Members in the Media

“It’s really boring when all the measurements and theory agree with each other. This kind of disagreement gives us something to talk about that isn’t the Higgs boson.”
Chad Orzel, Union College, on the changing diameter of the proton, MSNBC.com, January 27, 2013

“The long-term civic and economic welfare of the country depends heavily on a robust public higher education system.”
Robert J. Birgeneau, University of California, Berkeley, on heading a national effort to study and help public universities, The Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2013.

“The folks that are running the agencies aren’t in a position to know what the best science may be to go after; they have to put together plans. One of the issues we are really facing in the Department of Energy, and perhaps other places, is what is a reasonable trade-off between research that takes place with a very short-term goal versus research that takes place with a very long-term payoff?”
Robert Tribble, Texas A&M University, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 2013.

“I believe we should be judged not by the money we direct to a particular state or district, company, university or national lab, but by the character of our decisions… The Department of Energy serves the country as a Department of Science, a Department of Innovation, and a Department of Nuclear Security.”
Steven Chu, Department of Energy, in a letter announcing that he is stepping down as Secretary, The Washington Post, February 1, 2013.

“I hope we can hold hearings where people can hear about Darwin and science and the jobs it creates, the lives it saves, everything.”
Rush Holt, U.S. House of Representatives, on designating February 12th as Darwin Day, The New York Times, February 1, 2013.

“They’re flocking.”
Paul Chaikin, New York University, describing microscopic particles his team was able to self assemble into a crystal, The Los Angeles Times, February 1 20133.

“Could it be possible to use this idea to make a material that shrinks to a very small volume when exposed to light and expands to fill a large volume in the dark? Maybe.”
Aparna Baskaran, Brandeis, commenting on Chaikin’s study, The Los Angeles Times, February 1 2013.

“I had a new car and put 35,000 miles on it in one year. It just wasn’t worth it… The ferry is the only game in town.”
Thomas Ullrich, Brookhaven, on commuting to work using a ferry, The Connecticut Post, February 3, 2013.

“Physicists study phenomena that have no relevance to race, so one might expect that black physicists would be silent on issues regarding race. This would be incorrect. Organizations like the National Society of Black Physicists have spoken out on issues of inclusivity. Still, in my opinion, some members of the black physics community are silenced by fear of exacerbating their alienation from the majority community that still holds the power to grant access to faculty jobs.”
Stephon Alexander, Dartmouth College, The New York Times, February 4, 2013.

“It’d be great if more scientists wanted to become regular contributors, to at least try to explain their most recent work.”
Sean Carroll, Caltech, talking about his blog, MSNBC.com, February 6, 2013.

“We saw an incredible opportunity to measure the dynamic properties of language at the microscopic scale of individual particles, and to observe how the system coevolves in response to external socio-technological forces.”
Alexander Petersen, Boston University, on using Google Books to study the evolution of language over time, The Boston Globe, February 9, 2013.