When Norman Augustine, the former chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp, oversaw the 10-week effort to put together the US National Academy of Sciences’ “Gathering Storm” report, he was worried that the broad scope of the report’s four recommendations and the high cost of implementing them could doom the study to gather dust like so many reports before it. The report, which calls for spending several billion dollars to rejuvenate US science and research, “is sailing into a headwind,” Augustine said in October (see Physics Today, December 2005, page 25).
But the report’s warning that the US economy is at serious risk because the government has failed to properly fund and support science research and education has gotten the attention of legislators and members of the Bush administration. NAS staff members said the administration has been receptive to the report’s recommendations.
The NAS report and an earlier US Council...
