Nine Researchers To Receive National Medal Of Science

Sidebar: National Medal of Technology Goes To Biomedical Computing Pioneer, Four Others Two pioneering molecular biologists-including a Nobel laureate-were among nine researchers named in April to receive the 1997 National Medal of Science, the United States government's highest honor for scientific achievement. The honorees, who represent a wide range of disciplines, include an astrophysicist who helped elucidate the origin of the stars, a chemist who help lay the groundwork for understanding the chemical depletion of the ozone, and a psychologist whose theories of cognition and learning helped transform the field of experimental psychology. One researcher was named posthumously to receive the medal. Photo: Donna Coveney/MIT 'CRUCIAL' WORK: Medal of science winner Robert Weinberg of MIT The eight living honorees, along with the five recipients of the National Medal of Technology, will receive their awards later this year at a White House ceremony. The National Medal of Science, established by Congress in 1959, is administered by the National Science Foundation. The medal honors individuals' contributions to the physical, biological, mathematical, social, and behavioral sciences. A presidentially appointed 12-member Committee on the National Medal of Science, composed of leading researchers from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, reviews nominations solicited via the Internet and by letters to universities, colleges, professional societies, and members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. Including the 1997 winners, 353 individuals have received the medal. James D. Watson, 69, is probably the best known of the nine medal winners. According to an NSF statement, he will receive the award for his "five decades of scientific and intellectual leadership in molecular biology." Watson was only 25 when he and colleague Francis Crick revealed the nature of the double-helix ladder of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Watson, now president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Watson has continued to play a key role in the development of the field of molecular biology, and in 1989 became the first director of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Human Genome Research (now the National Human Genome Research Institute), which coordinated the Human Genome Project. The project is a 15-year, $3 billion international effort to identify the entire complement of human genes. Watson declined to comment to The Scientist. William EstesDarleane HoffmanHarold JohnstonMarhsall Rosenbluth Martin SchwarzschildJames WatsonRobert WeinbergGeorge WetherillShing-Tung Yau Cancer biologist Robert A. Weinberg helped change the ways scientists think of cancer origins, laying the foundation for the notion that cancer results from genetic machinery gone awry. The NSF statement cited Weinberg for his "crucial discoveries that clarified the genetic basis of human cancers." A member of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Weinberg calls himself "fortunate to be working at a time when such powerful tools of molecular biology are available. Few of us could have foreseen two decades ago the amazing tools we have today." Weinberg, 54, has led groundbreaking research in understanding the nature of cancer-causing oncogenes and tumor-suppressor genes. In 1980, he and his associates isolated a gene that turned normal cells cancerous. The gene is a member of a related family of genes called ras, which plays a role in bladder, lung, and colon cancer. In 1986, researchers in his laboratory isolated the first known growth-suppressing gene. Weinberg believes that scientists are finally beginning to understand the complex relationship between normal and cancerous cells. As such research progresses, he notes, "we will understand all of the working parts of the cancer engine." The inventor of the whole-body CT scanner, who also pioneered the development of automated chromosome analysis for prenatal diagnosis, is among the five recipients of the 1997 National Medal of Technology. The award, according to a statement by the United States Department of Commerce, "recognizes individuals and corporations whose leadership and innovation have made significant contributions to the nation by creating jobs, strengthening its competitive position, and advanced our standard of living." It was established in 1980, and Congress first awarded the medal in 1985. The National Medal of Technology is administered by Commerce's Office of Technology Policy. The winners, along with the nine recipients of the National Medal of Science, will receive their awards later this year at a White House ceremony. Nominations for the medal are solicited through an open process via the World Wide Web. Letters seeking nominations are also sent to private company and industry executives. An Evaluation Committee, a group of individuals appointed by the secretary of commerce who represent various scientific and technological fields, reviews the merits of the nominees' accomplishments in the "innovation, development, commercialization and management of technology." It then recommends finalists to the secretary, who in turn forwards recommendations to the president for the final decision. The winners of this year's National Medal of Technology and their achievements, as reported in a statement by Commerce's Technology Administration office, are as follows: Norman R. Augustine, CEO and chairman, Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md., "for visionary leadership in maintaining the United States' pre-eminence in the aerospace industry, and for championing technical and managerial solutions to the challenges in civil and defense systems." Ray M. Dolby, founder and chairman, Dolby Laboratories Inc., San Francisco, "for inventing technologies that have dramatically improved sound recording and reproduction, fostering their adoption worldwide, and maintaining a vision that has kept the world listening for more than 30 years." Robert Ledley Vinton Cray Cerf Robert E. Kahn Robert S. Ledley, director of medical computing and biophysics and professor of radiology, Georgetown University Medical School, Washington, D.C., "for pioneering contributions to biomedical computing and engineering, including inventing the whole body CT scanner, which revolutionized the practice of radiology, and for his role in developing automated chromosome analysis for prenatal diagnosis of birth defects." Team Award: Vinton Cray Cerf, senior vice president of Internet Architecture and Engineering, MCI Communications Corp., Reston, Va., and Robert E. Kahn, president, Corp. for National Research Initiatives, Reston, Va., "for creating and sustaining development of Internet Protocols and continuing to provide leadership in the emerging industry of internetworking." Two scientists were