Transcript

Five of the 1996 Nobel Laureates visited Washington D.C. October 17 at the invitation of Dr. Lane. NSF invited them based on the fact that all had received research support from NSF, and three had also received career support from NSF. OLPA arranged four press events for the Laureates which focused mainly on policy issues (in particular, budget forecasts) -- followed by an address to NSF staff and a presentation to the NSB, which focused mainly on the science.

The press events included the Morning Newsmaker Event at the National Press Club.

Morning Newsmaker Program with 1996 Nobel Laureates for Science

PHYSICS:

• DR. DAVID LEE
• DR. ROBERT RICHARDSON
• DR. DAVID OSHEROFF

CHEMISTRY:

• DR. ROBERT CURL
• DR. RICHARD SMALLEY

Thursday, October 17, 1996

PROCEEDINGS

Today we've got with us the nation's five new Nobel Laureates in physics and chemistry. All of them received some public funding for their basic research leading to their prizes; yet the American Association for the Advancement of Science is predicting as much as a 20-percent cut in federal research funding by 2002, with National Science Foundation funding reductions of from 7 to 18 percent. The Nobel Laureates are here to discuss how these predicted reductions could impact the United States' ability to earn future Nobel prizes. Three of our guests today share the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on the super-fluidity of super-cooled liquid helium-three.

The first, David Lee--Would you mind standing? David Lee is a physics professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is a recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Robert Richardson. Mr. Richardson is the Newman professor of physics, also at Cornell. He shared with Dr. Lee and our next guest, Douglas Osheroff, the Simon Memorial Prize in low-temperature physics and the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. He also is a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Osheroff is a Jacksonwood professor of physics at Stanford University in California. It was at Cornell, where he received his Ph.D., that he conducted his pioneering work in super-fluidity. He is one of the first MacArthur Grant recipients, and he's received the Buckley Prize in physics.

Our other two guests, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley--both of Rice University in Houston, Texas--shared the chemistry prize for discovering a new form of the element carbon. They dubbed their discovery the "Buckminster Fullerene," after the designer of the geodesic dome, which the carbon molecule resembled. Dr. Curl is the chemistry department chairman at Rice. He is a National Science Foundation fellow, a Humbolt Award recipient, and an Optical Society of America fellow. Dr. Smalley is director of the center for nanoscale science and technology at Rice. He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He and Dr. Curl shared the international prize for new materials, and Dr. Smalley holds a whole bunch of other chemistry prizes--as do all our guests this morning. And now, I think Dr. Smalley is going to speak first.

SMALLEY: Thank you. I decided to go into science one year after Sputnik. At that time, for the sort of people I hang around with--or hung around with in those days--science and technology was the most romantic area you could possibly enter. I did go into science. And during my career I have watched as the support for this enterprise of science and technology development with a long time horizon has gradually gotten to be harder and harder to do, for many reasons. The process is in actually somewhat of a state of decay right now, in a rather insidious way that I think we won't know clearly about for another ten years or so.

FLYNN: I'd like Dr. Curl to say a few words, please.

CURL: Good morning. Science is all about learning more about the world. And the more we know about the world, the more potential things that we can do, both for good and for evil. The most disturbing thing that I've heard recently is the notion that it's all done, it's all discovered, there's not going to be any more new breakthroughs, brilliant things, or just a few cleaning up the details. That was true in the 1890s, as well, that attitude. I think that basic research is in trouble in this country And the reason for this is not clear precisely, but there are many factors at work. And I think that we really need to do something to make sure that basic research continues, because otherwise we'll be in the position of eating our seed corn.

FLYNN: Dr. Osheroff.

