White House Nominates Physicist to Head NSF
President Clinton has nominated Neal Lane, an atomic physicist and Provost of Rice University, to be director of the National Science Foundation. In announcing the nomination on July 13, Clinton said, ". . . the National Science Foundation fuels the engine of creativity that helps us to increase our economic potential and our base of knowledge. Neal Lane, with his considerable experience as a scientist and administrator, will provide the leadership necessary to foster the great talent, ingenuity, and potential of the American research community.”
Lane should know the ropes at NSF; he served as director of NSF’s Division of Physics in 1979 and 1980. In taking over the Foundation after the departure of Walter Massey, Lane will inherit what has become an increasingly political job. (Massey, who served only two years of the six-year term, left in April to become vice president and provost of the University of California system.) In recent years, the director of NSF has been pulled in two directions: Many Members of Congress, seeking quick results for taxpayers’ dollars, have been pushing NSF to delve more deeply into strategic, applied research, in opposition to those scientists who do not want to see NSF’s mission of supporting basic research threatened. It is worth noting that, in choosing Lane-- as in the case of Massey-- the White House has looked to academia rather than industry to lead NSF.
Lane’s background includes a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. He was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Queen’s University of Belfast, and a visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado. Lane became chair of Rice’s physics department in 1977, a position he held until 1984, with a 2-year stint heading NSF’s physics division during that time. In 1984 Lane accepted the chancellorship of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He returned to Rice in 1986 to become provost.
Lane has been active in the American Institute of Physics and belongs to two of its Member Societies, the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society. He is an APS Fellow, and has chaired the APS Division of Electron and Atomic Physics and the APS Panel on Public Affairs, as well as serving on numerous other APS committees. From 1983 to 1986 he served on the AIP Governing Board. His resume highlights a long list of professional activities, including serving on the National Academy of Sciences Subpanel on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics; the OTA Panel on Science and Engineering Manpower; the National Research Council Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications; and the Harvard-Smithsonian Advisory Board for the Institute of Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics; among many others.
The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, chaired by Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), has the responsibility of confirming a new NSF director. No confirmation hearing has been scheduled at this time.
