Neal Lane

Zierler:

OK, this is David Zierler, Oral Historian for the American Institute of Physics. It is March 15, 2021. I am so happy to be here with Dr. Neal Lane. Neal, it is great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Lane:

Thank you, David. Nice to be with you.

Zierler:

So, to start, will you please tell me your current title and institutional affiliation?

Lane:

As an institutional affiliation, it would be Rice University. That's where most of my academic career has been. I'm retired from the faculty, so I have titles of University Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics and Astronomy Emeritus. But I still work with the Baker Institute pro bono, and so I have a title of Senior Fellow in Science and Technology at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Zierler:

A question we're all dealing with these days: how has your work been affected by the pandemic? In what ways have you been more productive as a result of physical and social isolation, and in what way do your collaborations and work suffer not being able to see the people nearest to your research interests?

Lane:

On the downside - the pandemic has been bad for everybody - it's been an extraordinary time; many people have been hit very hard and many have died. In my case, being retired, I largely get to do what I want to do anyway. So, it doesn't have the kind of impact that it has on many people. Of course, I don't travel. Haven't traveled for a year. And that's not all bad. Air travel is not as much fun as maybe it was a long time ago. But that also means that all the talks, webinars, and interactions like this one today are on Zoom or some other medium. I've had the opportunity to give lectures to a Rice University class, a Texas A&M class, and one at Stony Brook University. The last one was the Marburger lecture, in memory of John - he went by Jack - Marburger, who was Science Advisor to President George W. Bush and a good friend and colleague. On the positive side of being all virtual, it's been possible to attend seminars, lectures of all kinds that I otherwise would not get on an airplane or maybe even drive across town to attend. So, some things have been positive.

In my own case, I've enjoyed some physics seminars, which, having been out of the field so long, I knew I wouldn’t understand in detail, and I wouldn't have even made an effort to attend in person. But I'm able to attend those events when I want to. The Washington Post and other organizations stream a lot of virtual events, and so I was able to hear an interview of Jennifer Doudna and Walter Isaacson, who has written a book about her life and her discoveries of CRISPR technology. And so, things like that are very positive, and I expect will continue after the pandemic. For the things that we all have found convenient and useful, I think there'll be a way to continue to make them available. Probably the main downside is not being able to spend time every week with students and other colleagues on the campus who are collaborators on science policy issues. We continue to work together, of course, but we're having to do it remotely.

That sometimes has the advantage of scheduling. It's just easier to schedule a call or a Zoom. But still, there's no substitute for being able to get in the room, and spread the material out on the table, and participate in all the give and take. That's really easier to do in person with a small number of people. That's a significant downside, and that slows down productivity. So, papers that we would've gotten out months ago took much longer to do. A report that Norm Augustine – retired CEO and chairman of Lockheed Martin – and I had been working on for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (and Rice’s Baker Institute) took a very long time to get out.

That, in part, was because of the difficulty of doing things on our end, and, of course, the shutdown of in-person office time at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. So, my experience with virtual work has been mixed. It’s important to have the freedom and flexibility to do what's necessary, meet in person when that works best, travel when you need to, but there have been some things coming along electronically that just weren't there before, some opportunities one can take advantage of. And I hope that those will be around in the future.

Zierler:

A very topical question for you personally and for the Rice University community in general: how has everyone fared in the wake of the massive storm that's gained such national media prominence? And what are your opinions on that, given your academic and governmental expertise and experience?

Lane:

Well, taking the latter first, it's an example of a rare event that has caused policymakers to be conservative and err on the side of saving costs, and cutting expenses, and allowing companies to do the same sort of thing they’ve been doing. And then, you get hit by a big storm like this. And it takes a tragic toll on people's lives. People have died, people have had incredible damage to their homes and suffered during the cold. The consequences were enormous, and I don't know what the final cost is, not just for Texas, but across much of the middle of America. But Texas simply wasn't prepared for this. That's a result of government failures, deregulation, I guess hoping that it wouldn't happen. But it's been known for a long time that this energy system, natural gas, in particular, was not protected from that kind of cold weather. And so, when the cold front hit, it shut down. The Republicans blamed it on the wind turbines. It wasn't primarily the wind turbines, which provide 20% of our power production. The biggest chunk was natural gas. And it wasn't just the failure at the electricity generation point, it was sort of failure all along the way of gas delivery.

So sure, it'll happen again. And it gives us a hint of how we're going to deal with climate change down the road. Personally, we were lucky in the case of my family in that we have a gas generator, so the gas continued to flow to us, and the generator, which we purchased for hurricanes, worked quite well and kept us with power and a certain degree of warmth. And then, the water system went down, of course. But we'd had bottled water, again, stored for hurricanes. Many people were not so fortunate; their pipes froze, and they didn't have water or heat. So, it had a huge impact. It'll take some time to recover, I think, for the state.

Rice University was prepared. I'm not aware of any serious problems as a result of all this. But of course, they had to deal with water, they had to deal with power shortages, and they have students on campus, although many are studying remotely. Rice has been delivering a hybrid class system for some time. The freeze was costly, just like COVID-19 has been costly, across the country, for all the universities and other businesses. Recovery will take a long time.

Zierler:

Well, perhaps we could talk about happier times. Let's go all the way back to Oklahoma and start first with your parents. Tell me a little bit about them and where they're from.

Lane:

Well, my mother was second-generation in a German farming family. She grew up on a farm in North Central Oklahoma, near a little town called Okeene, a community made up of German and Russian immigrants–people from Eastern Europe primarily. She decided to go to nursing school, graduated and had a career in nursing. My father was second- or third-generation Irish. His father was born in the United States. I'm not quite sure about his mother. But the earlier generations came from Ireland. So, my family’s roots are from immigration, which is true for most American families - an important message that we need to keep in mind during these times. Immigration will always be key to America's future. My father was a laborer. His family didn't have money. They all worked in the oil industry, out in the field.

So, there was not much money on either side of the family, and everyone worked. And after my parents married, my mother continued her career in nursing, and my father continued to work in the oil industry, employed by Cities Service Oil Company, as it was known at that time. Eventually, he got a clerical job, so he wasn't out in the field risking his life on the oil rigs. But he enjoyed a career with the same company throughout his working time, which was not so unusual in those days. It doesn't happen anymore. But in the early days, companies were loyal to their employees and vice versa. I grew up being very well-cared for in a family that didn't have a lot of money, but with two working parents we weren't poor either. I was born in 1938, well past the Depression; but times were still tough. World War II, of course, brought rationing and other fiscal constraints. But, as a young kid, not really aware of such matters, it was fine. I had a happy life growing up, living in a house out in the oil field with parents who valued education, who valued culture, and who instilled in me the values that I've always held throughout my lifetime. I have no complaints about my youth.

Zierler:

What about the Dust Bowl? Do you have any recollections personally of experiencing the impact of that on Oklahoma?

Lane:

No, I don't think I was aware of it until I got older. Also, it didn't hit all parts of Oklahoma the same way. Of course, the Dust Bowl occurred in the 30s, and I was born in 1938. But the Depression, following the crash of '29, affected everybody. And while I didn’t know much about the Depression as a young boy, it clearly influenced my parents, who were very frugal and saved every penny that they didn’t need to spend. They gave me everything they could in the way of an education but no expensive toys or a car when I was a teenager. I wasn't handed those kinds of things. They gave me a quality education and shared their religion –Catholicism – a faith my parents held more strongly than I did, perhaps.

But I grew up in that environment – Catholic grade school with tough nuns. School was not my favorite way to spend time, but it obviously was important to me.

Back to the Dust Bowl. I had no memory of it. My mother was born in '11, so she was growing up during that time. But my mother told me that, living on the farm, they had plenty to eat, and they provided food to friends and took food into town for city folks. Not a very big town, but they all shared. The farmers were on the giving side. They didn't have any money, but they did have food. So, I suppose the old style of bartering, and attitude of ‘share with thy neighbor, and take care of one another’ was the spirit of that farming community. Many of them were related to one another—a bunch of Russian and German immigrants whose families were intermarried and came from the same part of Eastern Europe.

So, those weren’t bad times for my mother. And my father’s father always had a job. Of course, it wasn’t a terrific job, working in oil fields, but it paid a salary, and so they could eat. Both my parents made it through the Depression, more fortunate than many, and as soon as my father graduated from high school he was able to find a job in the oil fields. I would only have seen the tail end of the Depression, as an infant. I was also very lucky to have a father and mother who were very kind. I was spoiled, I guess, certainly with being an only child with parents who were frugal but also devoting their lives to me. I do remember that my father would never leave the room without turning off the lights, letting me know that you don’t want to waste electricity. I also remember the old cars he bought and the worn tires on the cars. My parents continued to live simply and save until they thought I was in good enough shape that they could at least afford to travel around the world, which they’d always wanted to do. My father also had always wanted a university education, but it just was never possible. He took night courses, when I was growing up, just to learn more in the hopes, I guess, that someday he would actually get a degree, but it simply was not in the cards for him.

Zierler:

What do you think his interest would be if he had the opportunity? Engineering?

Lane:

Yeah, engineering was what he was interested in. I don’t know why, but he was good with his hands, good in mathematics, and he had writing skills that somehow, he’d developed. He got interested in electronics and repaired neighbors’ television sets as a hobby, spending hours in the evenings and weekends; he went through the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors. So, I think he would have majored in engineering, and probably electrical engineering as opposed to chemical or petroleum engineering.

Zierler:

What memories of World War II stick out for you? Do you have recollections of VE Day or the dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Lane:

Only vague memories. And when I think back that far, my memories get intermingled with what I've learned since then. So, I can't always be sure what I’m remembering. But I do remember newspaper headlines. I don't think I was reading the paper daily when I was a pre-teen, but I would see the paper. Television wasn't around, but my parents would listen to news on the radio, so I'd hear it. I'd go to a movie, and there would always be a newsreel. And sometimes, the news would be light, movie stars or whatever., but often, it was about progress in the war. It was very strong American propaganda, of course, meant to keep up our spirits. It was very much about winning the war, not so much about the uncertainties, the losses, the battles we were losing, the times when it wasn't clear America was going to make it. I don’t think those doubts came through, at least I don't remember hearing such things.

I do remember one thing about the war. I knew that my father was not drafted and not able to serve because of some kind of medical condition. So, I was very fortunate to be growing up with both parents. My uncle, though, was in the Navy. He was with the Seabees, and he built airfields and facilities, and following the war, he became an electrician. I knew that he was in the war, but I didn't really get to know him until after he came home. He was our only direct family connection with the war fighting.

Zierler:

With the caveat that terms like progressive, and conservative, and liberal, and Republican, and Democrat mean very different things now than they did when you were growing up, but as you understood those terms growing up, how would you describe your family's politics?

Lane:

My mother, one time, asked me later in life, "Neal, are Republicans born mean, or do they just get that way?" So that pretty well expresses my mother's view. The first time she was able to vote, it was her opportunity to vote for FDR. And FDR was her hero, and my father's as well, I guess. They were both Democrats, at least by the time I had any memory. And pretty strong Democrats. They would talk about politics, but there were never any curse words used in our home, not even angry words about people. But it was clear that they did not like Reagan, Nixon, probably George Herbert Walker Bush (41). I would say, as an aside, that Bush 41 has fared much better among Democrats as well as Republicans as the years have gone on, and we've had a chance to see what some of the alternatives might've been or might be. My parents’ Democratic political views were important to them and they never missed a chance to vote. Religion was also important to them. They were Catholic – my father from birth and my mother converted when she married my father. They never missed mass and I always went with them. But they were not strict with me.

They never pushed me any particular direction. I think at some point, they thought I might become a priest because I remember that they took me for a visit to a Catholic boy’s high school, which would've meant boarding away from home. I liked the trips because the school had a really nice science museum, which was unusual for a high school. But they didn't push me to go there. I think they were thinking that I might enjoy it, and that it would give me a quality education. And, while they never said it, I often thought my father might've wanted me to become a priest. But I don’t ever remember him talking about it.

When I was young, I had a terrible temper, and so I would misbehave. Never had any physical abuse or even pats on the bottom. They just didn't believe in that and found ways to cope and help me get through those periods. And then, finally, the anger sort of went away because as I got older, I began to understand why controlling my temper was important, and by the time I got to college, anger was simply distracting and a waste of valuable of time. I simply couldn't afford it. I had to curb my emotions and focus my attention on whatever I was doing. I wanted to be a physicist, and I knew that was going to be demanding. And it was. And so, over time, like most people, I guess I grew up. I mention this facet of my young life, and how my parents handled it, to give you a flavor of home life. I was very fortunate.

We did go on driving vacations after the war, even when we still didn't have a lot of money. We would stay in cheap motels or camping sites. We had many such trips because my parents liked to travel. My father particularly loved going to the ocean, which, driving from Oklahoma City, where I grew up, meant going to Galveston. So, I knew about Galveston from a young age, even the age of 3, although I don’t remember that particular visit. My parents also loved the mountains in Colorado and we would often visit relatives in Denver. Those were the early trips, either driving up to Colorado or to Galveston, with occasional other destinations that could be reached by car.

Zierler:

You went to Catholic school through 12^th grade?

Lane:

No, only through 6^th. And then, and I don’t entirely know why, I went to the nearby public school. I’m sure that my parents probably detected that I’d had my fill of Catholic school. There were Catholic high schools in the city, but I don’t ever remember being encouraged to go to any of those. I mentioned the one Catholic school within a couple hours’ drive of Oklahoma City, where they took me for visits. But I don’t ever remember any pressure or even any discussion of, “Neal, would you like to go to a Catholic high school?” So. I think they decided I'd had enough of Catholic schools.

There was a brand new public high school opening within walking distance of our house. It was actually a secondary school, so 7^th through 12^th grades. All of us, 7^th grade through 12^th grade, studying in the same school, intermingled without a problem. Of course, we took different classes depending on our grade, but we were all together and it worked remarkably well. You can just imagine a little skinny 12-year-old and one of these super hulks of a 12^th grade football player, all in the same school together. And the older kids took care of the younger ones if necessary. It was a good experience. But it wasn't a terribly strong school, academically. I had a few classes that were, I think, held to fairly high standards, but overall, the school didn't give me a great background compared with the kids I met when I got to college.

Zierler:

When did you start to get interested in science? Was it early on?

Lane:

I think it was quite early on. It wasn't until I was age 12 that I decided I'd be a physicist, for reasons I don't really remember. Something to do with the image of Einstein, and the stars. And when I was 4 or 5, my kindergarten friend and I would hunt for fossils and other kinds of interesting looking rocks in our neighborhood. It was pretty much red dirt country, but you could find minerals of various kinds. The fossils were in gravel beds brought in from South Oklahoma, North Texas where those sedimentary formations were rich with invertebrates, crinoid stems, and trilobites, and those kinds of early creatures, so we would hunt those things in the gravel.

And then, there were the storms, filled with wonder - lightning, and thunder, and all of that seemed physics-related. So, my friend and his older brother, who was interested in chemistry and geology, along with my own experiences, living in the storm belt environment, interested me in science. I wasn't much for bugs or plants. I'm not sure why. I was a little physical scientist.

Zierler:

Between grades and geographic and financial considerations, did you ever think about leaving Oklahoma for your undergraduate education?

Lane:

I'm sure the thought passed my mind, but I met a girl, Joni Sue Williams. That's the answer. I met a girl in high school, junior year, and fell in love pretty quickly. And we dated through the senior year. Joni had always planned to go to OU. Mathematics was her joy, and she was very good at it. I think she thought she'd actually teach school. Because even in those days, that's what women did, or they were nurses, if they wanted an advanced education. Fortunately, that has changed. So, Joni and I decided to go to OU. We both could afford to go there. Joni’s parents helped her, my parents helped me, and we were fortunate enough to receive scholarships, so we didn’t have to work while attending the university. The campus, in Norman, Oklahoma, was close to Oklahoma City, so we could stay close to family.

We didn't feel any pull to go to the East or West Coast, which would really have been the likely choices for study in physics and mathematics. As kids growing up without money, my wife, Joni, had only been to New York City once, accompanying her aunt, who was in the mercantile trade. I had never been to the East, except once in high school, when Joni and I went to Washington, DC on a class trip. That was it. Neither of us had been to the West Coast. There was no opportunity to do that. These days, two young people might want to go anyway, just get away and have a new experience. But we were not so adventurous and wouldn’t have wanted to be living so far from our families. After we received our bachelor's degrees, we were married (in 1960), raised two wonderful kids. We are still married, 62 years later. So that was probably the most successful endeavor in my life.

After our wedding, we settled in a small apartment in Norman, Oklahoma where I continued my graduate studies at OU. One reason I stayed at OU for graduate school was because by that time, Joni had received her degree, as I had, but she'd also gotten a job in Oklahoma City, not as a mathematics teacher, but in computing. Joni worked as a computer programmer and analyst while I was doing my PhD work. Our first child, our daughter, Christy, was born around the time I received my master's degree. I finished my research and received my PhD in physics (in 1964), after which we left Oklahoma and moved on to do other things in other parts of the world.

Zierler:

And the plan was for you to major in physics from the beginning? You went in thinking you were going to pursue a physics degree?

Lane:

Yes. The idea of being a physicist appealed to me, and I think it was the image of being an academic physicist. It's not that I really knew what physics was. I certainly didn't know any physics. I'd never done physics problems; I'd never read physics books. I had not even read Isaac Asimov, who wrote great books, not just in fiction, but in science. So, it was not because I had a knowledge base. What I had was curiosity. And that curiosity, for some reason, was directed toward physics. I do remember one time, when I was in a bookstore, and picked up a physics book, My high school friend said, “Do you understand any of that?” Just teasing. And I don’t know what I said, whether I lied and said, “Sure,” or told the truth and said “No, but I hope to.” But I decided I really did want to understand what was in that book. It looked interesting. Diagrams, equations. What was that all about? And that one experience in the bookstore seemed to connect with the larger context of the universe, the stars, and all that sort of stuff of nature.

So that was all at the age of about 12. No physics was offered in my high school, so I had no opportunity to study physics unless I did it on my own. But studying was not my favorite way to spend time. I was barely willing to put in the time to make good grades, let alone do anything extra. I was more an extracurricular kind of boy - saxophone, tennis, fun - anything but academics. I did well anyway, fortunately, well enough, so that I could earn scholarships and go to the university. When I entered OU (in 1956) and declared a major in physics, I found that OU offered no freshman physics course either. So, the first physics course I had as a physics major was in my sophomore year, and I didn't like it, at least the first semester. I thought it was dull and disconnected. But in the second semester, I had a gifted teacher who helped me understand that there really is joy in physics and in learning. And I did well and learned a lot. He ended up being my thesis advisor many years down the road and a good friend today.

