MAX-lab is a Swedish national synchrotron radiation facility, first established as a small-scale university project in the late 1970s and then gradually developed into a national and international user facility. This article presents a historical study of MAX-lab that illustrates the decentralized character of the Swedish science policy system and especially its lack of aggregation mechanisms for strategically important initiatives such as the establishment of large research infrastructures. The dominating university sector and the absence of strong central governance structures have made Swedish science policy pluralistic, driven from the bottom up, and decentralized. The genesis and development of MAX-lab, while remarkable when compared to other such facilities internationally, is symptomatically Swedish–it has grown from the bottom up and step by step, and thereby managed to become a respected national and international user facility despite unfavorable conditions. The patchy funding model and the lack of coherent policymaking has led to underfunding and an opaque organizational structure, but MAX-lab and its users have nonetheless been of high quality. This article argues that the determination, patience, adaptivity, and, to some extent, ingenuity of the people involved in MAX-lab have compensated for systemic shortcomings and enabled the laboratory to succeed despite the unfavorable conditions.

This paper discusses the historical connections between two large-scale undertakings that became exemplars for worldwide data-driven scientific initiatives after World War II: the International Geophysical Year (1957––1958) and the International Biological Program (1964––1974). The International Biological Program was seen by its planners as a means to promote Big Science in ecology. As the term Big Science gained currency in the 1960s, the Manhattan Project and the national space program became paradigmatic examples, but the International Geophysical Year provided scientists with an alternative model: a synoptic collection of observational data on a global scale. This new, potentially complementary model of Big Science encompassed the field practices of ecologists and suggested a model for the natural historical sciences to achieve the stature and reach of the experimental physical sciences. However, the program encountered difficulties when the institutional structures, research methodologies, and data management implied by the Big Science mode of research collided with the epistemic goals, practices, and assumptions of many ecologists. By 1974, when the program ended, many participants viewed it as a failure. However, this failed program transformed into the Long-Term Ecological Research program. Historical analysis suggests that many of the original incentives of the program (the emphasis on Big Data and the implementation of the organizational structure of Big Science in biological projects) were in fact realized by the program's visionaries and its immediate investigators. While the program failed to follow the exact model of the International Geophysical Year, it ultimately succeeded in providing a renewed legitimacy for synoptic data collection in biology. It also helped to create a new mode of contemporary science of the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER Network), used by ecologists today.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the experimental particle physicists at large laboratories responded to the limited funding context of that time. Unlike the "big science" in the postwar decades, when funding for research appeared unlimited and many parameters grew exponentially, the even larger-scale "megascience" of the 1970s and on was shaped by competition for limited resources at host laboratories. Experimental programs increasingly took the form of long-lived (typically ten- to twenty-year) strings of related experiments, invisible institutions creating research traditions within the laboratory. Focusing on how a particular study of charmed particles (experiment E-516) at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory gave rise to one of the laboratory's earliest experiment strings (E-516-691-769-791), we explore why such strings evolved and how they led to new research practices. Because these strings produced conflicts and ironies that threatened to undermine fundamental aspects of the research, the emergence of experiment strings can be viewed as a limiting process of large-scale research in the 1970s and 1980s.

ABSTRACT Yoshio Nishina is often honored as ““a father of modern physics in Japan.”” By performing multiple roles as a competent researcher, a formidable teacher, and a shrewd organizer, he not only made a great contribution to the emergence of a research network that produced two Nobel prize winners in physics but also raised the level of Japanese physics overall. Among Nishina's many contributions to the Japanese physics community, the construction and operation of two cyclotrons during the 1930s and 1940s were the most celebrated. In this paper I try to answer the following questions: why did Nishina start the construction of two cyclotron in the mid-1930s?; how did he secure the necessary financial support?; what were the original objectives of the machines, and how were they were actually used?; what difficulties did he meet and overcome in the construction and running of the cyclotrons?; how significant was the Berkeley connection in contributing to the construction and operation of the cyclotrons?; why did Nishina skip the construction of the medium size cyclotron (30––40 inches) and move directly from a small (26-inch) to a large one (60-inch)?; and how much did the cyclotron project influence the future path of Japanese physics? I argue that Nishina's two cyclotrons, especially the larger one, should be considered as successful examples of reverse engineering, a hallmark of Japanese technology in the interwar period.

ABSTRACT From the mid-1930s, Australian physicists, though few in number, sought to join the exciting new field of research then opening up in experimental nuclear physics. Such research was already, however, largely based on the use of particle accelerators, and to acquire one demanded money and resources on a scale unprecedented in Australian scientific experience. Australian attempts during the period 1935––1960 to build accelerators or to acquire them by other means are described. The difficulties that Australian physicists faced in this connection and the strategies by which they sought to overcome them are considered. Three stages of development are identified: an initial period of small-scale initiatives in the 1930s, a postwar period of ““do-it-yourself”” accelerator building, and finally a growing practice of buying machines ““off the shelf”” from commercial suppliers.

ABSTRACT Experimental nuclear physics in Argentina entered the era of so-called ““big science”” with a project to build a 20 MeV tandem-type accelerator for heavy ions. Promoted by the group of nuclear physicists of Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), the TANDAR (TANDem ARgentino) project was presented to CNEA's Navy authorities during a democratic period of complete turmoil and a deep economic crisis. Most of its construction took place during eight years of brutal military dictatorship (1976––1983), leading to its inauguration in the first years of a new democratic government (1986). This article narrates how the project was envisioned, planned, and executed, and discusses the distortion of the usual meaning of ““big science”” when applied to a ““peripheral”” context.