sciences, space science, spectroscopy and renewable energy research.

Projects

RAL staff are involved with a huge number of national and international projects.

• Space Science and Technology
• EISCAT
• E-Science
• Enabling Grids for E-sciencE
• Particle Physics
• Large Hadron Collider
• LHC Computing Grid
• ATLAS experiment
• LHCb
• Compact Muon Solenoid
• International Linear Collider
• MINOS - Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search
• T2K - Tokai to Kamioka
• Technology
• Microelectronics Support Centre (MSC)
• ISIS - neutron source
• Diamond - synchrotron light source.

See also

• Atomic Energy Research Establishment
• JET

External links

• Science and Technology Facilities Council
• ISIS pulsed neutron and muon source
• Diamond Light Source synchrotron
• Central Laser Facility
• Computing at Chilton: 1961-1990
• Microelectronics Support Centre
• EUROPRACTICE Software Service

fi: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

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Last updated on Monday June 30, 2008 at 16:32:08 PDT (GMT -0700)
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