The month of June marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles’ album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – and also of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Visiting Chicago this month, on my way to buy the Sgt. Pepper reissue, I found myself driving past Fermilab.

The main building of Fermilab, the 16-storey Wilson Hall, consists of two curved slabs shaped like hands in prayer. It has been compared to a French gothic cathedral. Rising above the flat Illinois prairie, it is easily visible from the highway I was on – Kirk Road.