Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has a proud history and heritage of almost 70 years of science and innovation. The people at the laboratory work on advanced technologies intended to provide the best scientific and engineering solutions to the nation’s most crucial security challenges.

Whether it was helping to end World War II or creating a technology that makes every car’s airbags inflate fast enough to save a life, the world has benefited from contributions made by the innovators at LANL.

Since 1943, some of the world’s smartest and most passionate technical people have accomplished the difficult, the unexpected, and what sometimes seems impossible.

Los Alamos National Laboratory designed the atomic bombs used to bring history’s most violent and devastating conflict, World War II, to an abrupt end. Since the war, LANL has ensured the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Over the past 70 years, the laboratory also has developed into a multidisciplinary research institution, which has emerged as a world leader in scientific endeavor and technological development.

The timeline, 70 Years of Innovations, highlights just a few of the LANL innovations that have truly changed history. As scientific pioneers, innovator, and the people who support those capabilities, scientists and researchers at LANL also have helped create ways that technologists across the globe make their own innovations — providing the world with fundamentally new approaches to (for example) software codes and computerized simulations.
It was at LANL, for instance, that the Human Genome Project began … as well as other crucial efforts that many people don’t associate with Los Alamos National Laboratory.

View innovation timeline: https://www.lanl.gov/about/history-innovation/innovations/index.php