Big Science “for the benefit of all mankind”

Abstract A little more than a century ago at the turn of the 1920s two eminent scientists—Jean Perrin (1870-1942) in France and Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) in the United Kingdom—speculated that the energy source at the core of the Sun was a product of nuclear reactions. Their intuition was a huge departure from the theories that had prevailed until then. In the years that followed a clearer understanding 1 of the hydrogen fusion process at the core of Sun-like stars led to a Promethean ambition: reproducing and harnessing fusion reactions to gain access here on Earth to a new sustainable source of energy for generating electricity on a massive scale.