Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Los Angeles Times contributor, the untold story of how science went big, built the bombs that helped World War II, and became dependent on government and industry and the forgotten genius who started it all, Ernest Lawrence.



Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. Machines have become larger, ambitions, bolder. The first particle accelerator cost less than one hundred dollars and could be held in its creators pa...