LeConte Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. It is home to the physics department. LeConte Hall was one of the largest physics buildings in the world at the time it was opened in 1924, and was also the site of the first atom collider, built by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1931. The building was named in honor of the brothers Joseph and John LeConte, professors of Physics and Geology, who were respectively the first and third presidents of UC Berkeley.In 2004, LeConte Hall was named to the National Register of Historic Places.HistoryIn 1924, the university opened LeConte Hall in order to accommodate an enlarged physics department, and to support the hiring of new, talented faculty. One of the newly hired faculty was Ernest Lawrence, who joined the department in 1928. Lawrence, together with students M. S. Livingston and David Sloan built an 11-inch cyclotron and installed it in room 329 LeConte. The device was the first successful, functional cyclotron and produced a current of 1.22 MeV protons.Lawrence set up the Radiation Laboratory ("Rad Lab") in the space between LeConte Hall and the Campanile. The lab was later moved up the hill and renamed Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
