Members in the Media

“It looks like a Higgs; it quacks like a Higgs; but we need DNA tests (more data) to make sure it is the Higgs… For now, it is time to celebrate a little and spike the ball in the end zone.”
Michael Turner (IL-1st), University of Chicago, The Washington Post, July 4 2012. 

“For years, the United States has built itself with talented individuals from abroad. At the same time, many of our young people are not so interested in science and engineering. A number of us who came of age in the post-Sputnik and post-Apollo era are reaching retirement age. Something like 40 percent of the PhDs in science and engineering we turn out every year are born abroad. But we don’t make it so easy to stay here anymore. And the world has changed. Many of the opportunities are now in their home countries. We also need to look at our domestic talent. Women, underrepresented minorities and boys, too. This is a quiet crisis. People don’t pay attention until it creeps up on us. It can’t be fixed overnight. It takes decades to fix.”
Shirley Ann Jackson (NY-20th), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Houston Chronicle, October 16, 2012. 

“At this point, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy stock in a quantum computing company… but we’re optimistic that as the technology improves over the years, this quantum computer will bring unique capabilities to computing.”
David Wineland (CO-2nd), NIST, on the future of quantum computing,commenting on winning a share of the Nobel Prize, The Denver Post, October 10, 2012.

“I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume… Personally I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid…Now dark chocolate is the way to go. It’s one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, OK, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate.”
Eric Cornell (CO-2nd), University of Colorado, The Chicago Tribune, October 10, 2012.

“Well, what’s at stake for science is also what is at stake for the nation. If we go off the fiscal cliff, and I’m not sure that’s the right term for it, but if we go off the fiscal slope, several things are going to happen. Number one, the economy is likely to contract. That means that federal revenues will decline, and that means there’ll be less money available to spend on a variety of programs, including science.”
Michael Lubell (NY-13th), APS, National Public Radio, November 9, 2012.

“The Higgs particle arises from a field pervading space, known as the Higgs field…Everything in the known universe, as it travels through space, moves through the Higgs field; it’s always there lurking invisibly in the background.”
Sean Carroll (CA-27th), Caltech, quoted from his new book, “The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World,” The Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2012.