Notable and Quotable

We'll continue to support science and technology because innovation makes America stronger. Innovation helps Americans to live longer, healthier and happier lives. Innovation helps our economy grow, and helps people find work. Innovation strengthens our national defense and our homeland security, and we need a strong national defense and homeland security as we fight people who hate America because we're free.

— President George W. Bush, 2002

What is so exciting about the work we do is that we produce benefits to America and the world that go well beyond the original scope of our mission.

Researchers probably never anticipated when they started smashing atoms and protons in our large accelerators that their science their very basic research on matter would eventually give us remarkable life-saving technology.

One of every three hospital patients in the U.S. benefits from nuclear medicine. About 10,000 cancer patients are treated every day with electron beams from linear accelerators.

Superconductors developed for high energy accelerators now provide the strong and stable magnetic fields needed for the sharpest Magnetic Resonance Imaging. And accelerators invented for high energy and nuclear physics research now provide intense sources of synchrotron light that is used for structural biology, chemistry, and material research.

High energy physicists, looking to share information, invented and helped establish the World Wide Web: a profound advance in human civilization – if only because it occupies the free time of our teenagers.

The practical value of basic research is often disguised. And those engaged in it often seek only to follow their curiosity, rather than to find an every day use for their work. But, as I hope I have shown, the connection of basic research to our missions here at DOE couldn't be stronger.

I think it's clear. A nation that embraces basic research embraces a brighter future.

— Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, 2002

I want to state clearly at this point that, despite its apparent impracticality, the Administration values discovery-oriented science, and aims to continue to support the grand quest for knowledge about the universe at the largest and smallest scales.

— Dr. Jack Marburger, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 2002

If we sustain our investments in basic research, we can ensure that the United States remains at the forefront of scientific capability, thereby enhancing our ability to shape and improve the world’s future.

— Dr. Jack Marburger, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 2001

The Office of Science fills a unique and central role in the country’s scientific endeavor.
Our work is complementary to that of other government research agencies.

We distinguish ourselves by our emphasis on research that:

· takes the long view,
· is open and interdisciplinary,
· requires the use of large-scale facilities,
· and takes risks commensurate with the high pay-offs we expect.

— Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director Office of Science, 2002

The lab that we are working in, which is the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, has a really long tradition, I think, going back to Lawrence, of taking on really challenging, difficult experiments, ones where you really don’t expect actually you’ll see results in a year or two years. It may take five or 10 years before you might see anything at all.

… I think it’s really important for people to realize that not every important problem in the world, science or otherwise, can be solved in just a month or just a year, that some of the most interesting problems are decade-long problems or multi-decade-long problems, and these problems can be a pleasure to work on, and they can be really worth that investment.

— Dr. Saul Perlmutter, Lawrence Award winner, 2002

Economists tell us that fully half of our economic growth in the last half-century has come from technological innovation and the science that supported it. It is no accident that our country’s most productive and competitive industries are those that benefited from sustained Federal investments in R&D – computers and communications, semiconductors, biotechnology, aerospace, environmental technologies, energy efficiency.

The Federal role is crucial. Economists estimate that rates of return on private sector R&D spending average about 30 percent. But societal rates of return on public R&D investments – the economic benefits that accrue to our entire society – are twice as large. As much as half the return on a particular firm's R&D investment goes to other companies and competitors – not to the investing company. This "spillover" effect means that private industry cannot and will not commit the level of resources to R&D that is best for society.

From satellites to software to superconductivity, the Federal government has supported – and must continue to support – exploratory research, experimentation, and innovation that would be impossible for individual companies or even whole industries to afford. These partnerships in pursuit of innovation enable the private sector to generate new knowledge and develop novel technologies that ultimately lead to commercial success, increased jobs, and healthier and more productive lives for all Americans.

— Dr. Jack Marburger, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 2001

… [W]hat we all try to do and you [at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science] support is so unique…. [W]e challenge very difficult problems, we bring together a variety of tools from computations to accelerators to intelligence to try to solve those problems. The Department of Energy is rather … a unique organization in the sense that it takes some risks.… By taking some risks, trying to do things that aren’t necessarily quite so clear but have potentially huge payoffs, rewards can be very great.

— Dr. Keith Hodgson, Lawrence Award winner, 2002

Two immense forces have emerged in recent decades to transform the way all science is performed, just as they have altered the conditions of our daily lives: access to powerful computing, and the technology of instrumentation which provides inexpensive means of sensing and analyzing our environment. These have opened entirely new horizons in every field of science from particle physics to medicine. Nanotechnology, for example, -- the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular level – and molecular medicine – the ability to tailor life essential substances atom by atom – both owe their capabilities to advances in computing and instrumentation.

