LIGO becomes big science

Abstract

Over a thirty-year period the serach for gravitational waves using large-scale interferometers has grown from a research proposal, to a few small projects, to a billion dollar international entreprise. The American project is known as the Laser interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). LIGO's working practices, management style, and scientific goals have changed as the enterprise has become larger. The case study explores the logic of LIGO's somtimes traumatic organizational revolutions and relates them to the changing nature of the science and the political setting in which these are set; the future may indicate the extent to which LIGO's science was ready for the degree of routinization that now characterizes it. While the course and character of each upheaval cannot be fully understood without an analysis of the capacities and capabilities of the personnel involved, this study concentrates on structural changes but uses the words of individuals to illustrate them.