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President Clinton to Honor Recipients of Nation's Highest Technology
and Science Awards
President Clinton will present the nation's most prestigious technology
and science honors, the National Medal of Technology and the National
Medal of Science, to fourteen outstanding scientists, inventors and business
leaders from around the country. The innovations and discoveries of this
year's laureates have led to revolutionary achievements in areas such
as: the understanding of the human genetic code; development of the Internet;
improved cancer diagnosis and treatment; and enhanced motion picture sound.
Past recipients of the National Medal of Technology include Bill Gates
of Microsoft, Gordon Moore of Intel, and the world's largest and most
comprehensive health care company, Johnson & Johnson.
Past recipients of the National Medal of Science include Eugene M.
Shoemaker, co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet; economist Milton
Friedman; and C. Kumar N. Patel, who invented the carbon dioxide laser,
which helped revolutionize such fields as medical surgery.
- WHAT: President Clinton to Honor 1997 National Medal of Technology
and National Medal of Science laureates.
- WHO: National Medal of Technology Laureates - Norman
R. Augustine (Lockheed Martin Corp.); Ray M. Dolby (Dolby Laboratories);
Robert S. Ledley (Georgetown Univ. Medical Cntr.); and the team
of Vinton G. Cerf (MCI) and Robert E. Kahn (Corporation for
National Research Initiatives).
National Medal of Science Laureates - William K. Estes
and Shing-Tung Yau (Harvard University); Darleane C. Hoffman
and Harold S. Johnston (Univ. of California-Berkeley); Marshall
N. Rosenbluth (Univ. of California-San Diego); posthumously
to Martin Schwarzschild (Princeton University); James D. Watson
(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY); Robert A. Weinberg (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology); and George W. Wetherill (Carnegie
Institution, DC).
(For more information on the 1997 medalists,
see the attached list.)
- WHERE: Old Executive Office Building
(OEOB), Rm. 450 (Immediately following the ceremony,
interviews with the 1997 laureates will be conducted
in OEOB Rm. 476.)
- WHEN:Tuesday,
December 16, 1997
at 9:30 a.m. (This
is a new time -- 12/15/97)
- CONTACT:
- Cheryl
Mendonsa,
Department of
Commerce, 202-482-8321
- Bill
Noxon,
National Science
Foundation,
703-306-1070
- Jeff
Smith,
OSTP, 202-456-6047
1997 National Medal of Technology Recipients
Norman R. Augustine, Chairman of Lockheed Martin Corporation
in Bethesda, MD, for visionary leadership in maintaining the United States'
preeminence in the aerospace industry and for identifying and championing
solutions to the many challenges in civil and defense systems. He has
pioneered numerous technological innovations that have helped make America's
fighting forces the best equipped in the world. (Contacts: Cheryl Mendonsa,
Dept. of Commerce, 202-482-8321 and Charles Manor, Lockheed Martin
Corp., 301-897-6258.)
Ray M. Dolby, Chairman of the Board, Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
in San Francisco, CA, for inventing technologies that have dramatically
improved sound recording and reproduction, fostering their adoption
worldwide, and maintaining a vision that has kept the world listening.
From the
cassettes we enjoy in our car stereos to the latest digital sound in
movie theaters, the world hears music and sound better because of Ray
Dolby and the company he founded, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (Contacts: Cheryl
Mendonsa, Dept. of Commerce, 202-482-8321 and Joe Hull, Dolby
Laboratories, Inc., 415-558-0200.)
Robert S. Ledley, Director of
Medical Computing and Biophysics and Professor of Radiology, Physiology,
and Biophysics at the Georgetown
University Medical Center in Washington, DC, for pioneering contributions
to biomedical computing and engineering, including inventing the whole-body
CT scanner, and for his role in developing automated chromosome analysis
for prenatal diagnosis of birth defects. He has applied emerging computer
technology to meet the rapidly evolving needs of biomedicine. (Contacts: Cheryl
Mendonsa, Dept. of Commerce, 202-482-8321 and Nancy Whelan,
Georgetown University Medical Center, 202-687-4704.)
Team Award jointly
to Vinton Gray Cerf, Senior Vice President
of Data Architecture at MCI in Reston, VA, and Robert E. Kahn,
President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives in Reston,
VA, for creating and sustaining the development of Internet protocols
and continuing to provide leadership in the emerging industry of internetworking.
