Editing Brookhaven National Laboratory (section)

===Foundations===
Following [[World War II]], the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission|US Atomic Energy Commission]] was created to support government-sponsored peacetime research on atomic energy. The effort to build a [[nuclear reactor]] in the American northeast was fostered largely by physicists [[Isidor Isaac Rabi]] and [[Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.]], who during the war witnessed many of their colleagues at [[Columbia University]] leave for new remote research sites following the departure of the [[Manhattan Project]] from its campus. Their effort to house this reactor near [[New York City]] was rivalled by a similar effort at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] to have a facility near [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]]. Involvement was quickly solicited from representatives of northeastern universities to the south and west of [[New York City]] such that this city would be at their geographic center. In March 1946 a nonprofit corporation was established that consisted of representatives from nine major research universities — [[Columbia University|Columbia]], [[Cornell University|Cornell]], [[Harvard University|Harvard]], [[Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins]], [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], [[Princeton University|Princeton]], [[University of Pennsylvania]], [[University of Rochester]], and [[Yale University]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Crease |first=Robert P. |date= 1999|title= Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory}}</ref>

[[File:Soldier_records,_Camp_Upton_(LOC)_(23546348723).jpg|thumb|right|Soldiers during [[World War I]] at the [[Camp Upton]] site,  which would in 1947 be repurposed as BNL]]
Out of 17 considered sites in the Boston-Washington corridor, [[Camp Upton]] on [[Long Island]] was eventually chosen as the most suitable in consideration of space, transportation, and availability. The camp had been a training center for the [[United States Army|US Army]] during both [[World War I]] and [[World War II]], and a [[Internment of Japanese Americans|Japanese internment camp]] during the latter.{{cn|date=March 2024}} Following the war, Camp Upton was no longer needed, and a plan was conceived to convert the military camp into a research facility.

On March 21, 1947, the Camp Upton site was officially transferred from the [[U.S. War Department]] to the new U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), predecessor to the [[United States Department of Energy|U.S. Department of Energy]] (DOE).{{cn|date=June 2024}}