The town is notable for its Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kazakhstan National Nuclear Center (formerly of the Kazakh SSR Academy of Sciences), which houses an experimental nuclear reactor and cyclotron.
Arthur Dooley The Laboratory has a piece 'Splitting of the Atom', unveiled in 1971 constructed from magnetic steel and two 37 inch pole tips taken from the first cyclotron to operate outside the USA.
He was a part of the team that developed the cyclotron that produced the first batch of plutonium for the then secret program only referred to as the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb.
He expanded the UCLA library system, enlarged the School of Medicine's basic science programs, convinced the regents of the University of California to purchase and maintain a cyclotron for the school, and founded the Jules Stein Eye Institute and a museum now known as the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Gammasphere was built in the early 1990s and has operated at the 88-inch cyclotron at Berkeley National Laboratory and at Argonne National Laboratory.