Zierler:

This is Chun Lin you're referring to?

Lane:

Chun Lin, yes. He has had most of his career at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But he was at Oklahoma in those days, a young assistant professor having studied at Berkeley after coming out of China, then at Harvard. He was an extraordinary teacher and mentor and very nice person as well. So fortunately, with Chun, I found that I really did like physics, and I enjoyed it more and more as I went along.

Zierler:

Would you say as an undergraduate that your physics education was broad enough that you understood the basic binary between theory and experimentation?

Lane:

Well, by the time I graduated, yes. And some of that understanding came the hard way. Because Chun Lin, for some reason, thought I had promise. And I took as many courses from him as I could, just because he was so good. As I moved into my junior year, and especially between junior and senior year, Chun brought me into his laboratory, paid me as a summer research student, and gave me projects during the academic year. Chun’s research included both experiment and theory. He first assigned me experimental projects but my skills in the laboratory were limited. I mean, really limited. I broke things. It was not a great experience. But I enjoyed some of it nonetheless. I got a feeling for what experimental physics was like, what the standards were, how important good data were, how the equipment worked, how to calibrate things like pressure measuring devices, and what could be done with electronics even in those days.

This would be in the 1959-60 timeframe. I worked with very talented post-docs and graduate students, some of them older, who'd actually gotten their experience in WWII and decided to continue their education when they came back. They really knew how to dig into a piece of electronics, find out what was wrong and fix it. I learned a lot from that experience. It mainly gave me a deep appreciation for the challenge and the importance of experiment. Without experiment, theory doesn't matter in the end. It can be entertaining, can be fun, can be beautiful, but experiments are really where you decide what's right and what's not in trying to understand the natural world.

Zierler:

Do you have a specific sense of if the American response to Sputnik influenced your educational opportunities or broadened your own horizons in any way?

Lane:

Oh, there's no question. I don't know if I was thinking about it at the time, but after Sputnik, an enormous amount of money flowed into universities and national laboratories – money for research, scholarships, and graduate and post-doc fellowships. I was fortunate to hold one of those National Science Foundation graduate fellowships. After graduation, I won a post-doctoral fellowship, again, from the NSF, so I could study wherever I wanted to. My thesis advisor, Chun Lin, from the time I first met him, was receiving research grants, apparently as many as he wished to apply for. The money was flowing. As you know, the real partnership between the federal government and the universities was established during World War II because Vannevar Bush, as wartime advisor to President Roosevelt, immediately understood that the war effort needed the talent, the scientists, engineers, mathematicians, who were in the universities. There weren't nearly enough of them working for the federal government at that time.

The federal government needed them. And the way to get them involved was to fund their research, particularly in the physical sciences and engineering. Prior to WWII, there wasn't much of a government-university partnership, except in agriculture, where even from the 1800s, with the land grant colleges, agricultural extension services, and so forth, money flowed from the federal government to agriculture in universities but not physics, chemistry or biology. It was World War II that abruptly changed the relationship between government and universities by providing copious research funding, and money was still flowing after the end of World War II. Of course, the Cold War started right on the heels of World War II and Sputnik was launched in 1957. The response to Sputnik by the Eisenhower Administration and Kennedy Administration that immediately followed, was to pump an enormous amount of money into research and development in general and academic research and education, in particular. I definitely was a beneficiary of those developments all through my college years, my post-doc years, and even my early years as a professor at Rice University.

Zierler:

Besides the family obligations and considerations to stay put in Norman, was the plan, even as an undergraduate, that you would stay on to work with Chun Lin? Or you only developed that relationship that he would be your graduate mentor after you committed to the graduate program at OU?

Lane:

No, he was the reason I committed to the graduate program at OU. At that stage, of course, I was fully aware of the importance of going to another university, a more highly ranked university, if you like, assuming I could've been admitted. But I decided to stay at OU, for two reasons. First, my wife, Joni, had a job, and we were happy there. But I would say equally influential was knowing that I would have a thesis advisor from whom I could continue to learn and enjoy physics. I would also have a head start because I had already begun working with him on one research project or another.

Zierler:

What was Chun working on at that point?

Lane:

The research program that Chun began when he came to the University of Oklahoma was an outgrowth of work he did with E. Bright Wilson, Nobel Laureate, at Harvard, research in molecular spectroscopy, specifically, microwave spectroscopy, to study the rotation of molecules. At Harvard, he also had worked with John Van Vleck, studying magnetic materials. So, at OU, Chun started programs in theory and experiment – molecular spectroscopy and magnetism, especially, as I recall, paramagnetism. But he became very interested in another area, the excitation of atoms in collisions with electrons. He formed a partnership with an experimentalist at OU, Professor Robert St. John. Chun wanted to do some theory to support the work that St. John was doing. But I don’t believe that Chun had done any collision theory and he had no students working in that area when I joined his group.

He asked me if I would be interested in a project on the theory of electron-atom collisions. I knew nothing about collision theory, but I had become particularly interested in quantum mechanics and this work would involve quantum mechanics. I didn’t begin to study quantum mechanics until my junior year, and then continued with more advanced courses in my senior year. It was quantum mechanics that convinced me that I truly enjoyed physics. It was something about the mystery and the mathematical beauty of quantum mechanics that grabbed me. Chun knew of my interest in quantum theory and he also knew that students tend to do better if they're doing something they like. And he had already observed my experimental skills.

I had taken heavy course loads during my early undergraduate years, so I could concentrate on graduate courses and research projects with Chun during my senior year. I think we wrote our first paper together at that time. So, my graduate research continued seamlessly from my senior year. My thesis research dealt with more challenging collision problems focused on calculating cross sections for excitation of atoms in collisions with electrons. Later in my career, my work shifted to electron-molecule collisions, and [still] later in my career, [to] so-called heavy particle collisions involving atoms, ions and molecules. Most of my research, throughout my career, has involved application of quantum mechanics to the study of atomic and molecular collisions. That interest began because Chun wanted to collaborate with St. John, suggested the topic to me as a beginning graduate student, and because I was in love with quantum mechanics.

Zierler:

What was Chun's style like as a mentor? Was he more hands-on or hands-off?

Lane:

Both. But in different ways obviously. He essentially lived in the department. So, it was just understood without him demanding it that his students would work around him. And I even had a desk down in one of the experimental labs when I was doing theory. It wasn’t a lab particularly related to my project, just a place to hang out, particularly because the labs were air conditioned, and the other offices were not. The experimentalists could have a window AC unit because they would argue that “the equipment’s going to die if I don’t buy an air conditioner.” Chun had a desk in the corner in one of those labs with students working around him. He was able to sit at his desk and do his theory, write proposals, write his papers while noise was going on all around him or, on many occasions, with opera playing at high volume. He was always there for the students. You could always interrupt him with a question, whether you were an experimentalist or a theorist.

Finally, when I moved into an office upstairs to get away from the noise of the experimentalists, I could just go downstairs, when I had a question, and he would be there. Chun would join his group – rather his family – for tea at some point in the evening just to have a break. I always went into the office every evening and most weekends, which was hard after I was married, especially after our first child was born. My wife, Joni, was very understanding and supportive. Of course, I would come home for dinner, kiss the baby, kiss the wife, get in the car, go back and work, spending three or four hours at my desk, and then come home again. Chun was always there for us. And the way he mentored us was, “What can I help you with?” I would say “Well, I’ve tried this, and it doesn’t seem to work.” – something I would show him on a piece of paper or just describe in words. And he would say, “Well, have you tried this?” And you’d say, “No, I haven’t tried that.” And he said, “It might not get us past it, but it might.” And so, you’d go off and work a few more hours, or a day, or whatever it took. Eventually, something worked and you made progress. I think the same thing was going on with his experimental students. Chun was not, himself, a hands-on experimentalist. His work with Van Vleck and Wilson was, I think, almost entirely theory. But he understood the importance of experiment. He and his students had access to the data coming out of his laboratory and could publish the theoretical analysis as well. I never talked with him in detail about his choices of research topics, but that’s how he worked. Chun was an outstanding mentor. He was friendly, he was funny, he would share his love of opera, have Chinese meals in his home and invite all those students, their wives and families. His students were his family. And he was there for them all the time.

Zierler:

It’s a long time ago in Oklahoma. Do you have any sense if Chun ever experienced any discrimination living in Norman? Would he have shared something like that?

Lane:

He wouldn’t have shared it. He was not the kind of person to complain about anything. As a student, my observation was that he was highly regarded by everybody, faculty and students alike, and was included in any serious departmental discussions, even as a young faculty member. I don’t remember anything about his promotions, when they came, during the time I was there. It was very clear that the department chairman, William Fowler, who was much more senior than Chun, consulted him for good advice. I sensed no discrimination of any kind during that time, either from the other faculty or from students. Later, I read a history of the department written by Fowler, who indicated that there were some feelings about Asian Americans and probably other races with at least one older member of the faculty during that period. It would not be surprising that you might find some feelings like that. And it was probably true on most campuses in America. But I never saw any evidence of it myself, and Chun never spoke of it. In the end, Chun was interviewed and hired.

Zierler:

Just to zoom out a little bit, looking back, what were some of the central conclusions of your thesis, and how did they relate to broader questions in the field at that time?

Lane:

My thesis consisted of three problems. In fact, I had trouble with one member of my committee when I was getting ready to make my oral presentation. I went in to meet with a member of the committee, and he said, “A PhD is given for a single accomplishment and development, not for an infinite number of infinitesimal contributions." So, I said, respectfully, of course - this is a member of my thesis committee - "I hope that my contributions have not been infinitesimal, and I know there haven't been an infinity of them." And then, I said something about each of the problems. I haven't looked at the thesis in a long time, so I don't remember what the other two problems were. Maybe they were infinitesimal. Now, at least the calculations would be trivial. But then, because of the challenges of the mathematics and, especially, the computing power that was available, it was a challenge. The problem had to do with excitation of a sodium atom from its ground state (3s state), to its first excited state (3p).

It was important for some reason that Chun knew about. The challenge was to construct a model that would enable us to calculate the excitation cross section with appropriate approximations. Our approach was to make a “weak-coupling approximation.” The standard approach to such a calculation is to expand the wave function in terms of atomic state wave functions and so-called “partial wave” functions for the continuum electron. The latter satisfy a set of coupled partial differential equations and yield the cross sections of interest. Ideally, one keeps as many terms as necessary for convergence; but we didn't have the computer power to do that or even to solve, numerically, the equations corresponding to only the two atomic states. So other approximations were necessary, for example, ignoring the energy separation between the states as a first order approximation. But this is enough detail to give you an appreciation for how crude the approximations were, primarily because of the lack of computer power.

Shortly after I finished my thesis, we did one more calculation, with fewer approximations. Chun hired a bright undergraduate to write the necessary programs. Chun purchased some computer time at a machine owned by Southern Methodist University. We were happier with those results, and the three of us co-authored a paper and published it pretty quickly. So, I would say the problem I did in my thesis you could do probably on an Apple Watch [laugh], in a few seconds. And I am not aware that the work had any substantial impact by way of application.

But my thesis research gave me an understanding of collision phenomena, the quantum mechanics of continuum states involving electrons, atoms and molecules. That experience led to my later interests in electron molecule collisions, atom molecule, ion collisions, and related phenomena. For the next couple of decades, I worked with students and colleagues on various atomic and molecular collision processes. And then, my transition into administration, and later into policy, caused me to reduce my efforts in research. So, I really missed an exciting time in my field, as laser technology allowed different kinds of experiments to be done, posing new challenges for theory. My field of electronic, atomic and molecular physics naturally evolved into atomic, molecular and optical physics, or AMO physics. But as my administrative responsibilities grew, I no longer took on graduate students, although I had the good fortune to work with several excellent postdoctoral colleagues toward the end of that portion of my career.

My field of AMO began to really take off, just as I was moving into administration. The only research I did beyond collision theory was some studies of metal surfaces and some work on the behavior of excited atoms in liquid helium.

Zierler:

At long last, after you defend the thesis, it's time to start thinking about opportunities beyond Oklahoma. What were you considering? What post-docs were available? What was compelling to you?

Lane:

Well, that decision was pretty easy also. In my subfield of atomic collision theory, there were really only three centers in the world where such research was a principal focus. One of them was University College London, one was Joint Institute for Laboratory of Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, and the other was Queen's University of Belfast. I liked the idea of studying abroad. I didn't know where Belfast was, but I knew it was not in Oklahoma.

Zierler:

I'm curious from your dad's heritage if that was personally meaningful to you at all.

Lane:

I don't remember thinking about that at the time. My dad mentioned Ireland. But as you know, Belfast is in Northern Ireland. Its population was primarily Protestant, or “orange.” And my dad's family came from the South of Ireland, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, or “green.” So Northern Ireland is not, likely, a part of Ireland that any of his family would've come from. But still, he was interested in it. University College London would've been another great choice. But Chun Lin was better acquainted with a professor at Queen's University of Belfast, a man named Alex Dalgarno, than the people, such as H.W. Massey, working in the field at University College London. So, Chun arranged that I could go to Queen's University, and Dalgarno had agreed to fund me for a year. When I learned that I had been awarded an NSF post-doc fellowship I knew I wouldn’t need additional funding and could go wherever I wished. But I was already set on going to Queen’s. Of course, I talked with my wife Joni about such a move. When I was finished at OU, our daughter, Christy was 2 years old. And Joni was pregnant with our son, John, who was born in Belfast. It was a lot to ask of her. I remember asking Joni "Would you like to leave Oklahoma and go to Belfast? We don't know where it is, exactly, but it's across the Atlantic." And she said, as she always did, "Sure. Whatever you want to do will be fine." And so, the decision to go to Queen's University of Belfast was largely because of Chun Lin's relationship with Alex Dalgarno, and then it was made even easier by the fact that I had gotten an NSF post-doc fellowship. Also, Joni had saved some money from her work, which we could use to travel in Europe before we settled at Queen's University in Belfast.

Zierler:

What was Dalgarno's research? What was he known for?

Lane:

He was an extraordinary theorist. He did only theory. And his early work was in atomic and molecular physics and he pretty much stayed with that field throughout his career. But early on, he got very interested in the applications of atomic and molecular theory, collisions and optical excitation - everything having to do with atoms and molecules. He became very interested in applications to astrophysics, especially understanding the colder parts of the universe, where atoms and molecules are present. He also made significant contributions to atmospheric physics, particularly the upper atmosphere. He focused on how electrons, ions, atoms and molecules interact with each other, day and night, to explain the experimental observations. At one stage, later in his career, he became the editor of Astrophysics Journal, a position that reflected the trust and respect of his peers.

Zierler:

Did you have well-defined ideas of what you wanted to work on with him? Or you were open-minded, and he had ideas for you?

Lane:

I didn't know what kind of research I would do with Dalgarno. Alex was in the U.S. when I arrived at Queen’s, so I didn’t see him for a couple of weeks. He often spent the summer in the U.S. collaborating with colleagues at various institutions. I was greeted by Professor David Bates (later Sir David Bates), who was chairman of the Applied Mathematics department and I was welcomed by others as well. So, It wasn’t until Alex returned to Belfast that I had a chance to talk about his current research interests. After some discussion, I decided to work on some theoretical aspects of electron molecule collisions. Alex hadn’t done any calculations on electron-molecule systems, but he had published a theoretical framework for treating rotational excitation in electronic collisions with diatomic molecules.

As theory goes, this was really just applied quantum mechanics, but it was a natural extension of work I had done for my thesis and it caught my interest. Later, I became interested in some of the other problems he was working on, or at least considered important to pursue. I collaborated with him on some of those. But he was working on a broad range of atomic and molecular phenomena and applications Most any problem I might have identified would've been of interest to him. He gave me complete freedom. He was also a very good mentor, always available, always willing to talk and share ideas. His daily schedule was a surprise to me. I would get to the department about 8 am. He would usually come in at 10, read his mail, talk with students, and give a lecture. Around 11, he would join other faculty and several of the postdocs for coffee at the faculty common room, which was only a few doors away. Around 1 o'clock, it was time for lunch, and many of us would go to lunch together, either at the common room or a nearby restaurant. At 4, it was time for tea, so we'd all go to tea, usually at the common room. On many days we would leave tea and go directly to play tennis or squash. I wondered how he got anything done, but he was the most productive person I ever knew.

I later learned that he worked all night. He would go home, have dinner with his family, and then work until 2, 3 or 4 in the morning, sleep several hours and then come to Queens. His reading, writing and serious thinking happened when everyone else was asleep. During the day, he spent his time talking with students and colleagues, lecturing, reading and responding to mail, that is, when not having coffee, lunch, tea or playing tennis or squash. It was not a schedule that I adopted at any point of my life, but it was quite amazing, and it worked well for him. Alex was an extraordinary researcher and mentor, and he gave me complete freedom to explore as I wished.

Zierler:

What was next for you? What did you want to do after your time in Belfast?

Lane:

I knew that I would need to get back to the US and find a job, and I didn't have anything in particular in mind. But, when I was finishing graduate school, I had met a man named Lewis Branscomb, while attending an international conference. Lew Branscomb was already a well-established experimentalist in atomic physics, and he was one of the top scientists at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics - JILA, it's now called – part of the University of Colorado in Boulder. I remember him telling me about JILA and saying something like: "We have this visiting scientist program. I'd like to involve some younger people in that program. Most of what we have is senior people who come from all over the world, and we pay a good stipend for a year in residence. And I would encourage you to apply." I applied and somehow got selected to be visiting fellow, one of the youngest, I believe.

I'd visited Boulder before, probably a conference. It was a wonderful town and very close to the mountains. So, we were very much looking forward to going there. Boulder, and JILA, became our next destination. So, after leaving Norman, Oklahoma, PhD in hand, we drove around Europe for a month, spent 10 months in Belfast and then moved on to Boulder. Our son, John, was born in Belfast. So, in Boulder, we were a family of four and had a great year. The famous JILA tower had not yet been built, so the theorists were housed in old Woodbury Hall.

Zierler:

What were your initial impressions of JILA? Were you impressed with the instrumentation and the level of scholarship that was happening there?

