Laureates Discuss Chemical Research in the 21st Century
by John L. Roeder
Six Nobel Laureates, two Presidents of the American Chemical Society (ACS), one former Congressman, and a reporter for Science gathered under the auspices of the New York Section of the ACS at The Rockefeller University on 18 October 1997 for a symposium entitled "Challenges and Visions: Chemical Research -- 2000 and Beyond."
Symposium organizer Paul Barkan, Chair of the ACS New York Section, began by relating a fable of the challenges from Mythos to the achievements of the Elysian scientists of ASU, with curtailments in the Asuvian budget for science. He noted that this was an "oversimplification of complex events and diverse causes" shaping scientific research in the next century and observed that the day's symposium had been organized in response to these concerns in hopes of persuading the public of the continued need for scientific research. "We as scientists have the general responsibility to society. . . ." he concluded, quoting from Linus Pauling's scientific credo stated in a 1966 lecture to high school teachers.
The six Nobel Laureates responding to Barkan's charge were Rockefeller University President Torsten Wiesel (Physiology or Medicine, 1981), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Environmental Sciences Professor Mario Molina (Chemistry, 1995), Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute Director (at the University of Southern California) George Olah (Chemistry, 1994), Harvard Chemistry Professor Dudley Herschbach (Chemistry, 1986), Harvard Professor Emeritus William Lipscomb (Chemistry, 1976), and Rice University Natural Science Professor Robert Curl (Chemistry, 1996). Joining them were ACS President Paul Anderson (DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co.) and ACS Immediate Past President Ronald Breslow (Columbia University), also former Chairman of the House Science Committee Robert Walker (R-PA) and Science reporter Robert Service.
Mainstream responses were offered by the two ACS presidents, with Anderson drawing from the recent Technology Vision 2020 issued by ACS and related organizations and Breslow drawing from his recent ACS-published book, Chemistry Today and Tomorrow: The Central, Useful, and Creative science. Citing the productive government-industry-academe partnership of the past half century -- in which products of the chemical industry played a "keystone role" -- Anderson asked, what should the chemical industry do to continue to be as productive in the 21st century as it has been in the 20th? Noting that customers look for value today more than at any time in history, he saw the need to reduce costs, improve products, or replace them with superior products. And, in a time of increasing environmental constraints and limited fossil fuels, he noted that those with the least waste and energy use will have the competitive edge. (In this context, he also lauded the Chemical Manufacturers Association's Responsible CareĻ program.) To strengthen the government-industry-academe partnership, the ACS has called for a doubling of government investment in research and development over the next ten years. Like Anderson, Breslow felt pride in the achievements of chemistry, but he focused on drawing from the table of contents of his book a list of achievements yet to be made by chemistry in such diverse areas as health, materials, the environment, electronics, and catalysis.
The person best able to respond to the ACS request for more funding was former Representative Walker, who now heads the Wexler Group. The T-shirt slogan, "When all else fails, manipulate the data," is a recipe for disaster in science, he said, but is often the stock in trade in public policy. He urged scientists to clarify the term "science in the national interest" and to distinguish between technology policy (which is political) and science policy (which is less so). Since the 1970s priorities were set by budgeting, and perhaps this is why Anderson had already transmitted the ACS request for doubled government funding to the Office of Management and Budget on 2 September. Walker credited House Speaker Newt Gingrich with appointing him Vice Chair of the Budget Committee to ensure that science priorities didn't suffer in the budget. Yet, Walker felt that other approaches to funding science research and development, such as tax credits, would provide longer-term security than annual appropriations reviews. And the largest projects, like fusion reactors, he felt, required international funding.
The Nobel Laureates in chemistry were much more personal in their visions beyond 2000. Citing his own experience in obtaining funding for research leading to a cure for diabetes, Lipscomb felt that pressure for short-term results leads to funding policies that are not optimally directed toward the health of the American people.
The three Laureates whose work is environmentally related -- Molina, Olah, and Curl -- looked at chemistry in the 21st century in terms of human need for food, energy, and a benign environment, not in terms of "better things for better living through chemistry." Having received his Nobel Prize for pinpointing the cause of stratospheric ozone depletion with Sherwood Rowland, Molina cited the need for continued research in atmospheric chemical reactions in order to safeguard our planet, as might be expected. But the observations of Olah and Curl, whose researches focus on hydrocarbons and combustion, were much more poignant.
Acknowledging that the sustenance of human life requires energy as well as food and shelter but noting that burning fossil fuels depletes a basic material of the chemical industry, Olah proposed schemes to synthesize alcohol fuels from carbon oxides and hydrogen -- by carbon dioxide fixation or the Fischer-Tropsch process as well as fuel cells. He did not feel that developed countries had the right to forbid developing countries from following the developed countries' pattern of fossil fuel use.
Curl, who left the field of "Buckyball" research for which he won his Nobel Prize because it was overcrowded, also acknowledged that people needed energy and food -- but without drowning in their own waste. He cited the environmental downside of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, which has increased along with world population since the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-eighteenth century. While Anderson looked to the future in terms of competitiveness, Curl felt instead that it was going to be a matter of survival.
Closing the symposium, Science reporter Service attributed declining newspaper coverage of science (only a third as many science sections in 1995 as in 1989) to increased newsprint costs and declining public interest. Consequently, science stories must compete more for space on the front page, where the greatest successes had been for fundamental breakthroughs, archaeology and astronomy, life-impacting developments, and controversies. Science reporters must justify their stories to their editors, he said, and I was curious to see how he justified coverage of this symposium to the editors of Science. Apparently such coverage was not deemed justified: none of the issues of Science within a month following the symposium even mentioned it.
(Editor's Note: According to Science, 278, 1390-1392 (21 Nov 97), Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) has introduce a bill to "double civilian R&D spending over 10 years.")
Home Winter 98 Full Screen
The TEACHERS CLEARINGHOUSE FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY EDUCATION