Members in the Media

"European and Asian students definitely get it. I've yet to run into one in Germany who thinks science is intrinsically bad or awful."
— Robert Rosner, Argonne National Laboratory, contrasting European and Asian attitudes towards science with American attitudes, USA Today, February 8, 2006

"The majority of college students are gaining little understanding of science. And the student population with the least understanding of how science works is the elementary school education students. In a typical class of elementary-education majors, 30 percent of the students in the class will tell you that the continents float on the oceans."
— Carl Wieman, University of Colorado, on math and science education, Rocky Mountain News, February 11, 2006

"We have a different kind of war, an economic war. The importance of investing in long-term research for winning that war hasn't been understood."
— Robert Birgeneau, University of California, Berkeley, on the US losing its lead in science and technology, Time Magazine, February 13, 2006

"Ten years ago in China, it was virtually all derivative stuff. Students would sit and listen and try to capture every word. Now they're asking lots of questions."
— Steven Chu, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, on China’s catching up to the US in science, Time Magazine, February 13, 2006
 
"The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast."
— Donald Lamb, University of Chicago, on scientific missions being cut back by NASA’s budget, The New York Times, March 1, 2006

“I wanted to find a place where I could express my love of chemistry, but I didn't want to be involved with this black goo."
— Donald Sadoway, MIT, on why he went into metallurgy rather that study oil, the Boston Globe, February 20, 2006

"I take a nice drinking glass, rotate it clockwise, and slide it down a counter. Everyone thinks that it will go to the right. That's the natural reaction from curling. But it goes to the left, and the initial reaction [from curlers] is that I'm performing some kind of magic trick."
— Mark Shegelski, University of Northern British Columbia, explaining some of the physics of curling, National Geographic News, February 23, 2006

“I'm trying to bring out the beauty of the wood and make a shape that is attractive to people, while keeping the original beam to preserve its history. My goal is to create something that people want to touch, so they connect with the wood which has a heritage and was once part of a living tree."
— Gary Carver, NIST (retired), on his hobby, carving wooden replicas of birds, the Frederick News-Post, February 21, 2006

“I’m lucky. I don’t think I’ll ever stop work. It’s too much fun.”
— Giacinto Scoles, Princeton University, on why he didn’t make time to watch the Olympics, Newark Star-Ledger, March 2, 2006

"On average, our computers are bigger than their computers."
— Eugene Stanley, Boston University, on the advantage physicists have over economists in analyzing lots of data, Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2006

“I’m not giving away the family secrets or the crown jewels. What I’ve learned is through open sources.”
— Charles Ferguson, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, on a class he gave at Georgetown University called “How to build a Nuclear Bomb,” The Washington Post, March 2, 2006

"There are a lot of problems that you can represent in terms of this language. We're providing the technique. Whatever people use it for, it's great for us."
— Veit Elser, Cornell University, on an algorithm he developed that both processes x-ray diffraction data and solves sudoku puzzles, United Press International, March 6, 2006