Lane:

It was a very invigorating kind of place. I didn’t know much about the instrumentation, but I knew there were some outstanding experimentalists there. JILA was a particularly strong laboratory because it was a joint institute. That’s what the J stands for. It was jointly supported by the National Bureau of Standards, now called NIST, and the University of Colorado. And the National Science Foundation had also given JILA a very large grant. So, it was sort of a three-way partnership between Bureau of Standards, University of Colorado, and the National Science Foundation. JILA had very active researchers in astronomy and astrophysics, atmospheric physics, solar physics and most areas of atomic, and molecular physics. The idea of laboratory astrophysics, in the JILA name, referred to basic experimental and theoretical research with potential applications to astrophysical phenomena, and many JILA scholars were working on that fundamental research in atomic and molecular physics and on the applications to other fields. I was immediately impressed with the quality of the work and the people, including the other visiting fellows.

The people you would talk with at coffee time or lunch or just in the corridors were just outstanding. The theorists were housed in an old building called Woodbury Hall on the University of Colorado campus. The experimentalists had their laboratories, in an old armory, it was called, located a few-minutes’ walk down a small hill. So, at the time all the JILA researchers weren't in the same complex, as they are today, I guess we theorists were inclined to stick to our building. At one point, perhaps out of frustration, Lew Branscomb, the JILA chairman and an experimentalist himself, wrote a strongly worded memo pressuring the theorists to get down into the laboratories. He called us the “Woodbury moles” because we'd just hang out up there in our building doing theory, essentially invisible to the experimentalists. As I recall, the memo got us out of the building a bit more.

But the quality of the people and, I am confident, the instrumentation, was outstanding. The National Bureau of Standards had very high standards. Their principal mission was to establish and maintain the standards of measurement, including electrical standards, which would be closer to such things as the precise definition of the ohm, the watt, or the amp. So that mission created an environment within the National Bureau of Standards that exercised very high standards in terms of performance and instrumentation. Much of the Bureau was located in Gaithersburg, but there was also a branch in Boulder, and one arm of that was a part of JILA, located on the University of Colorado campus.

Zierler:

When did you start working with Sydney Geltman?

Lane:

I started with Geltman immediately after arriving at JILA. It was because he was interested in electron - molecule collisions, and I was already interested in doing something in that area when I was at Queen's working with Dalgarno, but I hadn't done any calculations. And Geltman liked to calculate, and he wanted to improve on some calculations that he had done with a Japanese colleague Takayanagi. I had read about their work and was anxious to improve on their approach. Geltman understood that the method I planned to use would require more computing power. He had access to the computers at the main buildings at the National Bureau of Standards laboratory in Boulder. So, we worked together in an effort to calculate cross sections for rotational excitation of nitrogen and oxygen molecules in collisions with electrons.

Zierler:

Just to foreshadow ahead to all of your government service at the federal level, was being at JILA at this early part of your career formative in terms of some of the basic things you learned about how the federal government supported science and science policy?

Lane:

I would say only tangentially, in that Lew Branscomb, whom I got to know quite well, was very active in policy. He later became chairman of the National Science Board, which is part of the NSF, and he also served as Director of the National Bureau of Standards at one point. He was already involved in advisory roles, committee appointments and so forth. I would say that influence came through Lewis, and maybe through Ed Condon, who was there at JILA at that time, Condon was famous to many of us for being one of the authors of a well-known book co-authored by Condon and Shortley on atomic spectra, which only older members among your readers or audience will likely know anything about. Branscomb and Condon were very much involved in national policy issues. But, at that time, I wouldn't have paid a lot of attention to that. It was the beginning of my career as a theoretical physicist and I was focused on research. So being around these two national leaders probably was influential to some degree, but not immediately so.

Zierler:

Were you thinking at all about making a career for yourself at JILA? Or the terms were limited, and you were ready for a more academic-type job?

Lane:

I wanted an academic job. I was approached when I was at JILA and was told that there were opportunities to stay. But it wasn't clear to me that there were openings on the academic side. JILA had a mix of researchers; some were chemistry or physics faculty while others who were employees of the National Bureau of Standards. They all worked together, sharing ideas and, in some cases, actively collaborating. At some level, you couldn't tell the difference. But most of the teaching was done by the university faculty. And I guess, starting back in my early days – my image of a physicist when I was 12 years old – I always had in mind someday being a teacher at a university. That’s where I really had set my sights. There were several openings around the country, and I had an opportunity to apply for them. One of those was Rice University and it quickly emerged as my first choice. I had visited Rice as a graduate student; probably it was an American Physical Society conference.

I recalled that it was a very beautiful campus and knew it was an outstanding school – a small, very selective, private university. It just seemed like the kind of place I would like to start my career. I interviewed and quickly received an offer, which I accepted. So, I didn't pursue other opportunities. My young family and I would move to Houston, Texas after I finished at JILA in July.

Zierler:

Up to this point, how much experience did you have in teaching? Were you a TA in graduate school? Did you take on any recitations as a post-doc?

Lane:

I had very little experience teaching. My time in grad school was entirely devoted to courses and research. Because I had a graduate fellowship and other support, I didn't need to take on a recitation section. I should have appreciated how important it could be to get some teaching experience. But I don't remember thinking that. And realizing it would take time away from my research. I wanted to get on with it, get my degree and graduate in the shortest possible time. And I wanted it to be a good degree – course grades and thesis. So my focus was almost entirely research and study. Any actual teaching experience would have to have been working with fellow students in study groups, teaching each other informally. Chun Lin was an outstanding teacher but also very demanding. His homework assignments and exams were legendary. So, these projects took an enormous amount of time. I recall spending most hours of several days on a single problem that he had assigned in his weekly problem set of four. So those informal discussions would've been the extent of my teaching, and I probably was learning more than I was teaching.

Zierler:

What were your impressions of the physics department when you arrived at Rice? Was it in growth mode? Were you part of a new generation of hires to expand and improve the department?

Lane:

Fortunately, there were a number of open positions. In part, I think that was because of a historical event that took place years before I arrived there. There was a controversial thesis that caused significant disagreements among the faculty, theorists in particular. And there was a huge brouhaha that went all the way to the president of the university, who was a physicist, William Houston. It's spelled like Houston but pronounced “Howston.” Houston was a very well-known Caltech physicist, faculty member, who was recruited to be Rice University's second president. Anyway, the result of the faculty disagreement was that several people left the university, and that opened up opportunities for a new theorist. Several new assistant professors were hired.

My first officemate, and still my good friend today, was an experimental nuclear physicist, Stephen Baker, who was working in the Bonner Nuclear Laboratory on the Rice University campus. Rice was particularly strong in nuclear physics. Low-temperature physics also became a strength. And a few years before I joined Rice, the department hired an outstanding experimentalist from Texas Instruments, named King Walters, who was the first experimental atomic physicist in the department. It was through his encouragement and, I'm sure, support for me, when I applied for the position, that I got the job. He also provided funding to help me get started by allowing me to share one of his major Department of Energy (then Atomic Energy Commission AEC) research contracts.

King Walters did everything he could to give me my start at Rice. We can all look back and pick out a handful of people who made the difference in our lives – critical moments and special relationships that created opportunities. Had any one of those people not been there at those moments, I have no idea where my career might have gone or my life, for matter. That’s probably true of everybody in every profession. In my physics life, Chun Lin, of course, was the first one. And then, I would say my postdoctoral experience with Alex Dalgarno, in part because he was so well established and networked that he and Chun were able to help me throughout my physics career. Syd Geltman and Lew Branscomb at JILA were also important colleagues. And at Rice, King Walters gave me critical support as a young investigator and allowed me to start a robust research program. And that led to many more, including talented students and postdoctoral researchers and other colleagues.

Zierler:

As a result of your new location, your new colleagues, did your research agenda change significantly when you joined the faculty at Rice? Or were you looking to continue on what you'd been doing at JILA?

Lane:

Well, early on, my intention was to choose some research projects that were close enough to my past work, so I was on solid ground. Then I branched out a bit and, when I could contribute, chose projects that were particularly interesting to my colleagues at Rice and elsewhere. First, I transitioned into heavy particle collisions, i.e., collisions of atoms with other atoms, ions. That involved taking some risks with my graduate students. I was confident that I was not really risking their education or careers, since I was fortunate to be able to recruit some really outstanding graduate students, who quickly became colleagues and came up with the ideas and ways to make progress. Among those individuals who helped me with my physics career, my graduate students were absolutely key. Followed, then, by a number of talented post-docs, who helped me explore new territory. So initially, my work was close to what I had been doing, improving the calculations on electron molecule scattering, for example, by developing more accurate interaction potentials. Soon, my interest shifted to heavy particle collisions.

Meanwhile, King Walters and other experimentalists were starting to get some fascinating results in their laboratories. A few of my students and I developed some theoretical models of the behavior of metastable excited helium atoms in a liquid helium. That was some of the work I enjoyed most. After I had been at Rice for a few years, the university was fortunate to recruit Ronald Stebbings, another well-known experimental atomic physicist. I collaborated with Stebbings and several of his students on a number of charge-exchange atom-ion collisions they were studying. It all evolved in a fairly natural way.

Zierler:

On the undergraduate side, once you got your sea legs teaching, what were some of the favorite courses you taught undergraduates at Rice?

Lane:

Quantum mechanics, of course, still remains my favorite. I often taught the junior level course in quantum mechanics. I loved that course. And sometimes, I taught the graduate level quantum mechanics course at the same time. I enjoyed teaching every course I was assigned, including, sophomore physics for majors, electricity and magnetism. My favorite text was a beautiful book, written by Ed Purcell, volume 2 of the Berkeley Physics Series. I found that electricity and magnetism was challenging to teach, and I really enjoyed that. In my first year, I was allowed to teach graduate seminars in atomic collision theory, a field that I knew something about. Perhaps the department chairman didn't want to take a risk of assigning me to freshman physics in that first year. That was wise, I think. In later years, I especially enjoyed a course on physics for non-majors, which focused on conceptual physics and did not require calculus.

The small class included majors in music, history, and English and others. I chose a text that I really liked, authored by Gerald Holton and colleagues who stressed the historical development of physics. That’s when I began to better appreciate the history of physics. The experience taught me that that’s how we ought to be teaching our physics majors.

So, I loved that course because English majors and other non-science and engineering students were receptive - open minded. Because they'd not had any physics before this course, they had no more trouble accepting Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and curved space-time than they did basic Newtonian mechanics. It was all nature to them. Physics majors spend their hard-earned years doing hard E&M problems in Newtonian mechanics problems before studying general relativity. Then they have to adapt to the notion of curved space-time. It's a different way of thinking. I'm not saying our physics majors can't handle general relativity, but students meeting physics for the first time can be comfortable with the new idea.

Zierler:

Another foreshadowing question: when you were on leave at the NSF as director of the division of physics, first of all, how did that opportunity come about, and were you getting more interested specifically in science administration at that point in your career?

Lane:

I think one thing Chun Lin would tell you about me is that I'm basically a nosy person. So, I was always interested in knowing what the faculty were doing behind closed doors in those meetings at OU. Were they going to change our curriculum? Were they going to require a new oral exam? I was always curious about how things were done and why. Early in my career, as a faculty member at Rice, I did the usual things – wrote proposals, reviewed proposals, served on advisory committees for agencies and professional organizations, such as the American Physical Society. I served on the AIP governing board at one point. I enjoyed all those activities, primarily, I think, because of the people I had a chance to work with – physicists in different subfields and with different perspectives.

I began to work with nuclear physicists, high energy physicists, condensed matter physicists, and later in my career, with chemists, biologists, and researchers in other fields. I was usually in a room where everyone else was more accomplished and smarter than I was. I just went in knowing, "This is going to be a learning experience. I’m not here to try to teach anybody anything. I'm going to learn." I guess that was selfishness on my part. I would contribute in whatever way I could. The committee output was not always significant or the work rewarding but it was enriching for me because of the people I had the privilege to work with - extraordinary people, all of them. Most of them were scientists whom I never would have had a chance to know. My field of physics—atomic and molecular physics— was a very small one. It’s much larger now, having incorporated the incredible advances in optical physics because of the laser. Early in my career, I could know everybody working in my field. Other fields of physics - nuclear condensed matter, high-energy – were much larger. So, the only opportunity I had to get to know researchers in these fields was through these committee activities. One committee turned out to be particularly important to me. I was asked to serve on the physics division advisory committee at the NSF. I don't remember why I was asked, but I was happy to do it. In part, I think, it was to satisfy my curiosity about how a federal agency works.

As I mentioned before, I served on APS committees. At one point, I was chairman of the APS Division of Electron and Atomic Physics (later became Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics). In that role, I met with some of the agency officials responsible for funding physics research, e.g., the head of the NSF physics division. In some of those meetings I complained about how badly our field was being treated, arguing that "You really don't appreciate how important atomic physics is - let me tell you. And look how we're not being funded adequately compared to what we can do and how important we are," or something like that. It was likely that those interactions got me on the advisory committee. Once on the advisory committee, of course, I knew I should be collegial, support all of physics, and at the same time, help the whole committee understand and appreciate the importance of atomic physics.

So, I went through a transition of being a strong advocate initially for atomic physics, then all of physics. I found myself trying to help the NSF physics division director make the case to the upper administration of NSF, making arguments like "Here's how important physics is and how we're being funded relative to chemists and other divisions. " Those interactions, I think, are what led to me receiving an invitation from the NSF to come and spend a year as director of the physics division. The director at that time was an extraordinary person named Marcel Bardon, a high energy physicist, who came out of Columbia University and, I think, worked with Leon Lederman. Marcel had been director of the physics division for many years and was very effective. But I later learned that he had gotten slightly crosswise with the upper administration, and for various reasons, wanted to take some time off.

So, he got a leave of absence to go work for UNESCO in Paris- he was French by background. Marcel needed somebody to fill in for him for one year and for some reason, he thought I would be a good choice to come in and take that job. I was invited to come for a year. I talked it over with the family. I think you can imagine that a one-year move like that was quite a family decision. Our son, John, was going into 10th grade, which is a tricky time to be changing schools. But ultimately, John agreed that it would be OK. So, we went to DC for a year, while I served as NSF physics division director.

Zierler:

Leaving that position, did you have the bug? Or did you have some sense that you wanted to return on a more permanent basis later on?

Lane:

No, I had no plans to leave my university faculty position. In fact, I was invited to stay a second year because Marcel decided he wanted to stay in Paris one more year. So, the director of NSF asked me if I would extend my appointment for a second year. But my research students were back at Rice. I did have an excellent a post-doctoral colleague looking after them. But, as a full-time NSF division director, I was very busy and had little time to think about research. I could keep in touch, take phone calls, even visit campus a few times. But in those days, distant collaboration was far more difficult than it is today. I felt that my students, post-doc and I could handle one year, but not two. My career, a goal since I was 12 years old, was to be a physics professor. And Rice was my university; I had no thoughts about leaving. Some opportunities had come along, over the years, from other universities, and they were attractive. But I loved Rice. It was a wonderful place to work, outstanding students and colleagues. And my family was happy in Houston.

Zierler:

Did the NSF experience change your approach to being a physics professor at all? Did it make you think in different ways, either about funding, or pedagogy, or working with colleagues more broadly?

Lane:

I think it did, somewhat. And I don’t know how useful that was. I was totally immersed in a completely different job; there’s almost zero parallel between being a division director of the Physics Division at the National Science Foundation, working for the federal government, and being a professor, even a department chair at a university. These jobs have little in common, and the learning curve for each can be steep. You can make mistakes, as one sometimes does in research and teaching. But with greater responsibility, it’s important to be extraordinarily careful. I was very fortunate at NSF to have wonderful people to work with. And I always understood that even though I was told I had complete freedom to be the director, not just standing in for someone else, e.g., making the decisions to allocate funding to various subfields. But, with that freedom, came a strong sense of responsibility and respect for the institution, its rules and traditions, the constraints of federal law, the importance of listening to different voices and, in the end, thinking twice before going with what my gut might tell me. It was a huge learning experience.

When I returned to the university, I think I went back with the feeling that more of my colleagues should have that experience, should know more about how an agency like NSF really works. I didn’t necessarily believe that everyone should go to Washington for a year, although I did work with several program officers, called “rotators,” who were rotating in and out of universities and were able to bring back to the campus valuable insights. As division director, I was not making grant-by-grant decisions, selecting reviewers, deciding on each grant’s budget, and so forth. So, I did not have the same experience as the program officers. My role was reviewing and approving, or not, their decisions. The program officers are the people who really make the NSF function at the grant level. And when “rotators” come back to campus, after a few years at NSF, they can provide the best advice, especially to younger colleagues, about how the system works, how peer review works, what makes a strong proposal, how we can be confident that the decisions are fair, what role the advisory committees play, why it’s important to serve on one, all of those things. I guess you would say that my year at NSF instilled in me a deep appreciation for the contributions of not only the individual scientists but the agencies like NSF, that support the research, and dedicated people who work there and make hard decisions. So that year at NSF did have an impression on me, a positive one, but it didn’t change my thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up.

Zierler:

Having in mind, as you say, your intentions to come back to Rice, to be a physics professor, is that to say that the opportunity to become chancellor at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs was out of the blue, not something that you were expecting?

Lane:

That was definitely out of the blue. It came about in the following way. I continued to have a relationship with the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, JILA, located on the University of Colorado campus. At one point I became a non-resident fellow, a courtesy appointment. I also had applied and been accepted as a JILA visiting scientist for a second visit in 1975-76. I wanted a year to do full time research and wanted my family to enjoy Colorado, where we could have more family time together. So, I had developed a relationship with the JILA scientists. And, at one point, they asked me to chair a visiting committee, which was charged to evaluate JILA. Somehow, we avoided any potential conflict of interest, perhaps just by disclosing the relationship.

The visiting committee made their visit and wrote a positive review. One of my roles as committee chair was to brief the director of the Bureau of Standards and the president of the University, since JILA is a joint institution. I don’t remember briefing the Bureau of Standards director but I do recall sitting with the university president, who was fairly new at the time, a man named Arnie Weber, whose field was labor economics and who had come from the University of Chicago. In later years, after his time in Colorado, he served as president of Northwestern. I delivered my report. It was a cordial meeting, and he asked good questions. That was my only interaction with him until some years later. The chancellorship opened up on the Boulder campus, and I was nominated by some of my JILA colleagues as a candidate, and I agreed to be a candidate. And I don't recall that interview but perhaps met with Weber at that time. In the end, he selected a more senior person, a scientist who had some administrative experience. That was a wise decision, I think. Boulder is a big campus and a major responsibility.

