Argonne has four major mission areas, each of which fulfills important governmental and Department of Energy responsibilities, as well as provides important benefits to society at large. They are:
Conducting basic scientific research to further our understanding of the world we live in. Argonne conducts basic experimental and theoretical scientific research in the physical, life, and environmental sciences.
Operating national scientific facilities to help advance America's scientific leadership. Argonne operates world_class research facilities like the Advanced Photon Source.
Enhancing the nation's energy resources to ensure America's energy future. Argonne is working to develop and evaluate advanced energy technologies.
Developing better ways to manage environmental problems. Argonne is at the forefront in developing new ways to manage and solve the nation's environmental problems and to promote environmental stewardship.
Argonne scientists and engineers consider it their responsibility to help the public understand science and to enhance American science, engineering, and mathematics education by helping to train nearly 1,000 college graduate students and post-doctoral researchers every year as part of their normal research and development activities.
Argonne National Laboratory is one of the United States government's oldest and largest science and engineering research national laboratories and is the second largest in the Midwest, behind Fermilab.
Argonne conducts basic experimental and theoretical scientific research in the physical, life, and environmental sciences.
Argonne scientists and engineers consider it their responsibility to help the public understand science and to enhance American science, engineering, and mathematics education by helping to train nearly 1,000 college graduate students and post-doctoral researchers every year as part of their normal research and development activities.
Established in 1941 as the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab), the laboratory was part of the Manhattan Project that built America's atomic bomb.
From its inception as a national laboratory, Argonne has been operated and managed by the University of Chicago on behalf of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (1946–1974) and its successor agencies, the Energy Research and Development Administration (1974–1977), and the U.S. Department of Energy (1977).
Although the largest budget allocations went to the weapons laboratories, for 50 years Argonne's research and development agenda was driven by cold-war priorities to maintain the United States' preeminence in science and technology.