Discoveries
For more than 65 years, the men and women of Argonne have carried out basic and applied science and engineering aimed at solving the nation's pressing scientific and technological challenges.
  • Alexei A. Abrikosov discovered type II superconductivity and won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • Maria Geoppert Mayer developed the shell model of the atomic nucleus, for which she shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • Khalil Amine, Chris Johnson, Jaekook Kim and Michael M. Thackeray led research that developed the cathode material used in the battery of the Chevy Volt, the world's first mass produced plugin hybrid car.
  • Michael Wang developed the [GREET] (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) fuel cycle model, the world standard for evaluating the energy and emission impacts of advanced vehicle technologies and new transportation fuels over their entire fuel and vehicle cycles, from mining initial raw materials through end of life vehicle disposal.
  • Charles E. Till and Yoon I Chang led a team that developed and demonstrated pyroprocessing of spent reactor fuel, a process that recovers valuable fuel constituents, removes long lived actinides from the waste stream and is resistant to nuclear proliferation.
  • A team led by H.P. Planchon Jr. demonstrated the passive safety of a nuclear reactor fueled by metal alloy and cooled by liquid sodium.
  • Ali Erdemir developed Near Frictionless Carbon, an ultra hard coating many times slicker than Teflon and a coefficient of friction is less than.001 when in a dry nitrogen atmosphere.
  • Aneesur Rahman pioneered the field of molecular dynamics, the application of computational methods to physical systems, and invented the microcanonical ensemble approach to lattice gauge theory.
  • Steven C. Pieper and Robert B. Wiringa pioneered the use of high performance computers to model the structure and behavior of atomic nuclei.
  • A team led by Roger B. Poeppel made America's first wire from high temperature superconductors and developed the world's first motor based on the properties of high temperature superconductors.
  • Dieter M. Gruen made excimer laser surgery possible by using a quartz fiber optic cable to efficiently transmit light from a 308 nm excimer laser, the ideal wavelength to break the bonds of biological tissues without burning or charring. He also led a team that invented a process for growing the world's smoothest diamond films.
  • Led by Walter H. Zinn, Argonne scientists and engineers pioneered the concepts and prototypes of most modern commercial nuclear reactors, including light water reactors, pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, and the nautilus reactor that powered the first nuclear submarines. Notable accomplishments include creating the first usable electricity from nuclear energy and lighting the first town (Arco, Idaho) by nuclear energy.
  • Armando Travelli led the development of low enriched uranium fuel for nuclear test reactors, use around the world today to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation by minimizing the use of highly enriched uranium for most civilian applications worldwide.
  • Arun Wagh, Dileep Singh and Seong Y. Jeong developed Ceramicrete, a new kind of concrete for encasing nuclear wastes, and its variant, Grancrete, a building product for providing high quality, low cost housing for developing nations.
  • Michael Krumpelt led a team that developed a compact fuel processor that reforms ordinary gasoline into a hydrogen rich gas to power fuel cells.
  • Led by Edward J. Daniels, Argonne researchers developed "froth flotation," the first industrial scale method for separating plastics of equivalent density.
  • A team led by James P. Peerenboom developed the PROTECT early warning system used in municipal subway systems to provide early warning to commuters and quick response capability to emergency first responders in case of chemical and biological attacks.
  • Under the leadership of Andrzej Joachimiak, the Structural Biology Center at Argonne leads the world in contributing thousands of newly solved protein structures to the Protein Data Bank, used by researchers around the world to develop new drugs and diagnostic procedures.
  • Carl Peraino, Silvia Bacchetti and William J. Eisler developed the first automated system to grow human cells in culture.
  • John Malm, Henry Selig and Howard Claassen made xenon tetrafluoride, the first compound of xenon, previously thought to be inert.
  • Evan H. Appleman, Eric N. Sloth and Martin H. Studier made the first direct observation of the properties of astatine, an element so scarce it had never before been seen with the human eye.
  • Edwin Hart of Argonne and British colleague Jack Board discovered the hydrated electron, a major breakthrough in radiation chemistry.
  • Lawrence Stein created the world's first solution of positively charged ions of radon, normally an inert gas.
  • Jack Dongarra coauthored LINPACK, a software library for performing numerical linear algrbra on digital computers.
  • A team led by Michael Petrick designed, built and tested the largest superconducting dipole magnet ever built.
  • Norman A. Frigerio of Argonne and Gerald Droszcz of St. Procopius College prepared the first crystalline form of permanganic acide.