OSHEROFF: Well, first, let me say I was a graduate student in 1971 when the discovery for which we're receiving the Nobel Prize was made, and in fact I had been supported by the NSF on an NSF fellowship. And I believe that the grant that was supporting that work was also NSF support. So certainly, the NSF has been very important to me. I think that I was predestined to go into science. There was nothing else that ever interested me very much. But I can say that I think that during that period of time the U.S. supported science almost as a religion as a result of what had happened during World War II and then the space race with the Russians. That seems to be over now. And unfortunately, I think that the U.S. public and, in particular, U.S. Congress, seem to know and appreciate very little about basic science. And I really think that's a problem that we have right now.

FLYNN: Thank you. Dr. Richardson, please.

RICHARDSON: I would like to reiterate the things that everyone has said before me on issues related to the support of science. But there's a thing--two things that really puzzle me. First is, as far as I can see, the issues that concern us about science have been completely invisible in this political season by either party. There have been a few comments, but it is not near the top of the national consciousness. And this for me seems remarkable in the context of the desire to reach the balanced budget by the year 2002. The reason we want to do that as a country is to make life better for our grandchildren. I do not understand how we can make life better for our grandchildren if we don't provide the environment where new things can be invented, new products made, and the quality of life generally improved, because that's been the history of science in the past hundred years.

FLYNN: Dr. Lee.

LEE: I think the important thing that one must not overlook in discussing basic science, basic research, is the fact that all of science is linked by a web. And a discovery on one part of the web will influence what's happening on another part of the web. And it seems to me that one must be careful not to excise certain parts of this web, even though they may not have immediate applications. Thank you.

FLYNN: We'd like to take your questions now. And please address them to the person that you'd like to answer the question.

Q: (MACILWAIN OF NATURE) Dr. Smalley, you said that the process is in a state of decay in a rather insidious way, and that we won't know about it for another ten years or so. Could you expand on that?

SMALLEY: The reason that particularly the United States science establishment has been so incredibly successful over the time period since the Second World War has primarily been because of the tremendous power of having a large cadre of graduate students who are willing to work for, effectively, slave wages, with incredible intensity, with the sort of passion that only comes from someone who actually believes that they have a chance, themselves, to practice the game as they mature. And as the scientific establishment was expanding after the Second World War, this was a sustainable strategy. It was also a time when large corporations all believed that they needed their own long-term research frontier. I think the real issue is the funding of the whole establishment of the enterprise that was responsible for the development of science and technology, not five years from now, but ten to 20 years from now; the sort of research that gets awarded for Nobel prizes, that establishment. And in the '50s and '60s most large corporations felt that they needed such organizations. They no longer feel that way.

Partly, they may be wrong, but I rather suspect that a great portion of the reason why they're getting out of this area has to do with the changes in the way that the enterprise of science and technology has evolved; namely, the rapidity and the worldwide nature of this. So I suspect that there are many aspects of what made it so strong that are no longer sustainable. So as a consequence, we do not have the large number of graduate students entering science and engineering. We can always keep the numbers up, but the quality--that most insidious aspect--I do not believe is what it used to be.

And this is the sort of thing that you're never going to really see very clearly: How will you know what great discoveries and inventions that would have been made have not been made because the science establishment has gone into some extent of decay? And the fact that we have a hard time maintaining budgets of the sciences funding establishments like the NSF and the basic energy sciences of DOE and the relevant areas of the DOD is only one part of this problem. And it is striking that you do not hear this at all in the public debate associated with the election. It is a critical problem for this nation.

Q: Dr. Smalley, could you comment a little bit more on--You seem to be implying that corporations have made what may be an accurate judgment that they don't need to support basic research because basic research is so much more rapidly available to everybody in the world, no matter who funds it. So isn't that an argument for, and aren't you basically--Wouldn't the follow-on of that be that it doesn't really matter so much if the U.S. Government supports basic research, because we cannot as much directly benefit from the results of that ourselves? Everybody will share in it, so isn't it time that the rest of the world funds the basic research?

SMALLEY: Well, at some point, there is a scale of the human enterprise that has to take this responsibility. And if it is not the United States and it's going to be the world, you wonder how is that actually going to work? But for corporations, it is easy to understand how there is a problem here. If you're going to fund major serious enterprises with a ten- to 20-year time horizon, how are you going to be able to arrange to make sure that you, rather than your competitor, are going to be in a position to take the predominant advantage from those discoveries?

