The Supercollider: The Pre-Texas Days — A Personal Recollection of Its Birth and Berkeley Years

Abstract

This article describes the beginnings of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). The narrative starts in the early 1980s with the discussion of the process that led to the recommendation by the US high energy physics community to initiate work on a multi-TeV hadron collider. The article then describes the formation in 1984 of the Central Design Group (CDG) charged with directing and coordinating the SSC R&D and subsequent activities which led in early 1987 to the SSC endorsement by President Reagan. The last part of the article deals with the site selection process, steps leading to the initial Congressional appropriation of the SSC construction funds and the creation of the management structure for the SSC Laboratory.