Advanced materials and competitiveness
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Advanced Materials and Competitiveness
F R A N K PRESS
THE formal title of my talk is "Advanced Materials
and Competitiveness;" but I could just as easily have titled it "The Myopia of Expertise, ~ because what I really want to talk to you about is the urgency for all of us to see beyond the familiar, beyond what we know and what we spend our professional lives doing. All of us need to spend some time off the dance floor and up on the balcony; all of us need to see what is really going on. That's not easy to do. We tend to shift problems to what we know, to what we're expert at. Economists look at input-output measures. Academic researchers look at levels of support in their fields. Companies look at the bottom line. Governments look at deficits. That's overdrawn but I think not far off in reflecting what is, after all, human n a t u r e - - t h e tendency to shift uncertainties to what we know. It's like that old story about the man on the ground under a lamppost, searching for his wallet. Someone comes along and asks if that's where he lost his wallet. "No," is the answer, "but the light is better here." I'd like to spend a few minutes trying to move that light around, to describe for you some of the forces buffeting our familiar world. F R A N K PRESS was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from the City College of New York and advanced degrees in geophysics from Columbia University in 1946 and 1949, when he joined the Columbia faculty. He became associate professor in 1952, working in the areas of geophysics and oceanography. In 1955, Dr. Press was appointed professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology, and two years later became director of its Seismological Laboratory. He was named in 1965 as the head of the then Department of Geology and METALLURGICAL TRANSACTIONS A
Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which, under his leadership, expanded into planetary sciences, oceanography, interdisciplinary studies, and the joint program with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It has since been renamed the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. In 1977, he was appointed by President Carter as the President's science advisor and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In January 1981, he returned to MIT where he was appointed Institute Professor, a title MIT reserves for scholars of special distinction. Dr. Press returned to Washington in July 1981 as the 19th president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), elected by its members to a six-year term. In 1987, he was re-elected by the membership to a second sixyear tenn. Dr. Press is recognized internationally for his pioneering contributions in geophysics, oceanography, lunar and planetary sciences, and natural resources exploration, but his primary scientific activities have been in the study of the seafloor and earth's crust and deep interior. Dr. Press also saw the need to develop techniques for geophysical studies of the moon and planets
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