It was always hard to do, but it has become incredibly difficult now with the pace of research being what it is, and the interconnectedness of this whole thing, and the inherent unpredictability of the enterprise.

On the other hand, the nation--the United States, or the European Union, or the Pacific Rim--those are sections of the human enterprise that are large enough, that will be in a position to profit, or not profit, from the health of the enterprise that goes on in the country or the group of countries. It is somewhat of the tragedy of the commons. We have to get together at this much larger scale and decide: How important is this enterprise? How are we going to do it? And I do not think we have a healthy garden right now. It's not structured correctly. The whole issue of how it's funded has not been clearly addressed.

Q: Well, are you suggesting more of--When you say we have to come together, do you mean just people in the United States, or do you mean--

SMALLEY: No, I actually mean the whole world. But, hey, let's do what we can do. This is the United States. Let's see if we can get the answer here. We're not, of course, the only people in the world who worry about such things. There's exactly the same conversations that go on in the European Common Market and in Japan and in Taiwan and in China, and so forth. Everyone agrees that there's only one good future, and that's high technology to bring the six to, soon to be, 12 billion people to a reasonable life scale. And that technology has to come out of frontier research. Somehow, we have to learn to establish that enterprise in a sustainable way; not just because we're afraid the nuclear bombs are going to fall and that's such a terrifying thing that we're willing to fund basic research just because it kind of sounds okay.

NOBELIST (IDENTITY NOT GIVEN): I wanted to add a related comment, and that's about the future of the country. And I'm not one of the people that likes to view these things in a nationalistic way, like the Olympic medals, because it is an international enterprise. But there is another part of science in the United States that's in deep jeopardy, and that's the education of children and the training of children and young people to go into the field.

And if we say, "Well, that research is going to be done somewhere; let them do it in Japan," and we quit doing it in the United States, young American students, 12-year-olds like I was--and Doug referred to himself--who want to make a scientific career, are going to say, "That's not for me." And the interest in science will wane even further.

I mean, apart from the funding, there is also the abysmal state of American education in science. But the way to attack that is not to stop doing science research.

Q: (WOLFE OF "WASHINGTON HIGHLIGHTS") Dr. Osheroff...Your remarks included the observation that Congress does not understand science. This is an Congress that has increased the NIH budget this year by $825 million, reflecting the fact that the biological sciences are some of the future. How could you possibly make that comment?

OSHEROFF: Well, I do not regard--I certainly do not equate support to understanding. And in particular, I think that's a good example that, in fact, the expectation is that that support will lead to new discoveries alleviating human suffering on, probably, a rather short time scale.

Let me give you an example of what I do mean. And that is that in the mid-1940s the Bell Laboratories, as it existed at that time, decided in fact that the future of telecommunications could not be with vacuum tubes. And at that time they started doing work to develop a semiconductor device. Now, what would have happened if, in fact, no one had done research to show what the properties of semiconductors were before, in fact, an application for semiconductors had come along? I think that's the thing that we're looking at. The lead time for discovering fundamental laws of science and properties of materials to their applications to modern technology can be very, very long. And if we don't do the fundamental research to begin with, without the expectation that it will have ultimately some sort of technical application, but with an understanding that without it there certainly will not be the technical applications, then I think we're in trouble.

Q: What would you have the Congress do differently, apart from increasing the budget substantially?

OSHEROFF: Well, I mean, what we're talking about, of course, is an increase in the NIH budget with a backdrop of potential decreases in budgets for several other funding agencies, particularly the ones that fund the physical sciences. And I think that there still is a problem.

But when I said that the general public and Congress do not understand science, I think that's really an educational problem, and it's not one that we can solve very quickly right now. I think that we have to look at the issues in science education in this country very seriously, because it is my experience, having been around to many, many other countries, that in fact this country understands less and cares less about what's happening in basic science.