That would have been my second interaction with Arnie Weber. So, some time later, when he needed to find a chancellor for another of his campuses, The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs - UCCS, he called me. UCCS was a much smaller university, just developing its graduate programs. In the call he said something like, "We need a chancellor here, and we have a search underway. I would like you to consider applying for this job." And I said, "I don't have any experience of that kind. I've been a department chair of a small department." But he still wanted me to come for an interview. He knew about my experience in Washington, which, I think, is one of the reasons he thought that I might bring something to this emerging campus that was increasingly focused on science and engineering.

I thought it over, talked with the family, and decided, "Why don't I go look anyway?" I thought Rice, at that point, was not progressing as fast as I felt it could. I still loved the university, but the Rice administration wasn't really showing an interest in ramping up the university's quality and standing, especially in research. I felt that Rice had much more potential, so I wasn’t so happy with the direction it was going. Still, I really didn't think I would take a job like this one at UCCS. But I went for an interview and was impressed. Though small, the university had many high-quality faculty, who were not at all appreciated by the central Boulder campus, the flagship. That’s not unusual for a state system. The flagship campus comes first, and then the satellite campuses. The faculty in the flagship campus think they're better, adopt higher standards, and contribute more. Generally, their salaries are higher, and their teaching loads are lower. It's the same in many systems, at least it was in those days.

So here was a faculty that's higher quality than I expected on a campus with a tremendous amount of community support. Hewlett-Packard had several divisions in the city and several other companies, TRW and some semiconductor companies. It was really a blossoming of high tech along the front range, particularly in the Pike's Peak region south of Denver. It really looked like an opportunity for a campus to develop. So, I thought "Well, this might be fun." I worried about the fact I had no experience. It would be high risk for them and for me. But in the end, they were willing to make the offer. It was a tough decision, especially for my wife, Joni, and for rest of the family, although both of our children were now in college.

Zierler:

And you resigned your position. I assume you did not go on leave to take this.

Lane:

That was my intention. And that's probably what I should've done. But instead, Rice offered leave of absence, and I accepted it. Of course, one reason you don't want to take leave of absence is that you are retaining your tenure. And it would be fair for people to question if you really are committed to the new job. I didn’t think that through well enough at the time. My original intention was to resign my position and accept an appointment there. But when I got ready to move my research grant, which was with the Department of Energy, my program officer said he’d be very happy to help me do that. But I needed to know that Colorado was under a different contract office of the Department of Energy, and there was no assurance my grant would make it from where it was right now to the new contract office. It’s just the crazy way the Department of Energy worked in those days. Maybe it still does.

So, he said, "There's a risk you won't have your research funding." Well, I had several post-docs working with me. At that time, I no longer had graduate students, but I had post-doctoral collaborators. I just couldn't afford the risk of losing the grant. That would've been a deal breaker. Rice was quite happy to continue to manage my grant at Rice University and support my post-docs in Colorado. Rice was extremely generous and flexible. And so, that's the arrangement that they made. My post-docs continued to be funded from Rice University but were in residence at JILA in Boulder. They would have been much more isolated at UCCS, my new campus, since there were no researchers at UCCS working in their areas. My JILA colleagues were kind to offer them offices and make them part of the JILA community. So, I was living and working, most of my time, in Colorado Springs, while making frequent visits to my colleagues at JILA in Boulder, and Rice was funding their research. One very fortunate outcome of this arrangement was that having Rice continue to manage my grants allowed my postdocs’ insurance to continue without a break. And one of them, unexpectedly, became quite ill. Had his insurance lapsed, it would've been a horrible situation. We didn't anticipate that, didn't know about his illness, but it was fortunate that his insurance was still in place.

But things began to go downhill in Colorado. The state coordinating board of higher education decided that Colorado Springs campus would not, in fact, progress in the way that University of Colorado wanted it to. And so, they prevented the campus from developing independent PhDs the way that we had intended. And the financial situation changed with regard to the high-tech industry in Colorado Springs. President Weber and other chancellors left. I became the senior chancellor after just one year.

Zierler:

And one with no experience at that level.

Lane:

Yes, one with no experience at that level. President Weber, many of the Regents and faculty on my campus, had been very good to me. Initially, I was able to do the things I wanted to do. But some of the regents didn't really realize that if the campus was going to expand in research and graduate education, it was going to cost more money. And once I determined that some of them were hesitant to provide that, there didn't seem to be a path forward in any short term. But I was going to stick it out. I wasn't happy. This was the most difficult time in my career probably. It was a highly stressful environment and time for all kinds of reasons.

Meanwhile, the Rice president, Norman Hackerman, stepped down, and Rice hired a new president, George Rupp, who had been the dean of the Divinity School at Harvard. He had bold ideas and a commitment from the Rice board to move the university forward through what he called his enhancement program. He called me on day and asked if he could come up and talk with me. So, he flew up to Colorado Springs and spent the day with me talking about his plans, and ultimately offered me the provost job at Rice to work with him to do the things I'd often dreamt about at Rice.

Zierler:

You being on leave and not resigning, would this have been an item of information that he knew, and would that have made your decision easier to accept this?

Lane:

He certainly would've known about it because he's a person who did his homework. And it probably did make the decision easier for me. I think I would've gone back to Rice, anyway, even if it had meant another resignation, and a reappointment, and all of that. But the switching grants back and forth would have been scary since I had post-docs to support, and I still wanted to keep my hand in research. So, making the transition back to Rice was smoother for all these reasons. Still, looking back, being on leave from Rice, while leading another university was awkward. It wasn’t really a matter of conflict of interest, but it was a question of commitment. One commitment was that we bought a house and set up residence in Colorado Springs. But being on leave could have been considered by some as a lack of full commitment.

And the most difficult day of my life was the day I had to tell the Colorado people that I was leaving and why. I'd only been there 18 months. Well, less than that, when I actually informed them. To be fair, almost everybody was very good about it. Better than I deserved. But it remains one of those guilty feelings I have that never totally goes away. "Should I have done that?" Because generally, my view has always been that when you take a job you do the job, no matter what happens.

Zierler:

But given all of the negative surprises that you experienced in real time, it was a much different job based on larger political problems and confusion than you had accepted. Surely, that must've been appreciated in understanding why you wanted to go back to Rice.

Lane:

I think people accepted that. And, also, they'd draw a distinction between going back home–later, I was told by someone on the Boulder campus that I might have been asked to move to Boulder. Can you imagine that? I mean, the transition from being chancellor of University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to the flagship campus in Boulder, when there were strong negative feelings between the two campuses? That, I think, would've been received much less well by my colleagues in Colorado Springs. I think they understood both what you just said, namely, the circumstances changed, and I was asked to return my home institution for many years. And so, I felt that my colleagues considered that going home was different from just using the UCCS job as a steppingstone to some other place, which is a criticism that one can often hear about someone moving from one job to another. But it was a difficult day. And I had to think it through very carefully, "Whom do I need to tell first and how? And do I have to do it by phone?"

Some things, you can do by phone because you have to do them quickly. I didn’t have time to drive to Boulder to meet with the president because such things have to happen very quickly. And so, I had to have a phone conversation with Boulder, call the regents, call key people in the chamber of commerce that I’d coaxed into helping with support for the university. I had to talk with my senior staff and ask them to keep it to themselves until I could hold an all-hands faculty and staff meeting. And then, at the all-hands faculty and staff meeting, I had to stand up in front of them, explain why I was leaving and just take whatever comes. They were very good in that meeting; and while I know that some faculty were angry, on the whole they were very understanding. One regent, who was from Colorado Springs, would not speak to me for most of the remaining months of my appointment. Later, we had a warmer relationship and when things were falling apart in Colorado higher education, he said, "I get it. I understand why you left." In the all hands faculty-staff meeting, I recall that at the end of my comments, everyone was quiet. Then, one faculty member stood up and said, "Don't we get to vote?" There was laughter, and I took that as a positive response.

Zierler:

Going from chancellor to provost, obviously these are two very different schools, different structures, different sizes, did you see this as a lateral move, a step up?

Lane:

No, I didn't think of it that way. I understand that anyone could certainly see it as a step down because I was going from the CEO of a campus to a senior officer position who is not the CEO. President Rupp always referred to my position, the provost position, as second in command at various times in things he wrote or said. But I never thought of my position in terms of ranking, although I certainly understand many people do. But when talking with anyone at UCCS or Colorado I didn’t describe it as a lateral move. Otherwise it would leave the impression that I thought being 2^nd at Rice was equivalent to being 1^st at UCCS. Some of my colleagues did say things like "Oh, you're going to a university that's a whole lot better than my university." Yes, Rice was more highly ranked, but I didn't even want to think of it that way. Rather, my position was that I was “going home” and would have an opportunity to work with a new president who had enormous support on the campus and agreement of the Rice board to enhance the university, spend money, hire new faculty, start research institutes and centers. That's how I thought about it and how I explained my decision to return to Rice.

Zierler:

For better or worse, what learning experiences did you get in Colorado that may have informed your mandate or what you wanted to accomplish as provost, particularly because you were coming home to an exciting growth opportunity across the board?

Lane:

Of course, one thing I learned, although I knew it already, is that it’s better to be in a private than a public institution when it comes to working in a university administration [laugh]. They are whole different bureaucracies, and the private universities have considerably more flexibility. Of course, they too are subject to laws, and have rules. But it's nothing like being part of a public system. I have enormous respect for the public systems. State colleges and universities really are the key, since they provide most young people in this country the opportunity for a higher education; and they should be given much higher priority in the future than has been the case in recent decades. But in terms of ease of work and flexibility, it's much easier in privates. Rice was still relatively small, and I knew most of the faculty, at least those who had been around a long time. It was possible to go into the provost’s job with a lot of trust and goodwill. So when I needed to change some things, the faculty were willing to go along with me, for the most part, without being suspicious and asking "What's he after? Is this a steppingstone that he’s using go on to some other job?" There was just less of that kind of thing, because most of the faculty had known me for many years. And while I didn’t know some of the young faculty, we didn’t have many at that time. Working with President Rupp, that was something we were going to change, build a younger faculty.

Another thing I learned, is how progress can be made or hindered, depending on the nature of the relationships that people have in different administrative roles. I'd never been a dean. I worked with all the deans when I was the UCCS chancellor. But prior to my time in Colorado, I'd only interacted closely with the dean of natural sciences at Rice. So, my time as UCCS chancellor helped me understand how important those relationships really are, for example, how a vice chancellor for academic affairs (akin to provost), who reported to me, could work effectively or not with the deans. And I saw the danger of the vice chancellor isolating me from the deans and, consequently, the faculty. I learned how to get around that problem without undercutting the authority of the vice chancellor. Of course, in other universities, the titles might be different – some university campuses have a president and vice president for academic affairs (or provost).

I think my experience as UCCS chancellor helped me appreciate how to manage what could be a minefield, at least it made me sensitive to the dangers. Horrible things happen on university campuses because administrators don't get those relationships right, or they can't manage the conflicts just because of circumstances. It might not be their own fault, but the situation can be impossible. One example is when a president or chancellor promises something to a dean or the faculty, and then the provost has to go tell them why the university can't afford it. You just don't want to work in that kind of environment. And I’m happy to say that that never happened to me either in Colorado or Rice.

Zierler:

I wonder if you were perhaps naive in case you harbored any hopes that you would be able to remain active with the physics department.

Lane:

No, I don’t believe I thought I would continue to be involved as much in research. Of course, to be honest, I've always been naive going into jobs that I knew nothing about and had no background to prepare me. But with regard to my research program, I had decided before I went to Colorado, I would not continue to take on graduate students. And when I came back to Rice, as provost, I knew I shouldn't take on graduate students because the responsibility you have for your graduate students is very different from that of post-docs. And so, I wanted to continue to keep my hand in research, but I knew that in the provost job I would be very busy.

I had time to meet with my post-docs, find out how the research was going, share an idea, be a good mentor in the best way I could. I did not see the physics faculty very often. I did not go to the departmental meetings; to do that as provost would be intrusive and not a good idea. So, I no longer had the same connection with physics colleagues. I didn’t lose my personal relationship with them. They were my friends, and I’d known them a long time. But I didn’t have a professional relationship anymore. In terms of my research, I found that, over time, I couldn’t handle it; I was not focused enough on the research to be satisfied that my contributions were significant. By the time I went to Washington, I knew "I'm done with research, my post-docs have finished, and I'm giving up my grants." So that transition was not hard.

Zierler:

Looking back, what do you see as some of your key achievements as provost, particularly because of your initial excitement that you could ride that wave of President Rupp's commitment to growing the university and expanding its excellence?

Lane:

Mainly, what I would say is that I was able to ride that road of President Rupp’s enhancement. There is nothing that I would point and say, "Neal accomplished X." If Neal accomplished anything on his own as provost, it's probably something we can't talk about, e.g., a thorny personnel matter that had to be handled. That’s the downside of any job with responsibility. I would say it was easy going because of the strong support the faculty had for President Rupp and me, working closely with him, to make certain changes in the curriculum, the development of the new research centers and institutes, and the way Rice was doing business. President Rupp made it clear that he and I were going to be partners in this. It was going to be the two of us working together. Rice was small enough that the president could spend a lot of time with the individual faculty members as well as deans. He was very careful with lines of authority, but he was there, he was accessible. He would have lunch in the faculty club, as I would, with members of the faculty, and deans, and other administrators. Rice became more structured because it was getting larger, and it needed more structure to handle additional growth in income and endowment, spending, hiring, and so forth. But I don’t think the university fundamentally changed in any way. So I feel good about my time as provost, but what I feel good about is doing the best I could to support President Rupp’s initiatives, and work with the faculty and deans, and handle the thorny issues that came along from time to time. We did make some mistakes. Some things didn't work. And maybe, had the faculty pushed back harder, e.g., in some of these curriculum areas, we would've done it differently. But, in all, we pretty much went forward as a team.

Zierler:

Another foreshadowing question: as provost, and in light of your previous contacts in the NSF, were you in touch with anyone at the NSF? Or were you active in Democratic politics? The question, of course, I'm leading to is, of all people, why did the Clinton Administration approach you in the incoming administration to lead the NSF?

Lane:

I still don't know the answer to that latter question. They should have had their heads examined. I served on lots of committees, including several that were related to DOE’s Superconducting Supercollider project: the early oversight committee, whatever it was called; the magnet selection committee; and later, the board that guided the project when the laboratory was being built. So, I was involved in the DOE side of science policymaking. On NSF's side, I chaired and served on some different task forces and committees. I chaired the committee that advised NSF on setting up the first supercomputer centers and the NSF net to connect them all together with their users. I was doing those kinds of things, some at NSF and some with other federal agencies. Also, the National Academies had high-level committees, or commissions. I served on one of those, the commission on physical sciences, mathematics, and applications, chaired by Norman Hackerman, former president of Rice University. So, there I got to know the academy people. Frank Press, who was president of the National Academy of Sciences at that time, and a few Academy leaders. And increasingly, I got to know some people in the federal agencies, e.g., DOE, some of the administrators who were in charge of the national laboratories. I had been collaborating with researchers at Los Alamos since my early days, when some of my graduate students needed the laboratory’s computing capability. Some of my students actually took jobs at Los Alamos, so I continued to work with some of them and served, at one point, on one of the laboratory’s advisory boards. I became increasingly involved in federal policy by serving on these different committees.

But, let me get back to your question about what got me to NSF. I think that I had met Clinton’s science advisor, Jack Gibbons, some years before. He was a physicist with a specialty in energy and came out of Oak Ridge. He would have been the person in the White House leading the search for an NSF director. I didn't know that was happening at that time or even how the process worked. But Jack obviously had built up a list of people by just asking around, calling the National Academy, university presidents, agency heads, and others for suggestions of people. Then he asked a staffer, I think it was a man named Bill Wells, who had served in OSTP before, in several administrations, to run down the list and do soft background checks on everyone. By that, I mean not the FBI checks or financial disclosure. He would collect CVs and make a few more phone calls to people whose judgement he trusted. He would whittle the list down and start calling people on the list.

I remember getting a call out of the blue. I was provost at the time. My secretary tapped on my door, and stuck her head in, and said, "Dr. Lane, the White House is on the line." And I said, "Yeah, take a number. What White House?" She said, "No, it's the real White House. They're calling, and they want to talk to you." So, she put me through, and it was a staffer. And he said, "We're looking for the next Director of the National Science Foundation. And I've got a list of people here whose names have come to our attention. And it's kind of a long list, so we're trying to whittle it down. Would you have any interest in the job? If it came to a time when you'd need to express serious interest, are you interested enough you'd want to stay on the list? If not, I'll just cross you off." Enormously flattering kind of phone call. [laugh] Like, "You're here on a list of 150 people, and we're trying to whittle it down."

He was very polite, to be fair. It was more engaging than that. By that time, I'd been provost for seven years. And sure, I loved the job. But also, President George Rupp, had resigned. There'd been a conflict with the board and the cost of Rupp’s enhancement initiative was an issue from then on. We'd done a lot, fortunately. And Rice still benefits from Rupp’s enhancement program. I always feel good about that. But at that point it wasn't clear where Rice was going. I thought, "Seven years as provost was enough anyway. A new president is going to come. He or she needs to choose their own team, including the provost." So, the timing was good. I told the White House staffer, "Sure, leave me on the list. I have great respect for the NSF and I’m very excited about the Clinton Administration." Both things were true. So, they left me on the list. Then, a lot of time went by, while they clearly were doing more checks. Finally, they were down to two people at the top of the list. An outstanding scientist whom I did not know, and me.

They called me again and asked if I'd be interested in being deputy director, at that point, telling me that they had somebody in mind for the director, and that person was interested. "So, what about the deputy director position?" I said, "Sure. It's a very important job. I have known deputy directors in the past. I would be happy to work with whoever is selected as the director." Then, more time passed, and the first person on the list pulled out for reasons I do not know, perhaps not yet ready to leave a very successful research career. So, the staffer said, "If nominated, would you be willing to accept the appointment as director?" And I said, "Sure." By that time, of course, I had talked with Joni, my wife, and the kids were all college age and up and gone by that time. So, it was an easy decision.

Zierler:

Another naive question: did you have any idea what you'd be getting into in terms of the confirmation process?

Lane:

Not really. You never quite know how bad it's going to be. But you know it can be a bit of a hurdle; there are all kinds of forms to fill out, and the FBI's going to do background checks. I had been interviewed by the FBI when somebody else was being considered for a high-level job. So, I'd had the experience on the FBI end, answering questions like, "Does this person live well beyond their means? Do they take drugs? Do you believe that they're involved in some plot to overthrow the government?" A predictable group of questions. I also had heard that the process takes a long time.

