A brief history of Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy%3CU%2B2019%3Es Office of Science : interplay between science, technology, and mission.

Abstract

In 1957, Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) initiated its first programs in fundamental science, in support of its primary nuclear weapons mission. In 1974, Sandia initiated programs in fundamental science supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE-SC). These latter programs have grown to the point where, today in 2011, support of Sandia's programs in fundamental science is dominated by that Office. In comparison with Sandia's programs in technology and mission applications, however, Sandia's programs in fundamental science are small. Hence, Sandia's fundamental science has been strongly influenced by close interactions with technology and mission applications. In many instances, these interactions have been of great mutual benefit, with synergies akin to a positive 'Casimir's spiral' of progress. In this report, we review the history of Sandia's fundamental science programs supported by the Office of Science. We present: (a) a technical and budgetary snapshot of Sandia's current programs supported by the various suboffices within DOE-SC; (b) statistics of highly-cited articles supported by DOE-SC; (c) four case studies (ion-solid interactions, combustion science, compound semiconductors, advanced computing) with an emphasis on mutually beneficial interactions between science, technology, and mission; and (d) appendices with key memos and reminiscences related to fundamental science at Sandia.