How it started

Brockhouse and Shull made their pioneering contribution at the first nuclear reactors in the USA and Canada back in the 1940s and 1950s. It was then that the resources of the reactors became available for peacetime research.

... how it continues

Thousands of researches are now working at the many neutron research centers throughout the world. New and very advanced neutron scattering installations have been built and more are planned in Europe, the USA and Asia. At these super-installations the researchers are studying the structure of new ceramic superconductors, molecular movements, on surfaces of interest for catalytic exhaust cleaning, virus structures and the connection between the structure and the elastic properties of polymers.