The front features the X-10 Graphite Reactor, the first nuclear reactor designed and built for continuous operation. This was Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s original logo, in use during Weinberg’s tenure as director.

“The work that took place at the Graphite Reactor had ramifications for many fields of science. This was the place, for example, where mammalian radiation biology in its modern sense really originated. .…it was the first place where isotopes were produced for every science you can think of.”

Alvin Weinberg

The term “Big Science” is usually attributed to Weinberg’s 1961 article in Science, one of the world’s top academic journals.

“When history looks at the 20th century, she will see science and technology as its theme; she will find in the monuments of Big Science—the huge rockets, the high-energy accelerators, the high-flux research reactors—symbols of our time just as surely as she finds in Notre Dame a symbol of the Middle Ages.”

Alvin Weinberg