Includes bibliographical references (p. 413-423) and index.

1. A Team of Young General Groveses -- 2. A Reluctant Director, a Remote Site -- 3. National Laboratory -- 4. The "Brookhaven Concept" -- 5. The Pile Project -- 6. Community Relations -- 7. The Accelerator Project -- 8. Reactor Research in the 1950s -- 9. "For the Enlightenment and Benefit of Mankind": Research at the Cosmotron -- 10. Goldhaber's Directorship -- 11. Research at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron -- 12. The High Flux Beam Reactor -- 13. Crossroad -- App. 1. Some Key Personnel of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Associated Universities, Inc.

From Nobel Prize-winning work in atomic physics to community concerns over radiation leaks, Brookhaven National Laboratory's ups and downs track the changing fortunes of "big science" in the United States since World War II. But Brookhaven is also unique; it was the first major national laboratory built specifically for basic civilian research. In Making Physics, Robert P. Crease brings to life the people, the instruments, the science, and the politics of Brookhaven's first quarter-century.