Q: Dr. Osheroff, you covered it partially in your opening remarks, but it seems like the attitude at least in this town is, let the marketplace bear what you're doing. So as they try to balance budgets and things of that nature, do you honestly believe that the marketplace--i.e., private research--can really bear out the work that you have done and what may be going on down the road?

OSHEROFF: Well, I think it's been shown very clearly that in fact industry has decided that there is no guarantee that it will reap the benefits of the basic research that it supports. And almost all American industry has gotten out of the business of basic research, with, perhaps, the exception of the biological sciences and biotechnology areas. So I think the answer is that if you allow marketplace issues to govern the funding, in fact, there will be very little funding done. The lead time is simply too long.

Q: (OPTICS AND PHOTONICS NEWS) Given the desire to balance the budget by 2002, and most policy leaders say they don't want to touch two-thirds of the budget, so that last third of discretionary spending is going to get squeezed where the non-defense science funding is, how do you justify putting resources into science, as opposed to the other areas in that one-third of the pie?

NOBELIST (IDENTITY NOT GIVEN): Well, first of all, I believe that the amount of money that's spent on basic research is a very tiny fraction even of the discretionary funds. And it's the sort of thing where the benefits that can come back from this money--It's sort of like planting a tree, or planting some crop. Eventually, you hope to harvest something that's more worthwhile than your investment that you put in. So I think the point is that the rate of return on investment for basic research is so high that it certainly--I can't say that it should be enormously expanded. I'm not trying to suggest that. But the notion that it should be cut back further seems to be equivalent to saying, "Well, I'm not going to plant this year."

Q:(COHEN OF CBS RADIO) Someone earlier had insinuated that the issue of science funding had not come up in the campaign, and probably specifically that's very true. But the theme has come up, which is the Government's role in our lives. It's a constant theme in the campaign. What should the Government's role be in science funding? Specifically, if private industry is not going to do the job, as you all have said, what should the Government do to pick up the slack if this is so important?

LEE: Well, the Government has a very large program to fund interstate highway systems, and this is a facility which is used by everyone. Now, the basic research enterprise can be thought of in the same way. It provides a facility, a facility of new discoveries, and those discoveries are accessible to all industry. The problem which was discussed earlier is that the time horizons are rather long. It also turns out that the basic research enterprise is a rather broad enterprise and only certain small parts of it--and very unpredictably--are going to lead to extremely important technological breakthroughs. But when those breakthroughs do come, they can have vast implications for our society; for example, the laser, magnetic resonance imaging, and many other things. And some of the things we regard quite casually actually came out of some very, very exciting basic research. But you can never tell. As they say in the state lottery: You never know.

Q: One of the ways that a lot of especially the physical sciences are going is toward the laboratories or group laboratories which are addressing bigger and bigger issues. And I don't know who would want to answer this, but the question is, does this leave room for the individual saying, "Oh, I have this really weird idea that it might go off this way"? Or does the group work mean that you already have to define your questions so tightly that you can't do that imaginative work any more?

RICHARDSON: That's one of my favorite questions. There are different places where science can make a contribution, and some of them are in the interdisciplinary projects where people can take their expertise in chemistry and physics and engineering and address a significant problem. And those are frequently addressed to something that can be useful in a short-term time scale, in three to five years. And there are major programs in NSF that are in that direction. But there's another kind of science, and particularly studies of helium at low temperatures, where it's not clear at the time it's being done what possible application it can really have. And sometimes 15, 20 years later we learn that it had a significant application. That does not fit into that format at all. And it is very important that both types of science be supported in the country, because it's the open-ended things that lead to serendipity. Now, a lot of people don't believe that serendipity should be put into the planning format for science, but since I happened to be a man standing in the right place at the right time--the discovery we had was fortuitous, as far as we're concerned--I believe very much that you have to have a part of your investment just exploring nature to see what's there, because there are lots of wonderful surprises.