These forces are influencing our approach to each of the grand challenges we face in the national missions of security, environmental protection, healthcare, and education.

— Dr. Jack Marburger, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 2001

The standard of living we now enjoy and the security of our Nation rests in no small degree on the quality of science and technology education we provide our Nation's students from elementary through graduate school. However, our Nation is failing to produce both a scientifically literate citizenry and the kind of workforce we will need in the 21st Century.

Consider the following: Test scores from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) placed the U.S. participants near the bottom of the 16 countries that administered the physics and advanced mathematics tests; engineering majors in the U.S. declined by 35% between 1975 and 1998; and in 1999, while U.S. colleges granted over 125,000 social science undergraduate degrees, it granted a mere 19,000 in the physical sciences.

There are many reasons for America's failure in science education, but as the National Commission on Science and Mathematics teaching pointed out, teacher preparation stands out as both a major contributing factor and something for which all scientific institutions can play a role in solving.

We believe the multidisciplinary, team-centered, scientific culture of our national laboratories is an ideal setting for teachers to make the connections between the science and technology principles they are asked to teach. From 1989 through 1995 we provided science and math teachers with 8-week summer fellowships at our laboratories. To quote one participant, this was "…a chance to become involved in gut level science as practiced by those who devote their lives to it. It's being treated as a respected member of the scientific community."

I would hope that we can reconstitute and expand this program in the future.

— Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director Office of Science, 2002

Whether measured in terms of discoveries, citations or prizes, our country’s prior investments have yielded a scientific and engineering enterprise without peer. Over the past several decades, public investments in research have helped America’s scientists and engineers split the atom, splice the gene, explore the moon, invent the microchip, create the laser, and build the Internet – and in the process millions of good-paying jobs have been created….

— Former Vice President Al Gore, 2000

We are America's laboratory for research into renewable energy; nuclear waste cleanup; supercomputers that can help certify our nuclear stockpile as well as predict weather patterns; nuclear medicine; human and microbial genomics; and so much more.

But we need to work harder if we're going to continue what Carl Sagan saw as a new Renaissance of discovery. One way is by explaining to the Congress and the public why it is in our national interest to get this work funded. We can win this – and do what is right by the American people – if we can get the public to understand what's at stake.

Many Americans still believe that science is – beyond their schooling years – inaccessible. Let's show them that it is accessible, and they can then tell their Congressman why our work is important to them.

— Former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, 2000

Scientists must act as citizens. It is ridiculous to say that because what they are doing is noble and interesting that they should not also function actively as part of our society….

If scientists truly believe that they are on the cutting edge of the future, they have a double burden because not only do they have self-interest, they also have the moral obligation of educating our democracy into creating a better future.

Yes, citizenship is frustrating, but it is a privilege we must exercise. Yes, it means occasionally scientists will be involved in controversy. Yes, they have to learn communications skills such as speaking in a language everyone else in the room can understand.

But these are doable things. They also are vital not only to the survival of this country, but to the future of the human race.

— Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 2000

In its ubiquity, science has fundamentally altered how we think of the universe, of the forces that bind it together, and, ultimately, of ourselves.

In my present position, one of my main objectives is the pursuit of better science, and science and technology are the foundation on which all of my Department's missions rest. Not all of you may realize that my Department oversees the national laboratories of the U.S. – the cradles where science is nurtured.

Today, the Department of Energy funds scientific advances of enormous range. Our scientists are unlocking the mysteries of the quark, the building block of matter. We are mapping the labyrinth of the Human Genome, the building block of life. We are probing the far limits of space, where scientists at Department of Energy labs – and elsewhere – may have discovered that Einstein's cosmological constant could be right after all
.
We're able to do this because we put our money behind it. Next year, the Energy Department will spend over $3.1 billion -- our highest science budget ever -- on our science programs alone. We are America's laboratory for research into renewable energy, nuclear waste cleanup, supercomputers that can predict weather patterns, nuclear medicine that gives us an eye into the nature of cancerous cells, and so much more.

— Former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, 2000

Many of the technologies that are fueling today's economy, such as the Internet, build upon government investments in the 1960's and 1970's–including the Office of Science's "Esnet." The Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies have been the sponsor of science-driven growth through the combined efforts of the national laboratories, 70 Nobel Laureates associated with the Department, and thousands of outstanding university- and industry-based researchers nationwide.

This Department is among the top federal research and development funding agencies, regardless of the criterion used. We are first in scientific facilities and rank third in basic research after the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The Department of Energy is, at its heart, a science agency….

— Former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, 2000

Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited natural resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression.
But to achieve these objects, to secure a high level of employment, to maintain a position of world leadership, the flow of new scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial.

— President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944