Members in the Media

''This primitive organism forms a material with unique optical properties. Here, nature teaches us a lesson in how to solve a very complex technological problem.''
-Joanna Aizenberg, Bell Laboratories, on a strange starfish with a many-lensed eye, Boston Globe, 8/23/01

"It's achieved an intellectual critical mass and it's in a drop-dead gorgeous place. The smartest people in the world come here."
-David Bishop, Bell Laboratories, on the advantages of the Aspen Center for Physics, NY Times, 8/28/01

"We're doing this wrong."
-Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University, on what inspired him to invent the e-print archive, NY Times, 8/28/01

"It has lived up to all our hopes, giving us front-row seats to phenomena light years away-exotic celestial objects, matter falling into black holes, and stellar explosions."
-Martin Weisskopf, NASA, Huntsville, Alabama, on the Chandra X-ray Observatory, ABC News.com., 9/6/01

"There's always been that nagging doubt."
-Fulvio Melia, University of Arizona, about whether there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy, New Scientist.com, 9/6/01

"About 60 percent of these devices are used for brain research. Physicians inject glucose labeled with a radioactive chemical in the patient's body. The brain burns glucose, so the glucose goes to where the brain is working, and since the glucose produces radiation, the PET scan can image it. So it is a powerful way to look inside the brain."
-John A. McIntyre, Texas A&M, on the PET scan, UPI, 9/25/01

"Some of the dust raised by the 'reading wars' has been settled. But the real solution lies in winning the hearts and minds of teachers."
-Donald N. Langenberg , University of Maryland, on the controversy over how to teach students to read, LA Times, 9/17/01

"I eat oatmeal at least twice a week, not always for breakfast, you know what I mean? I did go through my neon-orange macaroni and cheese phase. Put cheese in quotes because I don't know what the hell it was. No one should eat lab chemicals for a year. I even went for the off-brand that was 25 cents a box. But that was in graduate school. I haven't done it since."
-Brian Moeckly, San Francisco, on the diet of single people, Detroit Free Press, 9/18/01

"You can't think of security as just a screening device. It's a system-in fact, a system of systems. You have to optimize the way the whole thing works."
-Thomas Hartwick, Snohomish, Washington, on airport screening procedures, LA Times, 9/23/01

"If you have all the bad students in one group they don't learn."
-Ezequiel Albano, Institute of Applied and Theoretical Physical Chemistry, La Plata, Argentina, on the predictions of a model of atoms used to describe classroom behavior, New Scientist, 9/22/01

"It's always possible that these new structures will improve our understanding and lead to other advances."
-Ken Kihlstrom, Westmont College, on a proposed new type of high temperature superconductor, Information Week, 9/24/01

"We're trying to run the most complex problems in the world."
-David Nowak, Livermore National Laboratory, on his lab's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, Cox News Service, 9/24/01

"There was some serendipity in making this discovery, [because] we were actually trying to understand the wetting and spreading properties of lead on copper for soldering and brazing applications. Our original goal was to get a more microscopic view of what is going on during wetting and spreading of solder, but this just jumped out at us."
-Norm Bartelt, Sandia National Laboratory, on how metal films make the transition from droplets to organized structures, Electronic Engineering Times, 9/24/01

"This is one of the many nonlinear methods known to produce quantum states of light. You take one blue photon, annihilate it in the crystal, and it generates two near-infrared photons."
-Daniel Gauthier, Duke University, on how to use quantum entanglement to focus light more narrowly, NY Times, 9/20/01