named for their contributions to understanding the nature of the universe. George W. Wetherill, 71, a member of the department of terrestrial magnetism at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., is stunned to be receiving the medal rather than some outstanding scientists whom he himself nominated. Wetherill is most proud of the work that he did in the 1950s, in which he developed new methods of measuring the ages of rocks using a uranium-lead isotope system. The sytem became a standard, forming the basis for the dating of rocks of early Earth. He subsequently expanded his dating techniques to extraterrestrial material and began applying them to the theoretical origins of meteorites. NSF cited Wetherill for "his fundamental contributions to measuring astronomical time scales and understanding how earth-like planets may be created in evolving solar systems." Wetherill's work has contributed to theories of how meteorites could be responsible for devastating impacts that could have caused mass extinctions. While he's "still trying to understand the formation of the early planets closest to the sun," he says that he also "has begun a taxonomy of the asteroid belt," and is concentrating on understanding its formation. Astrophysicist Martin Schwarzschild, the late Eugene Higgins Professor, Emeritus, of Astronomy at Princeton University, will receive the National Medal of Science posthumously. He died on April 10 at the age of 84. John Rogerson, a retired professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton and his former student, explains that Schwarzschild "was instrumental in helping us understand the structure of stars." Among other things, he "modeled the structure of stars as they used up their energy stores, and described the evolution of stars of a given mass." According to NSF, Schwarzschild's medal is being awarded for his "seminal contributions to the theory of the evolution of stars and his creative insights into dynamics of galaxies." Schwarzschild pioneered the use of space telescopes for precise imagery of the sun, planets, and stellar systems. He was well-known for his Stratoscope I, a 12-inch-diameter solar telescope that went to 80,000 feet above the Earth by balloon. It was the first instrument to obtain sharp photographs of the sun and above the Earth's gaseous atmosphere. In research closer to home, nuclear chemist Darleane C. Hoffman, 70, a professor of chemistry and former director of the Glenn T. Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will receive the medal for her pioneering studies in the field of nuclear fission and particularly of elements heavier than uranium. NSF cites Hoffman for "her numerous contributions to our understanding of radioactive decay, notably of heavy nuclei." Though she retired as Seaborg Institute director last year, she has hardly slowed down. She currently is a member of an international collaboration to study the chemistry of elements 104 (rutherfordium), 105 (hahnium), and 106 (seaborgium), using "atom-at-a-time" techniques. Professor and research physicist Marshall N. Rosenbluth, 70, of the University of California, San Diego, will receive the medal for his "fundamental contributions to plasma physics, his leadership in the quest to develop controlled thermonuclear fusion, and his wide-ranging technical contributions to national security," according to the NSF statement. Rosenbluth, also a senior scientist with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program, is considered by many to be the dean of fusion theorists. "It's nice to be recognized," he tells The Scientist. "I hope it will give more recognition for the fusion energy effort." Rosenbluth's career spans the history of fusion research. In 1950, he was recruited as one of the principal theoreticians at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, which later became the national laboratory. Rosenbluth did classified fusion research that led to the development of the hydrogen bomb two years later. At ITER, he continues to work on developing a controlled thermonuclear reactor. Chinese-born mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, 48, a professor of mathematics at Harvard, notes how pleased he is to be named a National Medal of Science winner, particularly because the United States is his adopted homeland. Yau received a Fields Medal, considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematicians, in 1982, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1985. According to NSF, he is being honored for his "profound contributions to mathematics that have had a great impact on fields as diverse as topology, algebraic geometry, general relativity, and string theory." The sole social scientist among this year's winners is William K. Estes, 78, a professor, emeritus, of psychology at Harvard. To Estes, the news that he is to receive the medal "was a ringing endorsement of the kind of psychology I've been doing throughout my career." Estes is being honored for "fundamental theories of cognition and learning," which, according to the NSF award announcement, "transformed the field of experimental psychology and led to the development of quantitative cognitive science." Estes is most proud, he says, of "bringing mathematical methods into psychological research." He notes that his greatest challenge remains "bringing formal theories of learning and memory closer to the neurophysiology of learning." Research in the late 1960s by Harold S. Johnston, 76, a professor, emeritus, of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, helped seal the fate-at least temporarily-of the controversial supersonic transport (SST) plane. In 1971, Johnston found that nitrogen oxides-the major constituents of smog-were spewed into the atmosphere from the planes' exhaust and could cut global ozone by 3 percent to 23 percent. "I had a hand in getting the government to realize that man-made chemicals could harm the environment," he recalls. Following the publication of his findings, Congress established its first program dedicated to stratospheric research. The SST subsequently fell by the wayside for both environmental and economic concerns. Yet 20 years later, he notes, he was part of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration team that showed that at some altitudes and under some conditions, supersonic passenger aircraft did little harm to the ozone. According to the NSF statement, he will be honored for "understanding the chemistry of nitrogen compounds and their role and reactions in the Earth's stratosphere and in urban areas, his chemical and environmental research, along with his commitment to science in the service of society have resulted in pivotal contributions to the understanding and conservation of the earth's atmosphere."

Nine Researchers To Receive National Medal Of Science

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