OSHEROFF: Let me just add a little bit here. It's true that that was serendipity, what we did; but in fact there had been an enormous amount of work that had been done in low-temperature physics before that. And if, in fact, someone hadn't invented the cooling techniques that we used, or understood the properties of normal liquid helium-three at low temperatures, it's unlikely that those discoveries would have been made. So I really think you need--I agree with Professor Richardson completely. You need to have a mix of different things going on. And the idea of forcing people to work together on well-defined problems is probably a guarantee that you'll get interesting results but perhaps never make the really great discoveries.

Q:(CAREY OF BUSINESS WEEK) I'm still a bit confused. I realize funding has been somewhat flat over the last couple of years, but it's still at historic highs, and the scientific establishment in the U.S. is as large as it's ever been. I don't understand how that can be a sign of decay, as compared with the golden age of the '60s when the scientific establishment was much smaller and yet all these wonderful discoveries were made. Isn't a sort of rational question whether the scientific establishment is too large at the moment, and that's why support for any individuals is too hard to get, and that one response should be to consider how big the scientific establishment ought to be?

SMALLEY: I agree that it is a large establishment. What we're mostly talking about is the restraints that are being placed on the system to back away from the long time scale, time horizon, the true basic research, the frontier work. The activity that is actually working at that level is the one that is in danger. It is the best people in the best places. And of course, it is a function of the quality of the people coming through the system. That's where I think the insidious decay occurs.

Q: Can one point to any concrete measures of decay?

SMALLEY: No. That's the point. Because the question is, you know, what breakthroughs should we have had by this time that we don't have because we don't have that quality? That's why it's insidious. And it is the perception of many of us who have been in the system 20, 30 years in this enterprise, that that is not being sustained. It's hard to make it clear what the impact is when organizations like Bell Labs, and IBM, General Motors, General Electric, DuPont, and so forth, steadily pull back from doing research that has this time horizon. It becomes concentrated in universities. And increasingly, even when we people standing in front of you here go out to look for funding we are asked--in some cases rightfully, but there is a deep stress on the system--"What products are going to come out of this? What's its name? What does it do? So we know what the value of your particular project is going to be." I don't know what the right answer is going to be. You know, I'm not yet an expert in this area. But I think that the garden right now is not being tended correctly.

Q: Are you implying that there's too much emphasis placed at the moment on demanding that scientists provide concrete sort of measures of what the outcomes of their research are going to be?

SMALLEY: No. Actually, I think that's healthy. And I think in the past in the United States science establishment we haven't paid enough attention to the shorter-term development. That is one area where Japan did very well; taught us how important that is. I don't think we need to pay less attention to that. But it's the long time horizon stuff, which used to be funded over an umbrella primarily of the Defense Department. So it was really never rationalized on its own basis for producing economic wealth. Now, with that--at least for the time being--that fear receding, it has exposed this question of, "How important is this enterprise? How much of a portion of the federal budget, just in the U.S., ought to go to this?" I think the rational answer to that could only come if you imagine what the world is going to be like ten, 20 years from now, so you know how critical those discoveries would be.

And of course, how can we possibly guess what the future is going to be like? But we do have six billion people on the planet right now. Roughly two billion of them hardly have access to electricity. In the middle of the next century--something like twelve billion people. The stability of the world political situation depends on the wellbeing of the whole world in the information age.

Where are the technologies going to come from to make a sustainable, fulfilling life for twelve billion people in the middle of the next century? It's got to come out of this enterprise that has a ten- to 20-year time horizon. Where is the completely clean abundant energy going to come from when it, for one reason or another, becomes unsustainable to keep burning oil? It's got to come out of research with this long time horizon.

RICHARDSON: I wanted to add something in response to the specific question. I sort of challenge the assertion that support for scientific research is at an all-time high. All of the tables and statistics I've looked at in the last two or three years show a decline. It depends on how one defines research and even research and development. But anyhow, I'd be interested in the source of the data that you have on that. There is another related thing to the political process, and that's that there's a big mismatch between our political system and what's required for a stable funding for science. We reelect people every two years, as we should, and that's the democratic process. But long-term science needs to have a steady policy that has a ten- or 20-year time base, and that's not there.

