Testimony of Dr. Eugen Merzbacher Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: Good morning. My name is Eugen Merzbacher. This year I serve as President of the American Physical Society, which has over 40,000 members in academic institutions, government laboratories and industry. I am also the interim Chairman of the Physics Planning Committee (PPC) of the APS. The Physics Planning Committee was formed by the APS Council a year ago "to create a forum within the physics community for broadly assessing future directions of physics" and "to develop a balanced plan for physics in the context of the nation's scientific and technological needs." The PPC has three vice-chairmen, William F. Brinkman, Leon M. Lederman, and Andrew Sessler, whose own research interests span a broad range of the many different subfields in which physicists contribute to the progress of science (see Appendix). The American Physical Society is dedicated to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It has 1 two major interrelated concerns that impact on the research budget of the Department of Energy: 1. 2. That, in planning for the support of basic scientific research, full attention be given to the indispensable role which research, particularly at universities, plays in assuring that there will be a future generation of creative and productive scientists, and in providing a knowledge base for future exploitation by society; That a balanced menu of basic research in physics be maintained and new scientific opportunities and challenges pursued, wherever they arise, in the many small groups of individual investigators or in large collaborative facilities. We appreciate the enlightened attitude that has guided the Department of Energy in the past. It inherited from the Atomic Energy Commission, and later from ERDA, a broad view of energy research, and it has in the process gained valuable experience, especially in overseeing the construction and nurturing of very large scientific facilities. It is our strong recommendation that, as it moves forward towards making the SSC a reality, the Department of Energy be given the means to continue to discharge as the highest priority its broader responsibilities towards basic scientific research in physics and other sciences. The Administration's 1991 budget is responsive to these aims, and we support it. Nothing is accomplished in the conduct of scientific research without a steady flow of talented and well-educated people, essential as bricks, mortar, and equipment are. A profile of the APS membership may be helpful in this regard (See figure). The membership in the various research subunits of physics includes over 6,000 physicists in the Division of Condensed Matter Physics, which includes solid state physics. Almost 3,500 physicists identify with the Division of Particles and Fields, which in essence is high-energy physics; this Division provided the initial impetus for the proposal to build an SSC, which will serve the high-energy physics community. in addition, there are 10,000 physicists who belong to mediumsize Divisions dealing with Chemical Physics, Plasma Physics, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, and Nuclear Physics, and yet another 10,000 in a dozen smaller and more specialized subfields, from astrophysics to the study of fundamental physical constants and precision measurements. But In the past twenty-five years the number of physicists has doubled, and the trend has been the same in other sciences. Without this growth we would not have stayed at the forefront of science and technology. However, the resources for research have not increased sufficiently for us to derive the full benefit of this highly skilled scientific labor force, nor to assure our future scientific leadership. Without going into detail, we note that the entire electronics and computer industries are derived from what seemed to be arcane research in solid state physics and chemistry some thirty years ago. The need for an adequate pool of young scientists at many points in our technological society is obvious. The problems of energy and environment, which are particularly germane to the mission of DoE, call for involving the best and the brightest among our population. Fortunately, the Secretary of Energy appreciates this linkage and has taken the initiative in science and mathematics education; I hope that the Congress will strongly support him in this endeavor. Advanced science education and basic research are not separable. The American system of higher education owes its enormous success to the seamless blending of teaching with research at the graduate level, and increasingly also at the undergraduate level in colleges and universities. A large fraction of research in physics and other science is done by students and postdoctoral fellows. This research experience trains them for industry, government, and academe. The strength of our graduate educational programs in physics accounts in large measure for the attractions that our universities exert on students from many parts of the world. We are lucky to have them flock here for advanced training. We stand to lose our lead in science if we fail to provide for our young people opportunities in research across all active disciplines which meet the criterion of high scientific quality and national need. Research programs in the universities under the guidance of individual experienced scientists working with small groups of students are the mainstay of this system for educating the next generation. The education of young scientists by doing frontier research in universities is now threatened by starvation in many important subfields of physics and other sciences. Yet, no one can predict which branch of this tree will bear the next fruit. The 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics, for example, was awarded to two American university physicists for magnificent and enormously important advances in high precision measurements of atomic and subatomic physical quantities. This research has led to some remarkable technical applications in defense and civilian systems, such as clocks of unsurpassed precision. are useful for high-resolution navigational pinpointing and longbaseline interferometry, and have been used in the Voyager mission. Almost one hundred PhD physicists have been trained over the years in these two research groups. These Quite understandably, most discussion about the nation's science budget, and especially about the DoE budget, focus on the SSC. It is a grand project of very large dimensions in every respect, and it necessarily sets the scale by which other science projects are measured. It is a big step into the unknown, and it promises to extend our understanding of the structure of matter and the origin of the universe significantly. Authorization of the SSC, and construction at an expeditious rate, will send a signal to the world that the United States is determined to |