"You need a lot of information to run this organization well," says the molecular biologist, who assumed the presidency July 1.
Among the things Alberts undoubtedly will be contemplating is the legacy left by his predecessor, Frank Press, a geophysicist who has joined the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., as the Cecil and Ida Green Senior Fellow. Several academy members contacted for this article say that legacy is, for better or worse, a sizable one indeed.
Press's tenure, they say, was extraordinarily productive, marked as it was by a strengthening of the National Research Council, considerable growth in the academy's endowment fund, and a widening of the range of constituents the academy represents. Yet his term has not been free from controversy; there have been several noteworthy instances in which opposition has arisen from within the membership to a course of action he took.
Some of the issues that came ...
