The UK’s synchrotron is turning 10 today

Diamond, the UK's national synchrotron science facility and one of Oxfordshire's flagship science institutes, was formed 10 years ago today. A decade ago, on the 27th March 2002, the Wellcome Trust and the UK Government signed the Joint Venture Agreement and Diamond Light Source Ltd was born that day.

To celebrate this 10th Anniversary milestone Diamond has launched a blog www.diamond10.org where everyone who has had a connection to the project can contribute and leave their perspectives. It's also where anyone new to Diamond can find some useful facts and background to the project. Diamond will continue 2012 celebrating its 10th anniversary with a Special Series of ‘Inside Diamond’- open days which will run from 16th to 20th June. These events will be ticketed and more information is available at www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/Events/InsideDiamond

Gerd Materlik, Diamond’s Chief Executive, comments, “It’s been a real honour to lead this project and be part of a team who in less than five years got the facility constructed as well as up and running for scientific users and all this on time, on budget and to specifications. The following five years were spent delivering science as well as building up the next Phase of construction. We have achieved around 1600 scientific publications so far and over 3,000 researchers are now making up the user community. With a team of 430 strong, Diamond is now on the way to deliver its full potential.”

Provided by Diamond Light Source