What is the purpose of Brookhaven National Laboratory?
From its founding by nine universities in 1947, Brookhaven National Laboratory has been a center where large research facilities are conceived, designed, built and operated for scientists (originally from the northeast universities) to carry out research. Because such facilities were too large and complex to be built and operated by a single university, the founding universities wanted an institution dedicated to their operation. Brookhaven became the first of the national laboratories to be specifically dedicated to non-weapons research and open to researchers from other institutions (users). In order to keep these research facilities at the cutting edge, the founders realized it was necessary for Brookhaven to have an expert scientific staff to carry out research in many scientific areas, develop new technologies, and push continual improvement of these facilities. Brookhaven now has over 3,000 employees, including roughly 550 scientists, who carry out research in a wide variety of f
