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WASHINGTON-William Graham, confirmed Oct. 1 as presidential science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, faces a scientific community skeptical of his ability to affect science policy but hopeful he can represent their interests before the administration. He assumed office in the White House the following day shortly after 3 p.m. The voice vote in the Senate ended a nine-month search for a successor to George Keyworth II, who left the administration J

WASHINGTON-Looking for something new after 23 years at Bell Laboratories, Elliott Slutsky became a visiting professor in electrical engineering at Tennessee State University. This fall, three years later, he began his second year of teaching at Howard University. The work is hard, the hours long, and the problems are many. But he is no longer bored. "We're solving problems," he explained. "Besides teaching, I'm working to improve the curriculum. Industry people really can make a difference, be

WASHINGTON-The National Institutes of Health will receive an additional $910 million this year in a budget that provides for more than 6,200 new and competing grants, 21 new research centers, no lid on the total number of projects to be funded and no provision to lower the reimbursement rate for administrative indirect costs paid to universities. This good news for scientists comes as part of an agreement between House and Senate conferees on the Institutes' budget for the fiscal year that bega

Almost since I can remember, my ambition was to be a physicist. My parents had both studied physics and worked for a short time in the Cavendish Laboratory, and, although neither made a career in science, I was brought up knowing about physics. At both preparatory and secondary schools, however, my most inspiring teachers taught mathematics, and I left school with a maths scholarship to Cambridge and the ambition to work on quantum theory. That was in 1923, when Sommerfeld and others were still

It has been just over five years since Frank Press, a geophysicist of international renown and former science adviser to President Jimmy Carter, was installed as 19th president of the National Academy of Sciences. Press came to the presidency of the 1,800-member Academy with an imposing agenda: to revamp the report-writing process of the National Research Council, to cut personnel and overhead costs, to raise private capital for both the Academy endowment and for special projects, and to dissemi

PEOPLE RALPH E. GOMORY has been appointed chief scientist of International Business Machines Corp. and will head an organization consolidating IBM's divisions of research, technology assessment and university relations. Gomory joined IBM in 1959 as a research mathematician and was named an IBM fellow in 1964. He headed IBM's research division since 1970 and was elected a vice president in 1973 and a senior vice president in 1985. BRYANT W. ROSSITER has joined ICN Pharmaceuticals as vice presiden

WASHINGTON -Alvin Thaler of the National Science Foundation thinks scientists should not have to play elaborately boring games on their computers to be able to ex change information with their colleagues. A new $2 million program within the Foundation's Office of Information Systems holds out the eventual hope of permitting the free and easy exchange of data that is supposed to be the hallmark of science. The first step is called EXPRES, which stands for EXPerimental Research in Electronic Submi

LONDON-If international science is a race, Great Britain is beginning to tire. A study published this month shows a steady decline in Britain's scientific performance from 1973 through 1982. The decline is par-ticularly steep in physics, where the country of Maxwell and Lord Kelvin has been overtaken in many respects by France, West Germany and Japan. The Royal Society conducted the study on behalf of the government's science policy advisers after earlier figures suggesting a fall in the country

The typical U.S. scientist is a white male college professor of around 50 who juggles teaching and research, has been in his job a decade or more, and earns between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, according to a survey of almost 700 researchers undertaken by THE SCIENTIST. His salary accounts for almost all of his income, although he makes a little extra from such activities as consulting, honoraria, writing and, in one case, growing grapes. His employer underwrites a long vacation, sick leave and p

WASHINGTON-Government agencies, in their zeal to demonstrate support for biotechnology research, may have unintentionally complicated efforts to regulate the burgeoning field, according to federal officials. "We have opened up a complex regulatory world that need not have been," asserted David Kingsbury of the National Science Foundation. There is a growing "tendency to 'do' all of biology," he added, as conscientious regulators "examine things that have been going on for long periods of time. W

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M-Gary Seawright has a confession to make. "I'm probably an entrepreneur in scientist's clothing, and have been all along." The experiences of the former virologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory demonstrate both the perils and pleasures of moving technological discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace. That subject was the topic of discussion at a congressional hearing and a two-day conference here. Seawright left Los Alamos in 1984 to join fellow scientists Randy Bro

WASHINGTON-Officials at the National Science Foundation are considering major changes in a five-year-old program that provides federal science agencies with information on research topics that are ripe for additional funding. The program was begun in 1982 at the request of George Keyworth II, former presidential science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It enlisted researchers in an annual effort to identify a handful of fields where additional fund