I think a lot of us would like to see some of the suggestions, such as a couple the National Academy of Science committees have made, that the country commit itself to a reinvestment; that when the gross national product increases by 2-1/2 percent, we decide to have the investment in basic science track that. And if everyone could agree with that--and independent of political party--that would give the country a very strong base to be able to plan scientific endeavors on. There's also the big mix of national facilities that are required for science, as opposed to small university facilities. And some of the most important things that can be done in our fields require things like synchrotron radiation and neutron sources, that are very expensive.

Q: You mentioned, Dr. Richardson and Dr. Smalley and some others--You've mentioned the MRIs and other concrete results of scientific research. Again, I guess we all keep batting around this budget question. Somebody's going to ask you the basic question of priorities. And this gets back to my colleague from Business Week's question about, well, what should be squeezed out when somebody is going to say, "Well, we have to take care of crime, we have to take care of decent housing, we have to take care of all the basic things of life. You know, show me what you've got to prove that you deserve to be at the table"? And that's essentially my question, you know, on the short term.

SMALLEY: Basically, the basis of the current technology that runs the economy of this country came from research that happened in the previous parts of this century. Now, you might question, maybe we can live and prosper at this level of technology; we don't need any more advances. In which case, it's fine. Just keep doing what we're doing. We'll shrink this thing down. It won't be so productive. But chances are, we're going to have to have a whole new class of deep-reaching discoveries to seed these new industries, to take care of these fundamental problems of livelihood of people in our country and elsewhere.

We don't know what the future is going to be like, but we have had for a while now a tremendously effective machine that I think, if you add up the total dollars that were invested in it, even in the most silly activities, and you compare that to the economic impact of the industries they have spawned, that you'll agree that the return on investment is tremendous. And you can dicker about what the numbers are, but at least, okay, that's an interesting question. Let's take a look at it. Most people who take a look at this find that it has actually, as just simply an enterprise of humankind--if you want to invest in this and you're around 20 years, 30 years in the future to take advantage of it--that it's a very effective enterprise. But it's such a long time span that the entities who will be around 20 to 30 years from now are no longer reliably corporations. Supposedly, the United States is such an entity.

Q: Someone is going to ask you, what does that add to my ability to sustain my ability to put bread on my table, to keep a roof over my house, to keep my streets safe, you know, or the conveniences that I may experience on a day-to-day basis? What is it that you bring, even, say, on the short-term basis, even though you have to work long-term?

SMALLEY: What I'm saying is that, on the short term, the reason that we are as prosperous as we are is because of the technology that was developed primarily in this century. Now granted, some of it came out of applied research labs, but the great majority of it--semiconductors, computers, lasers--all came out of fundamental research at one point way back. And it almost always happens that you cannot draw any reasonably strong argument that this product, this huge enterprise--like, for example, the computer industry--traces back to a particular funded project of the NSF back in 1930, because it's so interconnected. So that the place where it actually happens is so far in time and so complicatedly connected causally that it's divorced from--You know, the enterprise is divorced from the rewards. And so the country has to grapple with this issue. How are we going to handle something which, over all these years, has been so productive, but where the rewards are ten, 30 years in the future, you know, with the political system as it is and with the economic cycle being as rapid as it is? And it's insidious because the people that do this have to devote their entire lives to it. It is a passion that is deep. It's like generating an opera singer. It's very much on the time scale of growing a tree. And if suddenly you feel, "Well, this forest isn't very productive; let's make a new forest," it takes some time. So we've got to take care of deciding how big this garden is going to be and how we're going to nurture it.

