Bevatron shutdown February 20, 1993, with Edward Lofgren and Marco Monroy (sitting). The Bevatron was a particle accelerator at LBNL, which began operating in 1954. It was built to be energetic enough to create antiprotons, and test the hypothesis that every particle has a corresponding anti-particle. Confirmation of the charge symmetry conjecture in 1955 led to the Nobel Prize for physics being awarded to Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain in 1959. Hundreds of new particles and excited states were suddenly revealed, which marked the beginning of a new era in elementary particle physics. The Bevatron was finally decommissioned in 1993. Edward Joseph Lofgren (born January 18, 1914) was an American physicist in the early days of nuclear physics and elementary particle research at the LBNL. He was an important figure in the breakthroughs that followed the creation of the Bevatron, of which he was the director for a time. He remained at the Laboratory until his retirement in 1982. He turned 100 in January 2014.