I was sent long forms to fill out – questioning everything in my life, everywhere I have lived, everything I have done, anybody I know, anything that could embarrass the President? Meanwhile, the FBI's going around asking my friends questions, and I heard from the friends, of course. All that happens before the President sends the nomination to the Senate. He first announces his “intent to nominate,” which starts the background checks and allows time to hear reactions from people inside government and outside government. In my case, apparently, he was satisfied, so he sent the official nomination over to the Senate.

And then, the Senate has its own forms to fill out. I don't know what other kinds of checking they do. Normally, the candidate would have a hearing, but because of other business going on in the Senate or no concerns been raised about my nomination, I didn't have a hearing. One day, at the close of business, I was confirmed. It took a while though to get through the whole process. I can't remember the exact dates now, but it was months.

Zierler:

Either before or after your confirmation, were you in contact with Walter Massey at all?

Lane:

I certainly talked with Walter before I showed up at the NSF, but I don't remember how many times. I didn't talk with many people prior to the President's public announcement. I felt I should just keep it close. I knew enough about NSF to know that I would be happy with the job. So, I didn't need to sit with Walter and say, "OK, tell me all the bad things about the job." I was just going to take the job, whatever the problems. I knew that there would always be problems. I had known Walter over the years as a fellow physicist. I'd always had great admiration for him and, of course, was very anxious to hear whatever he wanted to tell me about the NSF and its staff. But I don't think we had that conversation until my name was announced.

Zierler:

Before we get into some nitty-gritty inside politics type questions, I'd like to ask at the outset, sort of a more lofty question, which is, over the course of your career, for you personally, for so many of your colleagues, for countless post-docs, the NSF really made the difference to allow research, to get people onto the next stage of their career. Was that something that was personally meaningful to you in a way that you wanted to translate into the kind of director you wanted to be, the kind of programs you wanted to support, the kinds of people you wanted to champion in this very special role?

Lane:

I don't know that I had focused on that during the period of thinking about the job, filling out forms, and all that sort of thing. But that aspect of NSF certainly influenced me in two ways. Going into the position, it was definitely important that I already had a special respect for the National Science Foundation and what NSF does that other agencies don't necessarily do. I'd always viewed it as a different kind of an agency because of its focus on education and the development of human resources in science, mathematics and engineering. And I had personally benefitted from the fellowships. I'm sure that influenced how I felt about the NSF when I arrived there as director.

The second way I was influenced came after I got there and began to understand more about how the place worked. I became increasingly concerned about the importance of not just NSF, but all the federal agencies, doing a better job of integrating research, that kind of creative activity with education, with teaching and learning. I had long felt that we didn’t do that very well in many universities, including the ones I'd been associated with. There was research on one side, and then there was teaching. It’s true that the instructor is more current in the field because he or she is active in research but so much of the translation of knowledge occurs in the laboratory with students and faculty working side by side. Universities can’t provide that for most of their undergraduates. That was definitely on my mind. And I talked a lot about the importance of integrating teaching and research in my early days at NSF, in testimonies, speeches, and so forth.

And we emphasized some of those ideas as we made programmatic changes and the messaging we did to describe our goals as an agency, what made us unique at the National Science Foundation. I have always felt that the integration of teaching and research is a complex matter, a very nonlinear process, and as a federal agency you can't, or shouldn’t force it. I certainly didn’t want to mess up the grant program, which is focused on intellectual merit, by piling restrictions and constraints on top. The one thing we did do, which was pretty controversial, was to include a “broader impacts” criterion to the review criteria. That was done on my watch, working with the National Science Board.

Zierler:

A kind of specific question, but one that might also give a sort of broad sense about the budgetary environment, not only at the NSF, but the Clinton Administration's support for science in general: I've heard the possibility that the Clinton Administration understood that funding the Space Station and the SSC was a binary decision. In other words, it was going to be one or the other. Do you have any particular insight on that?

Lane:

No, I really don't. The decision to shut down the SSC, following the Senate vote, was done before I had joined the Clinton administration. It happened in the interval between me being informed that I was being considered for the NSF position but before I went to Washington. I had to step off of the SSC board as soon as I knew I would likely have a federal role. I resigned from all the boards and committees that I was serving on at that time. I had been elected president of the national Sigma Xi honor society, and I had to step down from that role as well. News of the SSC cancellation hit me hard, like it did many other physicists. It was a terrible mistake, in my view. And I don't personally know how hard the Clinton Administration really fought to keep it. I had the impression from others and subsequent descriptions that the answer was not very hard. But I don't have any direct experience, and I was never privy to inside information.

I think at that time, a couple of things needed to happen. The Secretary of Energy, of course, needed to be very positive about the project. And it's not clear she really was. The second thing was that we were anticipating a billion dollars from Japan, and we understood that President Bush was going to make that request on his trip to Tokyo. He did not make that request, and the billion dollars did not show up. The lack of significant international buy-in had to be significant in the decision.

Zierler:

We talked earlier about the impact of Sputnik on US government support of science. On the other side of that historical narrative, from your vantage point in the early days as Director of NSF, what was your sense of the impact of the end of the Cold War on federal support for science generally?

Lane:

I think it was considerable. You can see it in the budgets. It wasn't just NSF; it was the whole federal government. The biggest hit was to federal funding of development activities, which came down sharply after the end of the Apollo program. At the peak of Apollo, federal funding of research and development was almost 2% of GDP. And total national investment - public and private - in R&D was almost 3% of GDP. The federal government was funding twice as much R&D as the private sector. Since then, it's been totally reversed. Federal government now funds less than 25% of the total national R&D investment. The comparisons with research are not so stark, but it's certainly true that research funding, basic and applied, came down following the Apollo period. Just not as sharply as development.

In recent decades, federal R&D spending has stood at about 4% of the total federal budget and under 1% of GDP. And federal funding of basic research has been 0.2% of GDP ever since the waning days of the Cold War. Applied research has been funded at about the same fraction of GDP. The funding has had little wiggles and a few bumps, for example, the stimulus following the crash of 2008 and the earlier five-year doubling of the NIH budget, but then the funding fell back down again. It's a shame that research funding has stagnated, because the US is now suffering because it did not sustain its earlier priority placed on research and development. Many of us have been writing reports about that. I’ve been talking to as many members of Congress as I can about that issue, joined by Norm Augustine, the retired CEO and Chairman of Lockheed Martin, based on a report that we worked on together for the National Academies and Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy.

Returning to your question about the Cold War, the coming down of the Berlin wall led to the shifting of national priorities, for the general public as well as the federal government. The country began to focus on environmental issues, clearly important, and medicine and healthcare. The U.S. was particularly concerned about those things and we were no longer afraid of the Soviet Union. Research, then was no longer a high priority; nor was it a low priority. Federal research funding just began to track overall discretionary spending, as well as the GDP.

Zierler:

How did you develop relations with key people in the White House such as Jack Gibbons?

Lane:

I knew Jack Gibbons a little from his time heading up the Office of Technology Assessment. He had led that agency for a long time and really had an extraordinary record of accomplishment. Some of the OTA reports were controversial. That's why the Republicans in Congress shut it down. I chaired one of their panels focused on education at one point, and I met him at that time. But we didn't have a close relationship. After his move into the White House, I don't remember having any interaction with him until I bubbled up on the NSF list. And then, we talked, of course, and Jack first introduced me to Vice President Al Gore, prior to President Clinton’s announcement of my nomination to be NSF director. After that, I always had good relations with Jack Gibbons. He was a key go-to person for me in my role as director of NSF. So, once you get there, and start doing that job, you really do need a champion in the White House.

NSF is a small independent agency, even today, with a budget of about $8.5 billion, and it was only $2.5 billion when I came into the job. The NSF director’s relationship with the White House is critically important, and the person in the White House who can get you in to see the President is his science advisor. I never made that request while I was NSF director, but I did see the Vice President when I thought things weren't being handled right. And Jack Gibbons was the person to make that happen. He was also a great person to work with.

Zierler:

Who were some of your key points of contact at OMB, and how vital was it to have direct lines of communication at OMB and not necessarily to go through the White House?

Lane:

We were careful at NSF to work through our budget examiners in OMB and rarely tried to go around them, higher up the chain. So, I don't recall giving a call to the head of OMB, and I don't remember who it would've been when I first came to NSF. By the time I got to the White House, the OMB director was Jack Lew, an extraordinary person to work with. In my OSTP job, I had a lot of interaction with Jack and other OMB officials. But when I was at NSF, I don't recall an interaction with the Director of OMB. It's tricky business. It's different for a small, independent agency than it is for a cabinet-level agency or executive department. And I know that even they are careful. Clearly, the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of Energy will have many interactions directly with the Director of OMB. That's less the case, of course, with agencies embedded in these large executive departments like NOAA in Commerce or NIH in HHS, as well as independent agencies like NSF.

Zierler:

Who were some of the other key federal science agencies that were important for you to get to know their leaders to help you execute your mission at NSF?

Lane:

The Office of Science, a part of the Department of Energy, supports a considerable amount of research, and their grant process is very similar to the way NSF does business. So, it was important to work with the Department of Energy, and cooperation was particularly important to high energy and nuclear physics. NSF supports university groups in high energy physics and nuclear physics. But the Department of Energy provides much more support in these fields than NSF, in part because DOE has responsibility for funding the facilities, for example accelerators at Fermilab, Brookhaven, SLAC in those days. DOE also supports scientists and experimental facilities at Oak Ridge, and Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and others. The place where most NSF-DOE cooperation occurs is funding academic researchers, at the program level, where the program NSF officers in physics often have almost day-to-day interactions with their counterparts at Department of Energy.

The same is true for NSF program officers in astronomy and astrophysics, who have very close working relationships with their counterparts at NASA. Interagency cooperation is important for a number of reasons, for example it enables agencies to keep up with what the other agencies are emphasizing, but also, it's a way to be confident you know who's funding whom. The principle investigators of grants are required to disclose in their proposals any other agencies they're submitting proposals to or who might be providing funding. But it's good that the program officers exchange information. Also, there are occasions when NSF and another agency such as DOE are funding different researchers working on the same project, as I mentioned happens in high-energy physics.

The agencies also need advice from the research community. The High Energy Physics Advisory Committee, HEPAP, initially reported only to DOE, then began offering advice to NSF. The Nuclear Physics Advisory Committee, a parallel committee, also working with both federal agencies, provides advice from the outside that's critically important to priority-setting by both NSF and Department of Energy. I think that without those kinds of relationships, it would've been difficult to get NSF support for the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, at CERN. I believe that it was unprecedented for the United States to make that kind of commitment of federal funds to CERN, or any foreign laboratory for that matter. The U.S. was not only funding detector development, but DOE actually was funding accelerator development. I think most of the hardware supported by DOE has been made in the U.S. and contracted out to the companies doing the work.

That happened after I had moved from NSF to the White House. But it’s a good example of the close working relationship at the program level. Sometimes upper levels of the agency hierarchy can help by ironing out road bumps or potholes that get in the way, and smoothing cooperation, essentially, help the program officers do what they want to get done. I felt I had good relations with the people at DOE and NASA. I spent quite a lot of time with Dan Goldin, who was Administrator of NASA at that time, on various aspects of the programs important to NSF and NASA. In fact, we went together to China. My first trip to China – his as well, I think – was on his NASA plane, joined by Mary Good, who was Under Secretary of Technology at that time, and Martha Krebs, who ran the Office of Science at DOE. We toured China’s research facilities and met with Chinese officials as part of a science diplomacy mission. I had some interactions with the heads of NOAA, US Geological Survey, Army, Navy, Air Force research offices, as well as DARPA – I can't remember if it was ARPA or DARPA at that time – and NIST. I recall that Arati Prabhakar was head of NIST. We had a very close working relationship, and we had good connections with the Pentagon. At one point we had a big problem, and I needed the help of the Air Force. Anita Jones was head of defense research at that time, and she was extraordinarily helpful. It's really important to have collegial relationships with your counterparts across government. Some of us would get together for lunch every so often. It was off the record, not official, just sharing our latest problems.

And sometimes, my latest problem, they can solve. It's just remarkable. If you've established a rapport and trust at that level. We had a lunch meeting every month or every couple of weeks with Jack Gibbons, the president’s science advisor at the time, myself, Arati Prabhakar, Mary Good, maybe Anita Jones as well. It would be a different mix of us over time. I got a lot of problems solved that way.

Zierler:

What were some of the key activities of the National Science Board? And as Director, did you find their input useful for where you wanted to take the NSF?

Lane:

Well, we didn't always agree on where things ought to go. And so, it's very important to be able to work together because the National Science Board does have a level of authority that other advisory committees don't have. According to the statutes, the National Science Board shares policymaking authority with the director. So, the director needs to work well with the National Science Board. And having said that, there have been periods of tension, and, historically, sometimes it worked better than other times because the Director is a full-time job, and the National Science Board isn't. And as Director, you don't want the National Science Board managing your organization and getting involved in the nitty-gritty of grant-making. On the other hand, you do need their advice, and you need their agreement on major policies, like the annual budget that NSF sends to the President each year, and the approval of large grants, cooperative agreements, construction projects such as building new telescopes, LIGO, or phasing in new programs, changing the review criteria, which I referred to earlier – major policy decisions.

And there's no sharp dividing line. That kind of has to be negotiated. But the director has to work with the Board. Now, was I glad I had a board? Yes. Every single day? Well, maybe not. I found the board to be helpful for several reasons. One, there was continuity. There were people who'd been on the board a long time, some appointed by Ronald Reagan, and reappointed for a second term. Others were first appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush. And then, while I was there, there were new Clinton appointees. So, we had a real range of philosophies and experience. Some members of the Board knew much more about the NSF than I did when I arrived. So that can be valuable. And also, the Board brings different perspectives.

The board operates under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, which requires that most business be carried out in open session, except for the budget and certain other items, which are protected from public disclosure. Sometimes, differences of opinion would be aired in open session that I would have preferred be discussed in private. But those are judgement calls.

One other thing about the board is particularly important. There can be difficult times when a director needs them at your back. Sometimes, NSF is doing something that Congress does not like, and you've got some members of Congress all over you- you’re between a rock and a hard place. On the other hand, you have established policies, even law. But you've also got political pressure. And you have to make a decision - you really need the board's support at critical times like that. Because that's all the political protection you've got. Of course, you report to the President. And, in principle, the President could get involved, but the President's got a lot on his plate. Many things to worry about, a long list of priorities. You kind of have to get yourself out of trouble. And the board can be very helpful.

Zierler:

If you remember, there was a Future of the NSF commission that you inherited. It was completed, I think, before you became director. Was that useful to you? Did it constrain what you wanted to do at all? What was your response to that?

Lane:

It was useful, and I don't remember it being constraining. I don't remember the particulars of the report, but it was very visionary, far-reaching. It involved changes in the direction the NSF was going. As I recall, it was much more about how NSF should deal with the present situation, what's going on right now with the Endless Frontier Act. NSF is being asked to focus more directly on fixing the ails of society, paying more attention to what society needs, be more involved in the translation of research results to what the private sector uses. I don’t think the report laid out in detail what we see in the bills right now. I think the board was not totally receptive to the report. I didn’t hear board members saying, "We're behind this report 100%." Quite the opposite.

The board at that time held a pretty conservative view about the National Science Foundation, what its job was and whether it should change fast or slow. It valued staying with the NSF traditions. By that, I don't mean funding the same things over and over again, I just mean proceeding with deliberation, keeping a focus on the most fundamental work, and recompeting every so often, and respecting the importance of open competition. That's NSF’s tradition in maintaining excellence, it's how the agency ensures that it is supporting the best people. The board was very much behind NSF’s long-held traditions, about taking deliberative steps, keeping the focus on what had made NSF such a respected agency, and not transforming NSF into something else. I haven't read that report since then, and it has been a long time, but I'm remembering a kind of climate around Board discussions when I arrived.

That’s why I said that the report was not constraining. In later years, it ended up being helpful because it did lay out some challenges that the NSF continues to face, as more attention is given to national needs and NSF funding, also reflecting how science, engineering and technology have evolved. But you'd have to talk to my successors about that. When I arrived at NSF, I found not just the report, but also concerns of Senator Barbara Mikulski, who was chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee that had jurisdiction over NSF. At that time, it was the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee, which in addition to VA and HUD, dealt with NSF, NASA, FEMA, and some other agencies. NSF seems to always be in the “wrong subcommittee,” when it comes to appropriations. I quickly learned that Senator Mikulski, who was always a strong supporter of NSF and NASA, had very strong views about how NSF needed to change, and, I think, change in a way that aligned more with the Board’s report on the future.

She wanted NSF to be reorganized, more like NIH, where the institutes are aligned with particular diseases. She had in mind directorates of biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology and so forth. She was not saying that basic research should no longer be funded, in fact, she always said the opposite. I think she felt that a new organization would help her increase NSF’s funding, making it easier to convince members of the subcommittee and others in Congress by showing the research was clearly relevant to all these technologies, which were important to people. It would not just be a sales pitch. Basic research, of course, does pay off in real terms, but it often takes time. Research being supported, let's say, in basic biological sciences ultimately stands a chance, sometimes a very good chance, of being impactful in biotechnology, the whole industry, including pharma and other health sectors. Much of the research NSF supports proves information and tools used by the biomedical researchers that NIH supports. There are examples of grants that were funded for one reason, namely to uncover some mystery of nature, and ended up being extraordinarily important in medicine. Senator Mikulski continued to be a champion for NSF and we got along well. But I had a tough time for a while. It took a whole year to work through her concerns.

Zierler:

Did you resist her calls for reorganization, and did you interpret some of these things as being critical of your leadership?

Lane:

Yes, and no. I did resist, and it definitely was testing my leadership, but I'd just arrived at NSF. So, I was able to say “Mea Culpa, I'm just learning how things are working here." Comments I made were reported by “Science Magazine” – I don’t think I was misquoted but it was more a matter of context. But the article got me in real trouble. Science reporter Jeff Mervis caught me right outside after I had my first meeting with her, and I was too candid. I don’t recall saying anything negative – certainly nothing critical of the Senator - just described how I thought the meeting went. And he reported, in his words, how the meeting went. Essentially, his article was interpreted as, "New NSF director tells the junior senator from Maryland to stuff it"–well, it didn't go well. First of all, I don’t think she liked being called the junior senator from Maryland, especially given that she was chair of a key appropriations subcommittee, and the implications of the article were wrong, at least in my view.

