Los Alamos National Laboratory, in northern New Mexico near Santa Fe, began in 1943 as Project Y, the Manhattan Project’s secret weapons-design center. Chosen by General Leslie Groves on a site proposed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, it became the place where the first atomic bombs were designed and assembled, culminating in the Trinity test and the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After the war, it remained central to the American nuclear program, including thermonuclear weapons development, while also becoming a major center for computing, nuclear research, and later civilian science in fields from medicine to renewable energy, despite accidents and security controversies.

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Los Alamos, New Mexico · USA