Abstract

The ALMA Telescope: The Story of a Science Mega-Project is a history of the ALMA project published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.  After a description of the process followed in writing the book, the talk presents some highlights of ALMA history: the origins of ALMA in precursor projects in Japan, Europe, and the United States; finding the ALMA site;  how ALMA got four different antenna designs;  the story of three crises which could have killed the project;  examples of scientific results which demonstrate that ALMA worth the cost and effort;  and a few of the lessons learned.