Fridtjof “Fred” Kavli died in Santa Barbara, California, on 21 November 2013 of a rare form of cancer (cholangiocarcinoma) that he had been battling for about a year. Trained as a physicist, Kavli made his living as an entrepreneur and engineer. He later realized his lifelong passion for science by supporting basic research in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, the fields he called the most exciting of the 21st century. With Kavli’s enduring belief in the transformational power of science, the foundation he established endowed 17 institutes, created three prizes, funded seven professorships, and supported many programs around the world that live on as his legacy.
A naturalized American, Kavli was born in 1927 in Eresfjord, a small town near the Norwegian Sea between Bergen and Trondheim. It was there, growing up on the family farm, that he discovered his love of science. As he would reminisce, “I used to ski across the vast white expanses of a quiet and lonely mountaintop. At times, the heavens would be aflame with the northern lights, shifting and dancing across the sky and down to the white-clad peaks. In the stillness and solitude, I pondered the mysteries of the universe, the planet, nature, and of man. I’m still pondering.”
From a young age, Kavli was a sharp businessman. During and after World War II, when gasoline was scarce, the teenaged Kavli and his older brother, Aslak, manufactured and sold wood briquettes that could be used to power automobiles and buses. Their business was a success, and Kavli used the profits to finance his education at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (today the Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Trondheim.
Three days after his graduation in 1955, Kavli left Norway for Canada on the SS Stavangerfjord with $300 in his pocket. After a year there, he headed for his real goal, California. “America was the land of opportunity, and California had the climate,” he would say. He spent a year designing sensors for Atlas missiles for a small engineering firm in Los Angeles. Then, as he said, with “Viking courage and adventure in my blood,” he decided to set out on his own.
His company, Kavlico, began in 1958 with a short ad in the Los Angeles Times: “Engineer seeking financial backing to start own business.” Under Kavli’s leadership, Kavlico developed a wide range of innovative sensors used on automobiles and on military and space vehicles. By the time Kavli sold it in 2000 for $340 million, the company had grown to 1500 employees and $80 million a year in business.
With the proceeds, he established the Kavli Foundation in December 2000 and began his “payback.” Kavli was a strong believer in the importance of recycling wealth and in the power of science and technology to better humanity. His deliberate focus on long-term, basic research countered the prevailing trend in federal funding toward research with near-term returns centered on pressing problems. He and the Kavli Foundation have provided a strong, timely, and effective voice for long-term, basic research. He employed the same far-sighted approach to one of his deepest personal concerns—creating a sufficient and sustainable energy future while preserving the environment and confronting climate change.
The Kavli Foundation, guided by Kavli’s vision and with the leadership of two effective presidents (David Auston, 2002–09, and Robert Conn, 2009–present) has achieved much in its first 13 years.
There are 17 Kavli Institutes—2 in theoretical physics, 4 in neuroscience, 5 in nanoscience, and 6 in astrophysics—at leading universities around the world, including one in Norway. As we two can testify from our work as institute directors, Kavli’s formula was simple: “We don’t try to tell the institutes what to do. We try to just select the very best science teams and institutions and support them in what they want to do, and we expect them to choose the very best course of action.” His plan has worked extremely well.
The biennial awarding of Kavli Prizes in Astrophysics, Nanoscience, and Neuroscience began in 2008 with all the fanfare of that other Scandinavian prize: an announcement of the prize recipients in May, in Oslo and at the World Science Festival in New York; a prize week in September with a ceremony involving the king of Norway and Alan Alda; a lavish dinner in the Oslo Town Hall; and a medal slightly larger than the Nobel medal.
The Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia for young scientists, which he funded with the National Academy of Sciences, and the Kavli Futures meetings are symbolic of the long view he always took. He was enormously proud that one of the Futures meetings helped germinate the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative announced by President Obama last year.
Kavli believed in—and lived—the American dream, saying, “In America, you don’t have to know anything; you just have to ask the right question.” He met with US presidents and world leaders and served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Among his many honors was the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for Outstanding Service.
Above all, Kavli was an optimist and a believer in the power of science to do long-term good, and he took great joy in giving back. Basic research has lost a powerful voice and benefactor, Norway has lost one of its most famous sons, and we have lost a dear friend whose enthusiasm, wisdom, and broad smile will long be remembered. Fridtjof Kavli’s generous legacy will live on in the institutes, professorships, and prizes he has created and in the future work of his foundation.