With the rough start, my legislative people had to help me, and it took a while. I was not going to reorganize the National Science Foundation. But it turned out to be a good time to write a strategic plan that incorporated many of the ideas she was talking about, not by reorganizing in any sweeping way, but rather by building some new structure within the agency that didn't exist before, interdisciplinary programs of various kinds. It was also time to review the merit criteria whereby all the grants decisions are made and making any necessary clarification or revision. The National Science Board is involved in all major policy decisions and the Board was very involved in the review of the review criteria. We did make some important changes. We made a number of changes that we felt were important and prudent. In the end, Senator Mikulski was satisfied that we had taken her concerns seriously. Years later, during my last NSF hearing, she wished me well, blew me a kiss, as I was moving over to the White House. A kiss from Senator Barbara Mikulski is a moment to remember.

I’ll say little more about these incidents. My NSF legislative staff were key to helping me resolve this problem, saying, "Let's take our time to respond. When you've got your arguments lined up what it is you're going to do, we’ll schedule a meeting with Senator Mikulski in her Maryland office, where she's more relaxed, rather than her DC office on the Hill, where buzzers are going off and people are coming and going." That’s what we did, and it was a good, cordial meeting. Then, my NSF folks, working with her subcommittee staff, worked out a plan for my next formal hearing with her subcommittee, where I was given time to really lay out in detail NSF’s new strategic plan. She then responded by saying something like, "Dr. Lane, I am simply floored, or amazed, with what you've accomplished." The event was all orchestrated. But I think it was clear from our response that we took her concerns seriously, indeed they were prescient, in a way, because NSF has done a lot more in subsequent years to address changes that were occurring in science and has done a better job of communicating the impact of what NSF does, bridging some gaps.

Zierler:

You said before that you would go on occasion directly to Vice President Gore. Was that specific to science and technology issues on the basis that Vice President Gore was understood to be the administration's point person on those issues?

Lane:

Yes. I knew that the right way to approach the White House with an NSF issue was through Vice President Gore. One had to do with budget disagreement I was having with OMB. I first raised my concern with Jack Gibbons; in fact, I had that conversation with him during our NASA flight to China. I told Jack my problem, and he agreed it was a serious matter and said he would request a meeting for me with Al Gore. Because the level of difficulty was something that would be hard to deal with unless Gore entered in. My disagreement with OMB had to do with an OMB computer modeling exercise to provide options for President Clinton to make some budget reductions. But the model was just unrealistic with a capital U. Maybe it was just a first draft model, but it projected NSF to be cut by 5% the first year, 10% the next year, 15% the next year, or something like that. There were two things I was sure of: First, I was confident that these cuts were not going to happen in real life. OMB was just giving President Clinton some idea of what might be the effect of large budget cuts. This was happening during that difficult period after Republicans took control of both the Senate and House, and Newt Gingrich was the new Speaker. The big government shutdown occurred as a part of that. I’m sure that President Clinton was trying to figure out how to work with Speaker Gingrich and Senator Dole to get a budget agreement and the OMB exercise was part of that. But, the second thing that I felt strongly about was that you don't ever want to be on any spreadsheet with a 5, 10, 15, 20% cut, no matter what kind of exercise it is. So, I wanted to get in early and get that changed. Indeed, we got help as a result of that meeting with the Vice President. And of course, Jack Gibbons was key working it all out.

Zierler:

Do you remember the origins of the '94 report, “Science and the National Interest”? Were you a part of that? And was it significant long term, do you think?

Lane:

The origins really were MRC – pronounced “Marcy” – Greenwood. She had been recruited by Jack Gibbons and came in as OSTP associate director for science. When she arrived, the Clinton-Gore Administration had already issued a policy document called “Science and Technology in the National Interest,” with a big focus on technology. I had not been involved in putting that together. I think it was her view that science was getting short shrift in that document, and that it was important for the Clinton administration to get out a message about science.

She convinced Jack Gibbons, who was always supportive of science, to put something out about science. But the White House is a busy place and there is competition for ideas and time. Everybody's got something they want done. The Director of OSTP has to make choices, set priorities. MRC pushed this very hard, I’m sure, arguing that the Clinton Administration needs to put out a report, which became “Science in the National Interest.” And then, she got together a small writing group, consisting of myself, Harold Varmus, then director of NIH, and Ernie Moniz, in the role of a consultant, to sit down and draft a document. We had a number of meetings, drafted the document, put it through several edits, and got it out. That's the origin of “Science in the National Interest.”

Zierler:

You mentioned Frank Press before. In 1995, he issued a National Academies report on the importance of science funding and better prioritization. Do you recall that report having a particular impact?

Lane:

I recall the report. I don't know about the impact. I, myself, was not so positive about the report's recommendation that the United States set priorities by deciding which area of science or science and technology should be number one, where we should be the best in the world, and which areas we need not be number one but should be among the leaders. When I think about the report now, it was a very thoughtful, rational approach to what's realistic in a world where everybody's investing in science and technology and discoveries being made in all parts of the world. And of course, that was well before China was in the game. But Japan, countries of Europe, and Australia, Canada, and other nations were strong in science and technology. So, from an academic point of view, or even a rational one, it was, I think, a strong report. At the time, I wasn’t happy with it because I figured that if you say you're going to be number two in something, you can be darn sure you're going to end up being number two, and you're likely to be wrong in deciding which areas of science to choose. Also, I’m sure I was worried about how members of Congress might react, when they were making budget decisions.

So, I think I was not very receptive in discussions with Frank and his committee. Actually, it was a thoughtful report, and made sense, especially in more recent times. But I'm not aware that it had a big impact. Few reports have immediate impact at the time, but often they do have influence over the long term. In this country, there is no consistent mechanism for setting priorities and no national plan for science and technology. The exceptions, perhaps, could be World War II or the space program, following Sputnik, leading up to Apollo. But in recent decades there has been no sustained effort to plan. It's not part of what OMB does, or Congress, for that matter. It doesn't get done in the White House. OSTP could think about long-range strategic planning for S&T, but then what would you do with it if you came up with a good plan? When the President sends his budget over to the Congress, it generally doesn't contain a national science and technology plan. I've argued for some kind of planning mechanism for decades, in every report that I've had anything to do with. With Congress, it's even worse. What would Congress do with a national plan on science and technology? Science, all R&D, is split up into all these different subcommittees and lines, often buried away in deep levels in agency budgets. And then, in the end, the budget is usually a big political fight. And if your agency is in an appropriations subcommittee where the allocation is too small, then even if the subcommittee wants to add more funding for R&D, they can’t do much for your agency. It makes no sense. It's the wrong way to do business, but it's the American way.

I do want to be sure that I credit Frank Press and his colleagues for their efforts to insert priority setting into federal policy. I think those efforts were important and they should continue. We all need to participate, write reports, see if we can wake people up, and maybe, over time, we can change the American system into one that actually looks forward. And I would say that if we don't do that in the next several years, we're likely to be starting to go out of business, at least set well back. With China's scale and the pace at which it's advancing in S&T and overall economy, there's no way we can catch up once we fall behind. China and other countries won't send us their brightest and best young people anymore, and we won't have the economic strength or the skilled workers, especially scientists and engineers, to support the nation’s leadership in S&T. I don't say it that strongly in public, I just say that there's a real threat and danger there. These are perilous times for America. Several of us, working with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Rice University’s Baker Institute, wrote a report called “The Perils of Complacency: America at a Tipping Point in Science and Engineering.” The purpose was to try to wake people up. We in this country have to change the way we govern and do business. And I don't quite see that happening yet. But maybe with the Biden administration, we can make some progress; and there are signs in Congress that some Democrats and Republicans are starting to get it. Can they really change the system? Anyway, I've jumped way ahead.

Zierler:

One of the problems that always plagues American politics and funding is parochialism. The advocacy of particular science programs in the case of the NSF that are of limited benefit, except for a particular place, like, for example, the Green Bank radio telescope that was later named for Senator Byrd. To what extent was parochialism something that you had to deal with as NSF Director?

Lane:

I think I was lucky. NSF directors have had to deal with parochialism through the years. There aren't many cases, maybe none, where you would say NSF's budget was earmarked in the ways that many other agencies have been for decades. I was lucky in two ways. First, I found members of Congress to be very careful with NSF. The second was that earmarking was on a downslope during part of the time I was at NSF. When you think about it, after the Gingrich revolution, following the election of '94, when the leadership of both houses shifted to Republican control, you had leaders in the Congress, both houses, who were focused on the federal budget deficits. Of course, the deficits were actually going down. But Republicans were talking a lot about the national debt and using that argument to get government spending down.

So, it would have been hard for them to put in a lot of earmarks at the same time they're saying we need to cut the budget. So, I think the climate for earmarks was somewhat different. I wasn’t at NSF during the Green Bank episode, so I can't say how those discussions went. I don't think I ever looked into how the decisions were made and why. But certainly, Senator Byrd, caring about the Green Bank Telescope, would have been influential. Whether he actually earmarked the NSF budget, I don't think so. But again, that happened before I came. In my case, while earmarks were off the table, there were plenty of pressures. For example, when we decided that NSF could no longer fund more than four supercomputer centers, that meant that, following a full-scale review of all the centers, a couple had to be phased out. The members of Congress in those states were not at all happy and were being lobbied by the universities, and in some cases, industry.

I had some tough hearings over those decisions, but NSF stood its ground. It's an example where the board is extremely helpful. First, of course, you've got to do rigorous peer reviews before making any decisions. Then approval of the board is required before those decisions are finalized, and the board will stand by the final outcome. A second example of Congress weighing in on a specific decision was when NCAR, National Center for Atmospheric Research, proposed to upgrade their computer facilities; they put out an RFP and a Japanese company won the bid. The company promised high performance at lower cost than the competitor bidders and was selected as the winner of the bid. When the winner was announced, I heard from a very powerful member of Congress, who had gotten complaints from his constituents that the award was unfair, and I needed to cancel the purchase. But NSF and NCAR had followed the procedures and there appeared to be nothing improper about the decision. I had no legal basis to cancel it. The U.S. had no “buy America” policy. On the other hand, this member of Congress was in a position to cut the NSF budget.

Of course, he never threatened to do that. But he was very clear in a face-to-face meeting that he felt very strongly about this particular issue. My takeaway was "Thank you for coming. So, we'll see what you do." I felt that I was really between a rock and a hard place. There was the law on one side; NSF could be sued if I cancelled the contract. Besides that, the proposal to upgrade the NCAR computer, hence the metrics that would be used in the purchasing decision, had gone through peer review. Then, at one of our regular lunches, I talked with Mary Good, who was Under Secretary of Technology in the Department of Commerce at the time. She said, "This may be a case of dumping,” selling below cost, which would not be allowed. She offered to look into the matter.

She said that normally, such investigations are done after the purchase, and if the company is found to be guilty of dumping, they pay a big fine. But she indicated that they might be able to accelerate the investigation. And that still wouldn’t give NSF any legal grounds to cancel the purpose, but I stated that if the Commerce Department were to find that this was an example of the machine being dumped on the US, the order would be canceled. The risk was that the company could still sue us. Commerce did find it was an example of dumping, the order was cancelled, and we weren’t sued. NCAR, most likely, lost years in terms of upgrading their climate modeling capability. There are prices you pay when these things happen. I think, perhaps, that the modelers were encouraged to move more in the direction of parallel processing, rather than running big codes on big vector mainframes. The rewritten codes run on different hardware now, so it's a different world of computing. But this is another example of how NSF can get political pressure. I also got pressured to cancel a small grant just because a member of Congress didn't like it. It was a grant made to two political scientists who wanted to understand why people don't run for public office. And they did the usual thing—surveyed a large number of people, asking them questions like: "Why do you think people are not running for office? And do you know people you think might be better than your incumbent?" It quickly sounded like a dirty tricks campaign, and I began to get calls from members of Congress, who were really angry. Not only did they think this was an effort to get them out of office, but the NSF was funding it for some reason. It was a really horrible time. And I got dragged down to the Hill and told in no uncertain terms, "You've got to cancel this grant." The person who helped me on that was former Congressman George Brown, who was a long-time chairman of the House Science Committee, but was no longer Chairman, since Republicans had taken over the leadership. but he was still on the committee and was respected by members of both parties. George Brown was a Congressman from California and a good friend of science. He actually had earned a bachelor's degree in physics. And he knew what NSF was all about, how peer review worked, and so forth. He talked with his colleagues, explained that this was not a dirty tricks campaign. NSF didn't cancel the grant. I wasn't going to cancel it anyway. I would have gone home first.

Zierler:

Another question on the LHC. You mentioned earlier how remarkable it was that the United States was funding a non-American project. I wonder if part of that was by not thinking of the obvious fact that with the cancelation of the SSC, CERN was the only game not just in town, but on the whole planet.

Lane:

I think that was increasingly true. Fermilab was still in business with its collider, but the next big machine was not going to happen in the United States. The handwriting was on the wall. U.S. particle physicists were leaders in the field and at the top of their game – that’s continued to be true. But they weren't going to have the next machine on U.S. soil. So, with the advice of HEPAP and the desire on the part of the high energy program people at DOE and NSF to support American physicists, there was a push for U.S. investments in the LHC. It was a struggle in congress, before funding was finally approved, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner made a trip to CERN to question the CERN leaders intensely in ways that only he can do, letting them know who's in charge and making sure he was satisfied with the arrangements being made.

That meant, being able to tell his constituents and his fellow members of Congress that the US would benefit substantially from doing this. US scientists had been working in CERN for many years, participating in detector design and construction and research that followed, so we had a long-standing relationship with CERN. But I don’t believe that we'd never funded part of an accelerator, which is clearly a fixed part of the CERN infrastructure. You can't go back next year and take it back. "Here are our ten magnets. You can't have them any longer." So, it was a different level of international cooperation and cost-sharing, at least for the U.S. and CERN. It was also the case that the US had essentially given up its leadership as a builder of high energy physics machines, while it still had a large community of experimental particle physicists. Of course, all this happened after I had gone from NSF to OSTP.

Zierler:

Let's move on to LIGO. You, as Director of NSF, supported LIGO during a very critical period in its long history. What was your involvement in that, and what were some of your specific motivations in making sure that LIGO was sustained?

Lane:

LIGO, over time, has been supported by many directors. So, I just happened to be there at a particular time. Every director had to make some kind of decision related to LIGO. For example, directors following me had to decide on operating budgets and the upgrade of LIGO. So, I want to make clear that LIGO is not Neal's thing in any sense. This was one area, though, where my earlier time at NSF really helped me, personally. Because when I spent a year as director of the physics division back in 1979-80, the physics division was supporting Kip Thorne and Rai Weiss and others in early stage R&D. NSF’s physics division had decided to invest in experimental as well as theoretical studies of gravitational waves. And of course, at that time no experiments had detected gravitational waves.

It was very early in the process. But I learned a little bit about gravitational physics and about what visionaries like Kip Thorne and Rai Weiss could foresee being possible many years in the future if NSF would be willing to stay the course. That was 1980, and I didn't come back to NSF until 1993. So, 13 years had gone by. The research – the theory and detector R&D – had continued to get better and NSF had fully reviewed a proposal to build the first LIGO detector and committed to funding its construction. Then, some management difficulties arose, as often is the case when you're starting a new laboratory. Construction of a large expensive facility, with well-defined deliverables and timeframe, is very different from R&D. It had become sufficiently difficult for the NSF to be accountable to Congress and the OMB on what progress was being made, whether the project could be completed on time and on budget, the typical sorts of questions that lead to cancellation of a construction of the project. When I arrived, construction had been stopped. I don't remember all the details, but everything was a hold. I personally was hoping that NSF could resolve the issues and go forward with LIGO. But I didn't know anything about the problems until I came on board as director.

Lane:

Once I had a chance to get the briefings, discussing with program staff and board members, find out what was wrong and what needed to be done, I was convinced that the problems were real but there was significant support for the project. I remember a phone call with the president of Caltech, which was managing the project, along with MIT. And I remember the conversation. It was cordial, but I had to say, "A lot of people want this project to go forward. It's important to NSF, it's important to your university. But I'm afraid, at this time, I don't see any way forward unless you're able to fix these management issues." Schedule, budget, the formation of an international collaboration and other things that were part of the agreement that NSF had with Caltech and MIT, the partner institution, were being questioned. To his credit, he made the necessary changes and recruited Barry Barish to be the new director.

I knew Barry; we’d served together on NSF’s physics division advisory committee in the 1970’s. Barry was an accomplished, highly respected high energy experimentalist who knew what a laboratory was all about. He was not a gravitational physicist, but he was a physicist, and he understood the physics and engineering needs and also knew how to manage large experimental projects. He agreed to take the job part-time because he wanted to keep his high energy physics going, which he did. He did an extraordinary job with LIGO. He brought in the talent that was necessary to get the project back on track. The new team delivered everything they'd committed to do, formed the international collaboration, and built the laboratory, consisting of detectors in Louisiana and Washington. And he was there for the first observation, the first direct detection of gravitational waves created by the collision of black holes. It was a wonderful success story. I just don't know if an agency could do something like that now. When LIGO was approved, it was not possible to promise, with any confidence, when the detectors might expect to first detect a gravitational wave.

The technology that they were talking about, I remember myself thinking, "This can't be possible. You're talking about detecting the motion of objects to a 10,000th of the diameter of a proton. I mean, really? Doesn’t quantum mechanics play a role here? And, what about vibrations from trucks driving down the road 1,000 miles away?" The LIGO team dealt with all those issues – they had the talent and the funding to make it happen. So yes, I feel really good about LIGO. And I think so do the other NSF directors and everyone else involved in the project.

Zierler:

In light of the 1995 Republican takeover of Congress, were you specifically concerned that LIGO might've been on the chopping block, and did you take any efforts to prevent that from happening?

Lane:

I worried about it, of course, because everything was on the chopping block. And we were funding other large projects. I wanted to rebuild the research station at the South Pole because I thought it wasn't efficient and was dangerous to some extent, even though NSF had taken every precaution to manage any risk to life and limb. But people live over the winter at the South Pole. If you're there, and a fire breaks out in your building or your complex, and you have to go outside, and the temperature is -90 Fahrenheit, you're finished. Can't build an ice house to live in and no kind of survival gear can handle those kinds of conditions. So that was one of my highest priorities. We had a number of construction projects on the list, and I was worried about all of them. But the NSF has outstanding people who understood how to sequence the different projects and their costs in such a way as to keep the appropriators and OMB happy. NSF had a reputation of doing what it set out to do.

