Management Style is Key To NIST’s Success Say NIST Nobel Laureates

WASHINGTON – An open management style that encourages high-risk research is a key reason that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has seen three of its scientists win the Nobel Prize in Physics in the past ten years, said the Agency’s three Nobel laureates in Congressional testimony today.

The witnesses, who testified before the Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, and Standards, said that NIST management allowed and encouraged them to pursue innovative, high-risk research that led to important scientific breakthroughs in time measurement and to them each being awarded the Nobel Prize.  The witnesses were: 1997 Nobel Prize winner Dr. William D. Philips, a scientist in the physics division at the NIST laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland; 2001 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Eric Cornell, a senior scientist at the NIST laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and a fellow at JILA, the joint institute between NIST and the University of Colorado; and 2005 Nobel Prize winner Dr. John (Jan) Hall, a scientist emeritus at the NIST laboratory in Boulder, Colorado and a fellow at JILA. 

“NIST has become the world leader in standards by employing superb scientists who do excellent work; nothing more clearly demonstrates the phenomenal quality of the Agency’s work than the three Nobel laureates NIST has produced in less than ten years, a truly remarkable accomplishment,” said Subcommittee Chairman Vernon J. Ehlers (R-MI).  Chairman Ehlers, himself a physicist, once worked with Dr. Hall at JILA. 

“What NIST – and its predecessor NBS – have done well is to establish a climate of excellence and intellectual openness wherein the research staff are proud to be members, and to recruit the most talented young scientists as they become available from time to time,” said Dr. Hall.

Dr. Phillips added, “NIST encourages its scientists think ‘outside the box,’ to take a long and broad view of our mission, and to pursue targets of scientific opportunity at the same time that we are attending to the problems at hand.  My dabblings in basic atomic physics were not just tolerated – they were encouraged and supported.”

Dr. Cornell agreed, saying “Management at NIST encouraged me to pursue a high-risk research program at the cutting edge of modern physics.”