Guest Opinion: Science Has Made America Great

–by Neal Lane and Michael Riordan, as published in ScientificAmerican.com —

This coming Sunday, December 10, millions of people around the world will watch as eight U.S. researchers—two of them foreign born—receive prestigious Nobel Prizes in Stockholm for major scientific contributions that “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” These outstanding individuals have helped put America at the pinnacle of human achievement.

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young “for their discovery of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm.” This diurnal cycle of wakefulness and sleep governs the levels of many hormones that regulate our daily activities.

The chemistry Nobel Prize will go to Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland and U.S. scientists Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for developing electron-microscopy techniques that enable researchers to form high-resolution three-dimensional images of complex biological molecules and processes. This recent, stunning advance has stimulated a revolution in biochemistry, which “is now facing explosive development,” noted the Nobel press release.

(To read the full article, go to https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/science-has-made-america-great )

About the authors:

Neal Lane and Michael Riordan
Neal Lane is University Professor emeritus at Rice University and a Senior Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy there. He has served as Director of the National Science Foundation and science adviser to President Bill Clinton. Michael Riordan is the author of the book “The Hunting of the Quark” and coauthor of “Crystal Fire” and “Tunnel Visions.” He has taught the history of physics and technology at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www.springernature.com/us). Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments in science to our readers.