And also, I didn’t find that the Republicans who assumed leadership positions were negative about basic science. They understood the importance of having the federal government fund research that clearly the private sector wasn't going to fund because it was of little value to the company’s bottom line, in part because the researcher couldn’t promise to deliver a discovery anytime soon. Leading Democrats and Republicans were supportive and on that topic I found it easy to get along with everybody in Congress. There were no strictly partisan divides when it came to funding basic research. The fact that LIGO was clearly basic – there was no sense that LIGO was going to produce a widget and make a trillion dollars – meant that NSF was not guilty of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Congress, Republicans in particular, were focused on cutting the budget overall, so NSF’s challenge was to work LIGO into the budget during a time of budget cutting.

Zierler:

To continue with the theme of the Republican takeover, it almost seems counterintuitive, but did you see, in some ways, Newt Gingrich as an ally to maintain NSF's budget?

Lane:

He considered himself an ally. I disagreed with Newt Gingrich on pretty much everything including the fact that he was set on cutting government, both spending and the size of government. But that was not my business as NSF Director. My business as NSF Director was the agency and the things we were funding. And Gingrich always said publicly that he really liked science and technology. And I know for a fact, at least I was told by the chairman of my appropriations subcommittee, a wonderful member of Congress named Jerry Lewis, Republican from California, that Gingrich at one point called in his subcommittee chairs and said, "We're going to cut government, but I want you to protect science." I think we were treated better than many other parts of government and maybe even better than some science agencies during that period, but we did get cut. It was a very difficult time. None of us enjoyed the government shutdown in the winter of 1995-96.

Zierler:

What do you think the long-term impact was of the elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment, and did you take any specific steps to try that prevent that from happening?

Lane:

I was at NSF at that time, and Jack Gibbons was Science Advisor. I don't remember which year OTA was written out of the budget. Do you remember?

Zierler:

I think it was '96.

Lane:

So, I'd been at NSF about three years, and Jack Gibbons, a former OTA director, had been at OSTP about the same length of time. And it wasn't until two years later that I went to the White House. So, I was totally focused on NSF. I wouldn’t have been involved in the OTA issue. When I went to Congress for meetings or testimony, I would've been talking about NSF, budgets or programs or whatever a member of Congress or committee wanted to know about. I would never have presumed to talk about a non-NSF issue, even if I were concerned about it. Of course, I thought elimination of OTA was a mistake, and of course, Jack Gibbons was devastated when it happened. OTA was the only agency that Congress had to give them objective, impartial, nonpartisan advice on science and technology, and they killed it. They didn't deauthorize it, they just no longer appropriated money, so it couldn’t operate. OTA still exists on the books and still has statutory authority, but it's just never been funded since that time. I think Congress has definitely missed OTA through the years. Some members didn't like some of the reports that came out. You can just imagine how Republicans felt about reports on environmental issues, climate change, education, underrepresentation of minorities. There may have been other objections, including some from Democrats as well as Republicans who didn't like the reports or wanted them out faster. Several members of Congress have tried to reinstate funding but so far OTA is inoperative, and I think they need it.

I think the Congressional Research Office tries to fill in as best they can with very useful reports, but those reports aren't analytic. They're really more in terms of, "Here's the data, here's what it says, here's how this part of government works, functions." So that's not quite the same thing as OTA was doing. The GAO also helps, brought in some additional people to help with science and technology, but the GAO is mainly focused on accountability, and regulatory authority, and things like that.

Zierler:

Were you involved in President Clinton's proposal for the 21st Century Research Fund?

Lane:

Yeah, a little bit. I'd been pushing inside the White House for more funding for research, Not just NSF, but DOE, NASA, NIH, all the R&D funding agencies. I was less concerned about NIH, because when I got to the NSF in 1998, NIH was midway through its five-year doubling, and it was very clear that that was going to continue – the NIH budget was going to be doubled in five years. So, I didn't have to get involved much with the NIH doubling, except to support it. Of course, we assumed that after the doubling, the NIH budget would be put on a sustainable growth trajectory of 3, 4, 5% after that. I never imagined the bottom would fall out of NIH funding during the George W. Bush administration.

So, I think several of us, not just Neal, were pushing for more funding for research. And a couple of things were going on around that time. Somebody came up with the idea, I think from the tax side, of a tobacco tax to fund a special initiative called the 21st Century Research Fund. So, I think it started with the idea "Here's a way to get some new money, not just boost the appropriation." Ultimately, I don't recall the tobacco tax happening, but OMB put together a package to add research funding. Meanwhile, several of us were advocating a budget initiative on nanotechnology. I had highlighted that in my last hearing when I was leaving NSF, when I was asked, "Dr. Lane, what area of science do you see as providing the greatest breakthrough in the near future?" or something like that. I reworded the question a little bit, and then I said, "If I had to pick one, it would be nano-scale science and engineering." I don't think I used the word nanotechnology. I knew that the field was blossoming, based on research NSF and several other agencies were funding.

Research on nano-scale materials was also going on in the private sector, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, other companies, and many universities around the country were increasingly able to manipulate matter at the nanometer scale, size of a very large molecule. So, I had a feeling that the capacity was there to do a lot more with extra funding in that area. And I knew that some of the agency people – from NSF, DOE and other agencies – were working closely together, largely a result of the efforts of Mike Roco, who was an Engineering program director at the NSF. Mike was a strong advocate and was funding a lot of nano-scale research. He organized a committee of like-minded program people from several agencies. There was also a champion inside the White House, Tom Kalil, who dealt with technology issues for the National Economic Council. Tom reported to Gene Sperling, who was President Clinton's head of the National Economic Council and Chief Economic Advisor. Tom was very much a techie and very interested in nanotechnology. So, Mike Roco’s committee had a White House connection.

So, by the time I got to the White House, it was partially set up. Tom Kalil, who was a key person and Duncan Moore and others in OSTP were already thinking about nanotechnology. So, all I really needed to do was formally elevate the whole activity to the presidential level by issuing something called a Presidential Review Directive. That led to the idea to develop a budget initiative, which blended nicely with the 21st Century Research Fund. And under that umbrella, President Clinton put in his budget the largest dollar increase the NSF had ever gotten and significant increases for the other agencies. I viewed nanotechnology as important in itself, but also as a lever, a way to explain the need for a much larger investment in the physical sciences. I wasn't speaking negatively about biomedical research funding; it was going to be fine. I was pushing hard for the physical sciences, engineering and the non-medical life sciences.

Harold Varmus was very helpful to me during those White House discussions. Harold was director of NIH at that time, but he was very helpful in speaking up for the NSF and other agencies’ budgets. He probably could've walked away with all the additional money, but he didn't. He knew he would do well in Congress, but he also really understood that investments in basic research in physics, chemistry, materials, mathematics, computer science, all fields of engineering eventually pay off by contributing knowledge and technologies to biomedical research and medical devices downstream. He explained in public statements that if you don't fund the front end of that process, you're going to lose opportunities downstream.

Zierler:

Of course, NIH did double its budget as a result of this proposal. What lessons learned might there have been for other agencies that didn't fare so well from a budgetary perspective?

Lane:

Well, I think other agencies recognized that this was an extraordinary event for Congress. The chair of their appropriations subcommittee, Congressman John Porter just made it his priority to double the NIH budget. He told me later that had he had jurisdiction over NSF and other agencies, he would've doubled those research budgets as well. His subcommittee, which covered Health and Human Services, which contains NIH, and the Departments of Education and Labor, perhaps a few other things, did not have jurisdiction over the other research agencies. So, he could only double the NIH budget. NSF and other agencies understood about the limitations of subcommittee jurisdictions. We didn't have subcommittee chairs with that level of commitment, nor did any of us have a lobby behind us like NIH - public appeal, the pharmaceutical industry, big money and big companies. NIH is in a special place, and of course, NIH puts that support to good advantage. Given all that public and private sector support, and lobbying, it was a shock to all of us when the bottom fell out of the NIH budget at the end of the doubling period in 2003.

Zierler:

Just to take a break for a minute from budgetary conversation, you always prized the value, as NSF Director, of public outreach and science community. You made that a priority over the course of your tenure as NSF Director. Sort of philosophically, politically, what were your motivations in making this such a priority, and how did you execute this vision?

Lane:

That's an easy question to answer. I don't recall having such a philosophy, or learning from early experience, or Neal getting bright thoughts about the future of America and the world. What happened is that my speechwriters signed me up to give a speech at a meeting of the Arlington Rotary Club. I said, "I’m happy to give a speech. What do I talk about?" And so, one of my speechwriters, wonderful writer and poet named Patricia Garfinkel, who had been a speechwriter for Congressman George Brown, said, "One thing you could talk about is the idea of a “civic scientist,” a scientist, who, in addition to his or her responsibilities to discover new knowledge and inventions, takes time to engage with the public because most people, including policymakers and other professionals, don't know a lot about science."

An article came out under my name called The Arlington Rotary Club, and it said, essentially, "I've been invited to give a talk at the rotary club. What should I say?" There wasn't a lot of response, but that is how it started. She then wrote me a speech presenting this idea of the “civic scientist.” My message to the rotary club was not to convince them that this was an important thing to do, rather it was, "Scientists understand that it's really important for us to help the public understand why research is important, why it's appropriate to pay for it with taxpayer money. And we can do a much better job of that if there are more of us becoming civic scientists." Something like that. And so, the whole idea came out of a speechwriter's speech; and every time I've been asked about the civic scientist concept, I mention the role of Patricia Garfinkel and her advice as a speechwriter for an NSF director.

Zierler:

Did you see LIGO as enhancing NSF's overall portfolio in being a supporter of facilities?

Lane:

I didn't think of it that way. I knew LIGO was a much bigger project than NSF had traditionally supported. But by that time, NSF was already supporting one high energy physics lab, several nuclear physics laboratories around the country, cyclotrons, accelerators, some of which had been inherited from other agencies, e.g., the Office of Naval Research. NSF had funded telescopes for a long time and were very much involved in projects requiring international cooperation in astronomy. NSF had funded not only optical telescopes, but radio telescopes, Arecibo, for example, from early days. I think originally, Arecibo was funded by the Air Force, in an effort to probe the physics of the upper atmosphere, which was relevant to understanding the propagation of radio waves. That was the idea behind Arecibo. But then, it became clear that it would also function as a radio telescope, so the NSF began to support astronomy and atmospheric physics there. My point is that NSF was already funding large facilities. But the agency was funding these facilities through their divisions, in competition with their research grants, including small ones. In contrast to DOE, for example, NSF did not have a separate funding apparatus for large-scale instrumentation.

And that was starting to be a problem because the cost of these expensive facilities was such that, suppose NSF is building a telescope that costs the price of 100 or more investigator grants, and the telescope project gets in serious trouble. Either it's going to fall far behind and cost a fortune downstream, or NSF is going to have to spend the money to get construction back on track. Then, what happens to funding for all the individual investigators? The astronomy division assistant director can go to the director of NSF, but the NSF budget may already have been allocated to various directorates and many grants. There was no mechanism to deal with this kind of crisis. So, in particular, the astronomy division was having problems, and increasingly, physics was facing them. I felt that we needed to work differently. With the cooperation of OMB and our appropriations subcommittees, the best approach turned out to be a new account, separate from all the research directorates, a line in the NSF budget for major facilities; it was called the Major Research Equipment account. It still exists, fortunately. All the big construction projects go through a special review and those selected are funded through this account. I remember that when I started it, there were concerns. “All projects won’t get funded; there's going to be a winner. Somebody's going to build a big machine, and the money's going to be taken off the top.” It was felt that this would be a kind of tax across all areas of science for one or two fields.

To help address these concerns and make sure that the affected research community really did consider the new instrument to be a very high priority, whether LIGO or a telescope or other instrument, the division involved was required to set aside a certain percentage of the total cost from their base budget. In the future, building an expensive facility would require sacrifice but it would not kill large numbers of grants. Over the years, however, a queue of worthy projects built up, and subsequent directors, had to make even tougher decisions. But NSF changed the way it did business as a result of that budgetary change. The reason we were able to do it is because, for that particular fiscal year, the appropriations subcommittee had more flexibility in budget authority than they did in outlay. So, they had the greater ability to fund projects that were going to spend money over several years, rather than projects that required spending the money in one year. So, even if a construction project would have a total cost of $400 million, only $100 million would be needed the coming year. It was a case of good timing and the importance of collegial relationships between congressional staff and NSF staff; that makes possible opportunities. I wouldn’t go around the President, obviously, so we had to be careful to get agreement from OMB as well as the appropriations subcommittee. to take advantage of the opportunity without getting slapped down. We funded LIGO construction in this way, and later, construction of the new South Pole research station, which wasn't as expensive, but still was a major construction project.

Zierler:

Did you sense any tensions either before your tenure or during that the NSF should focus more specifically on PI-led grants?

Lane:

There is always that tension, and there's always pressure. There are also members of the National Science Board who are more inclined toward independent PI grants, who believe that that's where the major discoveries come from. But the counter argument, of course, is that there are some fields of science you cannot do at the bench. If you're going to study in those areas, you have to have a facility, and it can be expensive. And it's great if DOE has already built what the researchers need, but if not somebody else needs to do it. So, it would be great if NSF could support the smaller PI grants and use other agencies’ equipment. But the federal research effort is a multi-agency partnership. When it's NSF’s turn, or the facility is needed in a field NSF has staked a claim, taken the lead, another agency is not going to build what you need. And the science community understands that there are fields of science that don’t require big equipment. You don't have to do high energy physics or astronomy. And maybe some of my benchtop science colleagues might agree. I think they would also agree that the U.S. should be a leader in all fields. But those are the choices. You suddenly have almost binary choices to make.

And of course, DOE wrestles with this challenge all the time because they fund PIs through the grant process, they fund building these large facilities, and they fund the national labs, where there's a need to provide stable funding. DOE has more experience balancing its responsibilities. NSF does not have laboratories; by statute, the NSF cannot build and fund national laboratories like DOE. NSF does provide substantial funding for some large laboratories, but it has to do it in a different way.

Zierler:

As Director, what did you see as some of the most efficacious ways to support climate change research? And did you see Vice President Gore specifically as an ally in that pursuit?

Lane:

He certainly was an ally. And it was difficult to place a high priority on climate change after the election of '94. I don't recall, though, any pressure on NSF, by the Republican leadership, for example, to cancel grants. Where we would see pressure was with the appropriations subcommittees; they would attempt to cut areas they didn't like, such areas as education, human resources development, social sciences, and climate change -anything with the word climate on it. So that's where you get the pushback. But they didn't take NSF’s grant award decision-making away. It was more like "Take your penny and do well, whatever you want to do with it. But we're not going to give you a dollar, we're going to give you a penny." The White House pushed back through OMB, and clearly with Al Gore's help. The President's Chief of Staff would also weigh in on climate science and other areas that were priorities with President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

There probably were things written into our authorization bills that we didn't like when Republicans were in the chairs. But I don't remember the specifics. Authorization language is important; the Authorization committees do have influence over the agency. And even though they don't appropriate money, the amount they authorize can be influential; the appropriators might or might not pay attention to it. But, in general, NSF’s authorizing committees, particularly the House Science Committee, Space and Technology, have been especially friendly. Sometimes, the problem is in the White House, OMB in particular. I remember one year, when President Clinton was cutting back on the budget – hence, OMB was under pressure to manage those cuts – when I got my pass-back from OMB, which included an incremental increase for NSF, all the increment was in climate change research. And I said, "Look, I know this is a priority with the administration, but I need some flexibility to manage NSF's priorities here." So, we had some discussions with OMB along those lines. This was not the issue or the year when I asked Al Gore to intervene; that was a whole different problem with OMB. But I do remember a year or two when I was not getting the flexibility in the budget pass-back that I wanted.

Zierler:

One of the big surprises from this era, at least from an outsider's perspective looking in, was that it was the DOE and not the NSF that was really central to the Human Genome Project. Did you have an idea if the NSF wanted or should have been more involved in that project?

Lane:

I don't think so. I don't remember any concerns by NSF that the agency should have been part of the human genome project. That was a project that started at DOE because of its responsibility for health related to exposure to radioactive materials. And I think it was probably a little bit of a messy process getting the leadership over to NIH, but that decision was made before I joined NSF. In fact, I don't even think I appreciated the nuances about the project. Craig Venter’s public feud with the project came later. My introduction to the Human Genome Project came when I was in the White House and President Clinton asked me to fix a problem, namely, the public exchange between Craig Venter, then president of Celera Genomics, and Francis Collins, then director of the Human Genome Project.

Zierler:

What about other biological research endeavors? Given the excitement in the life sciences during this time, what were some initiatives that you were thinking about funding?

Lane:

I don't remember that there were biology initiatives that we weren’t able to fund. Of course, like other NSF initiatives, the ideas didn't come from me, rather they were grassroots developments involving the research community, NSF directorate advisory committees and the program officers. I am thinking of projects like the Long Term Ecological Research program, funded through cooperative agreements with universities, selected through the normal proposal process. This program involved sites established all around the country to take a long view of how the environment was changing. Different ones of them were focused on different aspects of the environment, but the overall focus of the project was all about environmental science and biology, all life forms. I visited a number of those sites, but I wasn’t involved in any significant policy decisions associated with them, other than the annual budget process. I was interested in the research being done at these sites, some urban and some rural. And I visited sites from the middle of Alaska to Phoenix, Arizona. In general, there was a lot of pressure on NSF to do more research on the environment.

Also on the biology front, NSF was early in recognizing the importance of sequencing the whole genome of various plants and supported sequencing the genome of a little mustard plant called the Arabidopsis Thalania. It was a particularly interesting plant because its genome is not very big. In those early days of sequencing, such a small genome could be sequenced for a reasonable amount of money. The genome could then be studied as it changed during evolution of the plant, which has a short life span. That NSF program led to a government-wide Plant Genome Project. Most research in the life sciences was supported by NIH and most of that on human biology and disease. So, NSF's biological research was largely about plants and small animals. I'm not even sure we funded any primate research.

One year, NSF got pressured to sequence the corn genome for political reasons. The corn genome's as big as the human genome, about three billion base pairs. There was no way we were going to be able to sequence the corn genome. And we managed to work through the politics and get people to focus on reality. But all that led to the multi-agency Plant Genome Initiative, in which we and other agencies ramped up our plant genome research but still constrained to plants that could be studied with the technology of the times. There was a lot of interest in NSF’s biology programs and pressure to expand funding for the field. The biology funding was not a large fraction of the NSF budget in those days, and I don't remember pressure to get into NIH's territory and fund clinical research. However, often, a lobbying organization would come to me and say, "You really need to triple your biology directorate because they can do all these wonderful things." And I said, "What do I do with the physicists?" "Oh, we don't know anything about physics. We're just here to tell you to triple your biology directorate."

