Robert Wilson, the first director of Fermilab, was both scientist and artist. There are many anecdotes about his interest in and promotion of art at Fermilab. Over many years I have observed that physical scientists often have a deep interest in the arts.
In 1998, theorists Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum met in a coffee shop in Boston to discuss how extra dimensions of space would change the predictions of particle theories.
Deep in the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota, during the early 1970s, Ray Davis monitored a 100,000-gallon tank of perchloroethylene, a chlorine-rich dry-cleaning chemical.
In 1905, Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity and overthrew the notions of absolute space and time. His later General Theory of Relativity was so revolutionary that even he had trouble accepting its full implications.
This mural in the Soudan Underground Laboratory, located in Minnesota half a mile underground, was designed by artist Joseph Giannetti. Its theme is matter and energy, and--more specifically--neutrino physics.
Speaking experimentally, the past decade has been the "Decade of the Neutrino." It produced neutrino experiments across three continents, going from the lab, to the nuclear reactor, to the atmosphere, to the sun, and back to the nuclear reactor.