And I agree, we must find ways of making the enterprise responsive and to make sure it really does produce the breakthrough discoveries in science and technology that will be what the society feeds off; that is, technology 20 or 30 years down the road. It's not just, "Fund us because we think we're cool guys and we're having a lot of fun." And it is a very complicated thing to do, and I don't think we really know how to do it right now. But if you pretend you're not talking about 1996--Let's pretend it's the year 2020. Imagine the sort of problems that are going to be confronting us then and what the solutions are, and try to imagine back. Where did those solutions come from? What sort of enterprise?

OSHEROFF: Let me just answer your question by asking one of my own. Would you ever consider that, in order to put bread on your table, you would take your children out of school? Or let's make it a broader question and less personal. Should we maybe do without schools because, in fact, they cost a lot of money? And the answer is clearly "No," because the children of today that are being educated are the workforce of the next generation. They're essential, I think, in the same way that the research that we do today will be essential for whatever technologies are developed in the next generation.

LEE: I just couldn't resist telling this anecdote. Many years ago, Michael Faraday, whose research was the basis of the entire electric power industry, was asked by Prime Minister Gladstone, "Well, what is the use of what you're doing now?" Whereupon he replied, "Well, sir, I think some day you fellows will get around to taxing it."

(Laughter)

Q: (MERVIS OF SCIENCE) Several of the panelists have talked about the need to educate legislators, federal legislators. And I wondered if each of you could talk a little bit about your experiences, if you have talked to members of Congress; and if so, what they are interested in, and what questions they ask, and what case you've try to make?

CURL: Well, for me, that's a terribly embarrassing question. It's terribly embarrassing because I've actually made no effort to influence my legislators or try to get them to do what I want to do. I'm going to go out on a little bit of dangerous ground, because I'm not an economics expert, and I don't claim to be. But I do have kind of a suggestion. I think part of the problem with the budget process may be that we don't make a distinction between our operating budget and our capital budget. That is, there are certain things that you are investing in as a long-term thing that's going to make the country better. You build highways because that allows people to get around and transport goods. And if we could come up with some way that we couldn't fiddle it--which is, of course, mission impossible, probably--it would be nice to separate the capital budget from the operating budget. You want to balance the operating budget. It's not clear you want to balance the capital budget. I don't know, I guess I would like to communicate this to a legislator, but it's an idea that only recently was presented to me. So I haven't tried anything like that yet.

RICHARDSON: Because of activities I've had in the American Physical Society--I was a chair of the division of condensed-matter physics--we actually did have activities where we visit congressmen. And I have talked with my local congressman. And it's a different one every time they re-gerrymander New York State. And with groups of people from the American Physical Society we have talked to people in Congress who were involved in science legislation.

All of those people are quite knowledgeable, and were happy to talk to us and discuss the problems associated with the long-term base for scientific research, and even what the short-term budget looked like, and what the out-years were going to look like, and all of that.

Some of the congressmen that we wanted to talk to were ones that are in a category I'll call the "know-nothings." They don't want to know anything about it because it's too complicated and they're very likely not going to vote for the increases, or even stabilization, of the science budget. Bruce Alberts told kind of a metaphorical story on this. Children from an elementary school went to a pig farm, and there were these cute little piglets running around. And one of the children asked the farmer, "What's the name of that piglet?" And the farmer says, "We don't give names to things we're going to eat."

(Laughter)

OSHEROFF: Well, I have to confess that I've actually never talked to a congressperson in person. However, I've written plenty of letters. And it's amazing, the responses one gets back. I mean, obviously, they weren't intended to address the issues that I bring up in my letters. But certainly I think that these letters are always weighed, and I always print mine on very heavy bond paper because of that.

But let me say that I think that when I brought this issue up in the first place I actually was mainly thinking about a reawakening that educational institutions have now. I think it's really essential that we provide an appreciation and at least an elementary education in science for those people that are going through universities but do not intend on technical careers. And I really think that's changing a lot, but we're not going to see that in Congress for another 30 years, or something like that.

