The Eyring Science Center was originally named the Physical Science building. It was dedicated in 1950 as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebration. Crowds filled the Pendulum Court to witness the dedication.

H. Tracy Hall left his job at General Electric to come to BYU. At GE, Hall had developed a way to synthesize diamonds. While at BYU, he engineered two types of presses, tetrahedral and cubic, that contributed to further success in the making of lab-grown diamonds.

Dr. Howard Nielson helps establish the department and is named the first chairman

The physics department decided to convert the reverberation chamber into an anechoic chamber for acoustic research. The project was funded by a NSF grant for $9200. This was possibly the first external federal research grant awarded to BYU.

The reactor was a 10-watt L77 research reactor and was housed in an underground lab. It was specifically designed to teach nuclear physics and engineering students on a very safe reactor. It was decommissioned in 1992 due to a shortage of students in the nuclear programs.

Dr. Gary Carlson, the director of BYU Computer Services, was named dean of the new college (with only one department), and Dr. C. Edwin Dean was named chairman of the department.

1971-

Chemical Thermodynamics: An Introduction,

by J. Rex Goates and J. Bevan Ott is published

This “pumpkin book” (because of its orange color) was used by generations of students and built upon BYU’s expertise in calorimetry.

The two surplus computer systems were IBM's 7030 model.

The college was created as a result of splitting the College of Physical and Engineering Sciences. The Computer Science Department also joined the college at this time. The founding dean was Jae R. Ballif.

The building was dedicated by Elder Delbert L. Stapley. It was 63,500 square feet, with 14,000 square feet dedicated to the University’s computer center. The computer mainframe itself took up 4,000 square feet.

424 students from all over Utah attended. As part of the conference schools could sign up to compete in a Science Bowl. Orem high school won first place with a $15 prize for each individual student on the team and $150 prize for the school to purchase science teaching materials.

The Math Lab was originally created to help students prepare for college entrance exams. It was originally held in the Harold B. Lee Library.

Dr. Willis H. Brimhall published his research that showed significant evidence that Utah Lake was never a clear lake.

Founded by BYU professors Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen, this symposium has developed into one of the most successful small global conferences and continues to be held annually at various global sites.

The beautifully preserved fossil is believed to be 40-60 million years old. It was uncovered near Kemmerer, Wyoming and donated to BYU Geology by the Mountain Fuel Supply Company.

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition is a prestigious math problem-solving contest. In addition to the team placing in the top 50, two BYU students secured places in the top 100 individual competitors.

PASCAL was taught in addition to COBOL and FORTRAN.

Dr. Kenneth Hamblin served on the Voyager 2 mission panel and was assigned to examine the pictures of Saturn's rings taken by Voyager.

When IBM created the first personal computers, the math department decided they needed to move in that direction. A group of 18 professors agreed to teach additional courses for a year so the department could afford the purchases.

The burial site was discovered about 90 miles from Cairo.

The travelling collection was made up of fossils from Brigham Young University, the Utah Museum of Natural History, and the antiquities section of the Utah Division of State History.

The geologists found the upper jaw of a mammal species and identified it to be haplolampia simpsoni. The mammal had never before been seen in Utah.

The Hewlett-Packard HP28S graphing calculator was the first to be on the market and was released in 1988. This was quickly followed by Texas Instruments' own version of graphing calculator.

The company was founded as a spin-off company from the research of Dr. Reed M. Izatt and Dr. Jerald S. Bradshaw of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Dr. James J. Christensen of the Department of Chemical Engineering. The company uses crown ethers to clean up nuclear waste and separate valuable metal ions from waste streams.

The remodel included the addition of a new wing. The rededication took place on September 27, 1990 and was conducted by Henry B. Eyring.

BYU physics undergraduate students receive an $87,700 grant from NASA to complete their “Goldhelox” project, a telescope attached to a NASA shuttle that will measure the soft X-rays emitted from the sun.

This discovery was used to develop the revolutionary arthritis medication Celebrex. A lawsuit later resulted between BYU/Simmons and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals on the grounds that Pfizer had stolen Simmons IP to develop the drug. The lawsuit was 6 years long and finally settled in 2012.

Jian-Ping Xun and Eric Swenson were the first two graduates to receive a PhD in Mathematics from the BYU Department of Mathematics. Eric Swenson has since returned to BYU as a math professor.

The Space Geyser was found near the center of a bright galaxy by BYU professor J. Ward Moody and his team. It was published as the first space "geyser" recorded in the universe.

CS Department chairman Bill Barrett and his students developed the Intelligent Scissors, which was a photo editing tool used to cut out shapes from parent images. The tool was later adopted into Adobe Photoshop Magnetic Lasso.

The name was officially changed from the Chemistry Department to its current name Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

The Benson building is home to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. It was dedicated on October 20th, 1995 by President Gordon B. Hinckley. The dedication ceremony was held in the study room located at the front of the building. The room has been nicknamed the "Fishbowl" because of its conservatory style windows that look out onto the BYU campus.

The research center was created in partnership between the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Biology and Agriculture. The center strives to provide needed experience and training to students who will become the next generation of cancer clinicians and researchers.

The Prix Galien award is the most prestigious award in the field of pharmaceutical research and innovation. Dr. Morris Robins, professor of chemistry, received this award for his contributions to better understand and treat the hepatitis B virus.

Computer animation began to gain popularity and BYU wanted to give their computer science students who were interested in animation the experience needed to be successful in animation careers. Animation takes very powerful computers to generate, so Ira A. Fulton generously donated the money BYU needed in order to purchase their first supercomputer for animation. BYU has since gained a name for excellence in the college animation community.

The imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) Satellite was built by NASA and launched March 25th. BYU undergraduate students were invited into a collaboration with NASA to develop special mirrors to be attached to the IMAGE Satellite. The mission led to getting the first images of the Earth’s magnetosphere

Gerald M. Armstrong became the department's first chairman.

The program was given this name by the American Institute of Physics.

At the campus devotional held on January 22, 2002, William Phillips, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, shared his thoughts about how science and faith are not strangers. His talk was titled "Science, Faith, and the Nobel Prize" and can be listened to here.

The animated film was called Lemmings and was invited to over 20 film festivals that year. It won a Student Academy Award and a College Television Award, setting a high standard of excellence for future films. It can be viewed here.

As part of an ESC underground laboratory renovation, the Department of Physics & Astronomy built reverberation chambers. The chambers were built to help further the acoustics research here at BYU.

The Summerhays Planetarium, located in the Eyring Science, was rebuilt in 2005 and renamed after Royden G. Derrick. The new planetarium also welcomed the addition of a star projector.

The Venus Express was a space exploration mission sent to gather data about Venus’s atmosphere and erosion.

The project was lead by Professor Brooks Britt, professor of geological sciences at BYU. The fossils were discovered near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. The sauropod was named Abydosaurus.

The Applied Computational Mathematics Emphasis (ACME) program helps students use advanced math concepts to solve real world problems.

578 universities participated in the competition. The BYU team was comprised of Peter H. Baratta, Samuel Dittmer, and Hiram B. Golze. To honor the "mathletes," BYU released this promotional video, which included a clever math rap.

Former member of the BYU men's track and field team and current member of the BYU statistics faculty, Professor Jared Ward competed in the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He placed 6th in the marathon run.