The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory is the U.S. Department of Energy’s flagship research facility for the nuclear physics program. With the capability to collide ions as heavy as Au at the center-of-mass energy of 200 x A GeV, where A is the atomic mass of the ion, the primary objective of RHIC is to create states of nuclear matter at an extreme high temperature and density. We believe that such states of matter existed for a fleeting moment, shortly after the creation of the universe, as we know it know, by so called "Big Bang". The construction of the collider, consisting of two superconducting magnet rings of 3.8 km in circumference, was completed as scheduled during 1999. Following the initial commissioning of the collider in the same year, collisions of Au ions were achieved during the subsequent commissioning run in the year 2000, first at the collision energy of 66 GeV per nucleon in the Au ion on June 12 and later at 132 GeV per nucleon. By the end of that year’s run, the luminosity of the collisions reached more than 10% of the design value. All four detectors of RHIC, i.e., BRAHMS, PHENIX, PHOBOS, and STAR, were also commissioned, using these collision events and collected a significant amount of data before the end of the run. An overview of the RHIC facility construction project, commissioning of the facility, and the first physics results at the new frontier of nuclear matter research will be presented.

^*Brookhaven National Laboratory BSA Upton, Long Island, New York 11973 Work Performed Under The Auspices Of The U.S. Department Of Energy Under Contract # DE-AC02-98CH10886 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

^*Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy.