Fifty-seven Nobel laureates implore Congress to sustain federally funded science
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.2435
In a brief 9 April letter timed to coincide with the 10 April delivery of President Obama’s budget, 57 Nobel laureates urge Congress ‘to keep the budgets of the agencies that support science at a level that will keep the pipelines full of the younger generation upon whom our economic vitality will rest in future years.’
As of early on 10 April, a news search via Google shows only the New York Times reporting the development. William J. Broad’s article begins:
More than 50 Nobel laureates are urging Congress to spare the federal science establishment from the looming budget cuts known as the sequester, saying that research has endured years of budget reductions and that additional cuts could endanger ‘the innovation engine that is essential to our economy.’
After citing ‘long-term research and development,’ the letter points to recent speeches by leaders of both parties to emphasize ‘bipartisan agreement on the importance of federal funding of long-term scientific research.’ Broad summarizes the financial context:
Between 2009 and 2012, the federal financing of research and development dropped 18 percent, to $140.6 billion from $172.5 billion, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The science association says the budget cuts would lower this year’s research and development budget an additional 6 percent, to about $131 billion.
The letter’s 22 physicist signers are Leon N. Cooper, James W. Cronin, Jerome Friedman, Sheldon Lee Glashow, Roy Glauber, David J. Gross, John L. Hall, Wolfgang Ketterle, John Mather, Douglas Osheroff, Martin L. Perl, Saul Perlmutter, William Phillips, David Politzer, Burton Richter, Adam Riess, Brian P. Schmidt, George F. Smoot, Steven Weinberg, Carl E. Wieman, Frank Wilczek, and Robert W. Wilson.
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.