Scientists have an atomic day of celebration

Isis, the ground-breaking science facility at the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, on the former AERE site at Chilton, marked two decades of excellence last week as top scientists praised its continuing achievements.

Twenty years ago -- on December 16, 1984 -- researchers produced the first neutrons, helping colleagues across all scientific disciplines understand the structure and behaviour of materials at atomic and molecular levels.

Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, attended a special Isis birthday party at RAL to celebrate its past successes and future opportunities.

"The twentieth anniversary of Isis -- one of the UK's major scientific achievements -- is a real cause for celebration," he said.

"This gigantic and complex particle accelerator allows scientists to probe deep into the internal structure of different materials and is the world leading pulsed neutron and muon source."

Dr Andrew Taylor, the director of Isis, emphasised the enormous impact that Isis has had for a generation of scientists -- ranging from physicists, chemists and biologists to material scientists and engineers.

Mr Taylor said: "Scientists from across the world use Isis to help understand the structure of a very wide range of materials -- solids and liquids, metals, plastics and ceramics -- from large engineering components to very thin films a single molecule thick."

His comments were echoed by Prof Bill David, a senior fellow at the Isis project, who said: "Isis has played a key role in the basic understanding of many of the new materials that have been discovered over the past 20 years."

The continuing research at Isis could soon change the way computers are used.

Dr Sean Langridge, group leader of the large scale structures group at the project, said: "We believe that scientific experiments at Isis will lead to the development of a new generation of storage and electronic devices."