They had the vision to realize the tremendous potential of computers
communicating and the know-how and perseverance to enable the creation
of the network of networks known today as the Internet. (Contacts: Cheryl
Mendonsa, Dept. of Commerce, 202-482-8321, Debbie Caplan,
MCI, 610-257-7974, and Alice Portale, Corporation for National
Research Initiatives, 703-620-8990.)
1997 National Medal of Science Recipients
William K. Estes, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Harvard
University in Cambridge, MA, for fundamental theories of cognition and
learning that transformed the field of experimental psychology and led
to the development of quantitative cognitive science. His pioneering methods
of quantitative modeling and an insistence on rigor and precision established
the standard for modern psychological science. (Contacts: Bill Noxon,
National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Susan Green, Harvard
University, 617-495-1585.)
Darleane C. Hoffman, Professor of the Graduate School at University
of California-Berkeley, for her discovery of plutonium in nature and
for her numerous contributions to our understanding of radioactive decay,
notably of heavy nuclei. She is an internationally recognized leader
in nuclear chemistry, particularly the topics of nuclear fission, properties
of actinide elements, and reactions of heavy ions. (Contacts: Bill
Noxon, National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Jeffrey Kahn,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 510-486-4019.)
Harold S. Johnston,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley,
for understanding the chemistry of nitrogen
compounds and their role and reactions in the earth's stratosphere and
in urban areas. His chemical and environmental research, along with
his commitment to science in the service of society have resulted in pivotal
contributions to the understanding and conservation of the earth's atmosphere.
(Contacts: Bill Noxon, National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070
and Bob Sanders, University of California-Berkeley, 510-643-6998.)
Marshall
N. Rosenbluth, Professor of Physics at the University
of California in San Diego, for his fundamental contributions to plasma
physics, his leadership in the quest to develop controlled thermonuclear
fusion, and his wide-ranging technical contributions to national security.
His theoretical studies of the behavior of plasmas and their instabilities
provided a significant foundation for the design and development of
prototype devices for fusion power. (Contacts: Bill Noxon, National
Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Warren Froelich, University
of California-San Diego, 619-534-8564.)
Martin Schwarzschild, Higgins Professor of Astronomy Emeritus
(deceased) at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ, for his seminal
contributions to the theory of the evolution of stars and his creative
insights into the dynamics of galaxies. His research forms the basis
of much of contemporary astrophysics, and the many students he trained
are among today's leaders in the field. (Contacts: Bill Noxon,
National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Justin Harmon,
Princeton University, 609-258-5729.)
James D. Watson, President of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
in Cold Spring Harbor, NY, for five decades of scientific and intellectual
leadership in molecular biology, starting with his co-discovery of the
double-helix structure of DNA. He was a forceful advocate for the Human
Genome Project and shaped that effort as the founding Director of the
National Center for Human Genome Research. (Contacts: Bill Noxon,
National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Wendy Goldstein,
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 516-367-6842.) Robert A. Weinberg, Member of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical
Research and Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Cambridge, MA, for crucial discoveries that clarified the genetic
basis of human cancers. His work has influenced virtually all major aspects
of our current understanding of the origins of cancer, from mutations
affecting certain cellular genes, to the development of diagnostic tests
for such mutations, to the description of the combination of events that
produce cancer. (Contacts: Bill Noxon, National Science Foundation,
703-306-1070 and Seema Kumar or Eve Nichols, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 617-258-6153.)
George W. Wetherill, Staff Member of the Department of Terrestrial
Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, DC,
for his fundamental contributions to measuring astronomical time scales
and understanding how earth-like planets may be created in evolving solar
systems. His pioneering achievements include developing precise radiometric
techniques for dating the age of meteorites and creating conceptual models
and computer algorithms for the accretion of a few solid, terrestrial
planets by collision with smaller neighbors. (Contacts: Bill Noxon,
National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Pat Craig, Carnegie
Institution of Washington, 202-939-1120.)
Shing-Tung Yau, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University
in Cambridge, MA, for profound contributions to mathematics that have
had great impact on fields as diverse as topology, algebraic geometry,
general relativity, and string theory. His work insightfully combines
two different mathematical approaches and has resulted in the solution
of several longstanding and important problems in mathematics. (Contacts: Bill
Noxon, National Science Foundation, 703-306-1070 and Susan Green,
Harvard University, 617-495-1585.) |
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