SMALLEY: I've had only brief experiences. Obviously, one of the biggest problems is that a congressman generally has a very short time horizon, and they're mostly interested in their local areas. And generally, they do not come from a strong science and math background, so that there's a lot of education involved. I hope one of the virtues of this prize is that it gives more opportunity to do this.

LEE: I agree with what Professor Smalley has just said. I think that we now have a forum where we can speak out on the issues and actually interact with our legislators with much more weight.

Q:(CORDES OF CHRONICLE OF HIGHER ED) You're talking about priorities and the fact that science is a priority for the future, to prepare now for what we'll need in the future to meet human needs. And Dr. Smalley, you had talked about providing sustainable energy in a sustainable way to the huge population we'll have around the world. So I wonder if each of you could identify the one area of research that you think is most under-funded, given the future of human needs.

SMALLEY: Solar energy.

CURL: That's a question which I have no idea how to answer, because the kind of thing that we're talking about is a situation where you're trying to predict the unpredictable.

Q: Well, I understand that. That's why I hesitated to ask it. However, we do have NIH supporting biomedical research, DOT supporting--And it's true that they have cross-overs, but still it's most likely most of the health benefits come from NIH-funded research. So in that context.

CURL: Well, I guess that this is a question that I really have not answered, or don't know how to answer, frankly. It's clear that the coming century is likely to be the century of biology, just like this last century has been the century of physics and chemistry. I don't think that saying that you're going to support biology necessarily means that you're going to support medical programs. I mean, you know, medicine is wonderful, alleviating human suffering is wonderful, but it's not everything. And I think it's a mistake to think that it is everything. So the kind of research that's aimed at more fundamental issues of biology which may be, for example, eventually important on the question of how do we have enough food supplies to feed everyone seems to be more the sort of thing that I would think that needs to be supported.

OSHEROFF: Look, I think that when we talk about basic science, as opposed to applied science, I think it's very difficult to answer the question that you've asked, because it's not clear where the benefits will be.

I certainly feel, however, that condensed-matter physics, my own field, is under-funded. There is a lot that is not known right now, and there's been, I think, a tremendous emphasis on things which will lead to short-term goals in this country. But let me say one other thing. There's been a lot of discussion as to whether, in fact, science right now is grossly under-funded or not, and I think that we are mainly concerned with what we look at down the road, and that looks very, very scary, indeed.

RICHARDSON: I'd like to broaden the answer that Rick Smalley gave. Rather than saying which one is the most under-funded area of science, I want to reverse it and say what is likely to be one of the deepest problems that society has 20 years, 30 years from now. And I think it is the energy problem. I think that the moral equivalent of war that Jimmy Carter talked about wasn't quite true then, but it's going to come back to haunt us soon. And solar energy might be one way to solve it, but there are lots of other things. And that relates back to Doug's answer, because in material science a central theme is making better, lighter, stronger materials. And that means that you can fly airplanes and drive automobiles with more efficiency if you have better materials. It's a very, very complicated interlinking in how science works. But my honest answer to at least the intent of your question is, I think energy is one of the greatest problems facing society.

LEE: Well, my colleagues have really said just about all of it. I also believe that renewable energies will have to be funded on a much higher level, and that solar energy in particular is at a stage where it really can take off.

I just attended a lecture about a week ago, and it looks like the price per kilowatt hour coming from solar energy is on the verge of being competitive with other energy sources. I think in a fairly short time that will be true.

Furthermore, there will be many remote locations--in Africa, in India, and so on--where the quality of life can be improved tremendously by use of solar power, where you don't have any large-scale electrical generating stations.

Now, I think basic science was behind solar power, the knowledge of semiconductors, other things, and more basic science will have to be put to work to bring this to fruition and to look into other areas where perhaps renewable energy sources will be aided.

So I think that one must not lose sight of the fact that these developments came out of basic research, and further improvements and further developments will still lean heavily on the basic research enterprise.

CURL: I think I agree, by the way, that energy is a very, very serious problem, but that wasn't the question you asked.

FLYNN: We want to thank you for being our guests.