Larry Lagin
Larry Lagin is a retired scientist and project manager who worked on two of the world's nuclear largest largest nuclear fusion research projects -Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at Princeton Plasma Physics and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). While at Princeton, Larry ran PPPL's "Science on Saturday" science outreach program for high school students for several years while working on TFTR. Shortly after moving to Livermore in 1995, Larry founded LLNL's "Science on Saturday" program while working on NIF. Since retiring in 2014, Larry has taken drawing and painting classes in a Specialized Drawing certificate program at UC Berkeley Extension, and completed the Post Baccalaureate certificate program in Visual Arts, specializing in painting in June 2018. As part of that program, Larry developed a series of paintings based on archived photographs from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. See "Holocaust Memorial Exhibit" more info.
Larry lives in the East Bay of San Francisco in Livermore, CA. He is a resident artist at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore, and has a studio there. Larry is also on the Board of Directors of Livermore Shakespeare Festival (LSF) and recently helped create the LSF's Science@Play program. Larry will be helping to create the East Bay Holocaust Education Center, which will be launched in 2021.
I devoted most of my scientific career trying to recreate the energy of the stars – essentially trying to tame nature by creating order out of chaos. And so, I also do it with my art – with the energy and untamed chaos I use in many strokes of the brush, seeking and eventually searching for order. There’s nothing like the pursuit of creative exploration and discovery that I find from both.