So that's how I got acquainted with some of the lobbyists in Washington. In the end, I felt that NSF had begun to get some stronger support for all the research fields, but it took time. I began telling them something like "Well, if you don't know anything about physics, why not go and find out. Because a bunch of physicists are going to come in next week, and they're going to tell me I should triple the physics budget. So why don't you all get together and bring me some advice I can use?" I didn't say it in such a rude manner. You should always be nice to people who take the time to visit you. Things got better but it’s still a challenge. APS has been very active on the policy front and is recognized and respected for doing so. And some of the other science societies and advocacy organizations are effective as well, but they really don't work a lot together, for all kinds of reasons that I think we understand. Until we learn how to do that, it's going to be hard for us to influence government any more than we're currently doing.

I believe that there is a message we need to be conveying to members of Congress, presidents and the public that's larger than any one of our disciplines, and it's a message we can all agree on. We just don't know, at least have not agreed on, what the message is. It should not be hard to do this, but it just doesn't happen. I think there are some of those discussions going on now but nothing along those lines has yet emerged. I remember a dinner with presidents of several science societies having this conversation, and they agreed and even, I think, started some discussions. But things happen, like the budget suddenly goes into a slump. Now you're going to be worried about your own constituency. So, when the funding is really good across all fields, it's a chance of doing more of this kind of thing. When the funding gets tight, then even if one research society doesn’t want to hurt anybody else’s field, still, they’ve got to pay attention to their own constituency.

Zierler:

Moving on to the White House years, were you in touch with Jack Gibbons directly before the announcement of succession became public?

Lane:

Yes. I don't remember exactly the occasion of that discussion. I certainly knew ahead of time that the President was going to nominate me as OSTP director. And so, Jack and I talked a bit about that. But I doubt there was much time between that call and the President’s announcement. The White House doesn’t like news to leak. I don't think they necessarily would worry about me personally, talking to the press, but I have an office. I've got senior staff, all kinds of people swarming around. So, the White House is not going to tell me much about their search until very close to the time the President is going to announce, and I then have to make a decision. The exchange with someone in Jack Gibbons office went something like this, "Neal, President wants you to do this job." "Well, I'm flattered. I love what's going on, I’m very supportive of the President’s program, and so forth. But I need to talk to my wife." "Oh, sure, of course. But can you call me back tomorrow morning as early as possible?"

So that's the timeframe you have. It likely was Jack Gibbons who made that final call. Then, once it's public news, you have to be careful not to assume you're doing the job. I could go to OSTP as a consultant, but I couldn’t take any formal actions, e.g., not sign anything. I even had to be careful what I said to anyone and avoided the press. It’s important, not to be presumptive of Senate confirmation. But that was a very helpful period where I learned about what was going on at OSTP and other White House offices. John Podesta, in particular, was very helpful to me. He was still Deputy Chief of Staff at that time, but he spent an hour or so with me and told me who everybody was, what their personalities were, how to get along, how not to get along. He was a champion of science and technology. Actually, I found the whole White House staff very candid. In both cases, the search for NSF director and search for OSTP director, there were no leaks. I don’t think any of the candidates knew even what direction Clinton was leaning, until very close to his announcement.

Zierler:

And when you say search process, that suggests that there were other candidates, as far as you knew?

Lane:

I assumed so. But I had no way to know. There was nothing public. In the case of the OSTP search, I just assumed that there were a number of people heading up agencies who would be in line. It seemed likely that the President would turn to one of us because it is now well into the second term. This was 1998. The President’s going to need somebody who knows the administration, the people, has interacted with the Hill. So, logic says that this is not a time to bring in a new fresh voice from a university or someplace else who has to learn about it all, no matter how smart they are. So that's kind of what was in my mind. I didn't for a moment think it was going to be me. I never had that thought. I just thought for a lot of reasons, there were other people who would be asked first. And that that would be fine with me. Everybody I knew and had been working with, I felt, would've been fine for the job. Also, I was very happy at NSF. I'd committed to Clinton and Gore, who were anxious to have someone who would stay in the job, to serve a term, which was six years, and I still had a year to go. I ended up only being there five and a half.

Zierler:

Coming in from NSF, how familiar were you with OSTP's overall portfolio?

Lane:

Well, I knew about OSTP based on my working with Jack Gibbons and several OSTP associate directors. Also, I was involved in the National Science Technology Council - NSTC, which was formed during the Clinton Administration and included cabinet secretaries as well as OSTP officials and other heads of agencies that have directly to do with science and technology. So, Harold Varmus was there from NIH, I was there from NSF, Jim Baker from NOAA, someone from DOE, and DARPA, and so forth. The assembled NSTC never met at the cabinet level. It functioned by its so-called coordinating committees. And as head of NSF, I co-chaired the science committee with Harold from NIH and MRC (pronounced Marcy) Greenwood from OSTP. That's the way they set it up.

So, there were a lot of working interactions, and I could learn a lot about OSTP, but that was from the outside. I don’t think anyone can learn how the White House works from the outside. I could never figure it out when I was at NSF. And then, when I finally got over there, I learned. I thought, "My God, this is how the White House works. Glad nobody told me." It's just such a different environment. There are lines of authority, associated with particular positions, but it's so nonlinear, and amorphous, and personality-dependent. And there are always histories that aren’t necessarily obvious. There were people still there who were on Clinton’s and Gore's campaign. And then, when it comes to budget issues, the relationship between OSTP and OMB is critical, as is the relationship between OSTP and the National Security Council on many other key issues. There is an unspoken pecking order.

One thing I believe I learned - and have often told students who ask how you work in the White House – "You have to learn and as quickly as you can, where to draw the line.” That requires finding the right mix of being a team player and being assertive. If you're not a team player, you're going to get marginalized, not get invited to the meetings, not be able to see the President; you're not going to get anything done. But if you don't step across the line at least once, you don't know where it is. And so, it's important to try doing that, not too bold, not too far across the line, or else people will shut you down. And you've got to do it early, so you can plead ignorance if necessary.

Zierler:

On that point of being dual-hatted as assistant to the President and OSTP director, between access to the President in terms of overall bureaucratic maneuverability, what are some concrete examples of that being an advantageous role for you?

Lane:

Of course, I was not on the cabinet. No science advisor for OSTP has been on the cabinet in past administrations.

Zierler:

But did you attend meetings?

Lane:

I attended all the meetings. The only one I was not invited to was the one where President Clinton finally had to tell the cabinet what he'd done in his personal life. That was clearly going to be a difficult meeting, and there was no need for any of the rest of us to be there, nor would I have wanted to be. I was invited to all the other cabinet meetings. And so were the other senior aides. The president can also appoint some of his advisors and agency heads to the cabinet, e.g., the directors of OMB, National Security Council, Domestic Policy Council, Environmental Quality, as well as the trade representative, and others. President Biden has decided to appoint Eric Lander, his Director of OSTP, to the cabinet.

I had two titles. One was Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which means I managed the office; that appointment was a Senate-confirmed position and I would be called on to testify on behalf of the government. I had a second title and a whole second commission that hangs on the wall, as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. That role is confidential advisor to the President, which is the same role that some of his other senior aides have, e.g., Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

As Assistant to the President, you have somewhat higher stature but no extra salary. You may be included in meetings that, otherwise, you might not be invited to attend. This title makes clear that you are a member of the President's most senior staff. And so, it helps establish the key relationships. But these are all intangibles. Jack Gibbons also had the two titles. And Allan Bromley had the two titles before, as advisor to Bush 41. John Holdren had the two titles with President Obama. Jack Marburger did not have the second title with GW Bush, 43. It’s sort of a fairly recent development. I think the second title is helpful. I don't know whether Eric Lander has that appointment or not, but as a member of the cabinet, it doesn't matter. It clearly puts him in a position of higher stature, and I think will be very helpful in his relationship with the other offices in the White House. Some people are concerned, "Well, now the senior aide is on the cabinet. So won't it cause bad feelings?" Eric is an adult and smart. He has a strong personality. He has extraordinary scientific credentials. I'm sure he can handle that and serve the President very well.

Zierler:

What were some of the major things that PCAST was working on during your time at the White House?

Lane:

PCAST was working in several areas that were priorities of President Clinton. We had a number of very distinguished people, including John Holdren, Norm Augustine, retired CEO and Chairman of Lockheed Martin, Chuck Vest, then president of MIT and many other leaders in science and technology. But I think all of us would agree that John Holdren was particularly active, at least when I was in the White House. John was especially focused on climate change, renewable energy, and all aspects of nuclear policy: nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear technology used for energy production. He has deep knowledge in these areas and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.

John really drove much of the PCAST agenda, consistent with President Clinton’s priorities on climate change and renewable energy. But there were many other high priority reports involving other members of PCAST. When OSTP and several agencies were developing the proposed national nanotechnology initiative, I took the proposal to PCAST for review and, hopefully, endorsement.

PCAST appointed a study committee to look over the proposal in some detail, and ask questions, and review it for the larger body. Chuck Vest chaired that group, I remember, and he brought in some people from outside. In the end, PCAST signed a letter to the President endorsing the nanotechnology initiative. That was obviously critical to the President Clinton’s approval and to getting the money that the President requested from Congress. So, the success of that whole initiative owes a lot to PCAST and its influence. And, there were others as well, but I've just mentioned a few that come immediately to mind.

Zierler:

What were some of the major considerations surrounding the US withdrawal from ITER in 1999? Were you involved in that? And what do you think the fallout was from that long term?

Lane:

I wasn't involved. It was largely a DOE issue. I don't remember being asked directly to give advice to the President on the ITER project. And since I went over in '98, I think probably the handwriting was on the wall and some of the decisions had already been made before I got there. My sense is that the decision had to do with disappointments in progress, as well as management and budget issues. The U.S. eventually got back in, but there are some opportunities at lower the scale and cost of fusion energy that I think DOE is also pursuing. I really hope we don't have to build these gigantic complicated machines to get energy out of fusion.

Zierler:

Were you involved at all in the National Nuclear Security Administration's creation?

Lane:

Yes, somewhat. That was a very difficult period. The final decision on how that was going to be handled was at the cabinet level, involving the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, at that time, and, of course, the President and Congress. My involvement was because of my very real concerns about the inferences being made by Congress, especially by members of the committee writing the Cox Report. There were allegations that the security of the defense laboratories was lax and that America’s secrets were not being protected from Chinese spies, which I felt was all nonsense. I felt that the FBI overreacted, in part, because they didn't have the necessary scientific expertise and understanding of the labs. There was alleged misbehavior, it was determined, by a Los Alamos employee, Wen Ho Li. But never any indication that he was ever thinking about giving away any secrets to anybody, certainly not a foreign government. So, in the end, I remember that a judge apologized to him for how he'd been mistreated by the federal government. So, this was not a Neal thing, but I did raise concerns. Then, later, as I recall, a classified disk drive disappeared from the inventory. A panic. The FBI was all over the laboratory again. It turned out that the device had fallen behind a printer or some other equipment.

All the chaos and media coverage suggested that Los Alamos was very lax in security. I believe that was never the case. I never saw it, personally. I'd been cleared for many, many years and participated in Los Alamos activities. I always saw that people were super careful to protect classified information. The scientists knew exactly what the rules were, and they wouldn't even think of accidentally disclosing anything that was classified– security was such a high priority issue in those weapons labs that the working culture and environment was security conscious up, down, sideways. I could not imagine an employee of the laboratory disclosing anything classified. The last I recall that happening was during World War II, during the Manhattan Project, when the Soviets placed spies in the lab. This was not the Manhattan Project, and it was years later, and the laboratory had put in place the whole intelligence security protection apparatus. Anyway, in responding to all that pressure from Congress, the Department of Energy decided to form this new agency—NNSA with some internal barriers within DOE. I can’t say how well it has worked. I just haven’t been closely enough associated with it. The weapons labs certainly have moved further away from basic science, but that could be due to many influences.

Zierler:

Were you involved in the creation of the first National Climate Assessment in 2000?

Lane:

Yes, OSTP led the effort. The Associate Director for Environment, a wonderful scientist, Rosina Bierbaum, was very involved and worked with the committee on the first National Assessment. We needed to get it done was because it was required by law, the US Global Change Research Act. And no such assessment had yet been done. So, we wanted to get the first one out. It's a very difficult thing to do because you really are assessing the potential impact of climate change on everything, and there were uncertainties in the climate model projections, which, today, are so much better than they were at that time. It was clear enough, though, that climate change would create problems for the U.S., but how severe and in which locations, were the questions. We are talking about assessing the impact of climate change on the entire United States: fisheries, crops, health, water the economy. It was a huge undertaking. We did the best we could.

As far as I could determine, we were not biased and not being pressured in one direction or another by the interests of the administration. We put together a committee of experts, and the report was peer reviewed. Then, I added another layer of peer review, in which I made sure there were people on the committee who I knew had very high standards and had nothing to do with climate change, either the science, or the policy, or anything else. They had some suggestions but approved the final report. And then, we were sued by a few members of Congress and a few NGOs to try to keep us from publishing the assessment. The courts did not prevent us from publishing. Still, I didn't know what would happen to the suit, since I was co-named with President Bill Clinton. I've thought about putting it on my CV, being co-named to the suit with the President. It's not on the CV, but I do talk about it often when people ask. And I have a slide that I sometimes use in presentations. In the end, of course, the election went with GW Bush. So, President Bush came into office and found that he was being sued by his supporters, people he probably agreed with. I don't recall that GW Bush seriously questioned climate change, but many in his administration did, as well as most Republicans in Congress.

The suit was quietly settled, but not withdrawn. I think the administration went on record as saying that the findings of this report would not be used for policymaking purposes. Of course, you might wonder what they'd be used for. [laugh] But Rosina Bierbaum was key in dealing with all that. Ironically, Rosina became acting director of OSTP, after I left, and served in that role for many months of Bush’s first term. That was an enormous service to the country, I have to add. Most of us in OSTP had gone by the end of the Clinton administration. But, OSTP needed an acting director, and Rosina had been confirmed when she became Associate Director. I think she thought it would just be a short period of time, but it took something like nine months for Jack Marburger to get confirmed. So, she went through all this business of settling the suit, even though she'd been a key player in the Clinton Administration and was involved in writing the report. That's the way government works.

Zierler:

Just a few more questions to round out your years at the White House, specifically on the National Nanotechnology Initiative. I'm curious if you could talk about your interactions with Tom Kalil in the National Economic Council, and if this relationship was really important in the establishment of the initiative.

Lane:

I didn't know Tom from my NSF days. I may have met him, but we didn't have many interactions. I knew his name through NSF’s Mike Roco, who was a major driver of nanoscale research at NSF. I knew that Tom was an advocate for nanotechnology and that he was a respected member of Gene Sperling's team in the Economic Council. So, Tom and I got together very soon after I got to the White House and talked about a possible initiative and how we could work together. I figured it was a long shot to get the initiative through for all kinds of reasons. There were many competing initiatives, coming from Domestic Council, Economic Council, Environmental Quality, so we would be in competition with a lot of strong competitors.

And so, I figured, we needed at least two things to be successful: the endorsement of PCAST, when we finally get a proposal together; and the support of somebody in one of the powerful offices like National Economic Council. Otherwise, we probably couldn't make it with the President. When Clinton learned about the idea, he liked the initiative, but he liked lots of things. I knew that if Tom were not behind this and didn't convince Gene Sperling this was a good idea for the President, it just wasn't going to make it through. I know nothing about conversations between Tom and Gene Sperling, but I know that we at OSTP worked well with Tom all along the way and I had a fairly good relationship with Sperling as well. Tom knows technology and he always seems to have a thousand ideas - usually all brilliant, just not all workable. But he was extraordinarily valuable to me and, I’m sure, to Gene Sperling. And later he served for eight years in the Obama Administration at the right hand of John Holdren. I don’t know anyone else like Tom Kalil. And he was absolutely key to getting the initiative to President Clinton and getting it in the budget. Later, Tom and I wrote a paper together about the creation of the national nanotechnology initiative. It’s important to add that many people at OSTP and several federal agencies actually did all the work to put the proposal together.

Zierler:

And what about Richard Smalley? Did you have a connection to him through Rice University? And was that important for the setup of the NNI as well?

Lane:

Of course, I knew Rick well. But, it wasn't my relationship with him that was important to the initiative proposal, because when I got to Washington, I cut off any kind of discussions with Rice people that might be perceived as benefitting the university from my being in Washington. The government ethics rules are very clear. Doesn't mean I couldn't have lunch with a friend at Rice or something like that, so long as I paid for it. Occasionally, I'd get a call from a Rice person - not from Rick, that didn't happen - but from someone who was having some kind of trouble with the federal government. But they understood the situation as soon as I explained why I couldn't get involved. In Rick's case, he was influential in the formation of the nanotechnology initiative, but it was not my doing. He was very well-known. He had just won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, carbon-60 molecule, which led to at least the carbon side of nanotechnology. Rick shared the prize with another Rice professor, Bob Curl and the late Harry Kroto.

Rick, sadly, died in 2005. Bob Curl is still alive, and I see him from time to time. When PCAST put its committee together to review the nanotechnology initiative proposal, Chuck Vest was asked to chair it, and Chuck asked Rick Smalley to serve on the committee. So, I saw Rick Smalley in Washington in a meeting of the review committee. But I didn't have any say in the selection of that committee. I heard later that when the committee discussed the name of the initiative, several options were discussed. In my comments during a Congressional hearing, when I was still at NSF, I'd used the phrase “nano-scale science and engineering.” Well, that's a mouthful, and it doesn’t convey much. But the word “nanotechnology” was different –it wasn't really a technology yet, still a research project. IBM researchers could write IBM's name, using one atom at a time, but it doesn't really put something on the shelf for people to buy.

So, it wasn't really a technology. But I was told later that Rick spoke up at the meeting, and he argued that nanotechnology was the best term. His reason was that the “nano” part clearly conveyed that this is still very fundamental work at the nanometer scale of atoms and molecules. And people are not going to associate that with products on the shelf. Yet, the part “technology” is the promise of a payoff downstream, that you're going to learn and invent things from doing those experiments and inventing tools to control matter at the nano-scale. Rick apparently felt that the term “nanotechnology” could help people understand that by carrying out research at the nano-scale, researchers will be pushing a technology that's eventually going to pay off. It's going to pay off in computing, in medicine, materials and in a variety of different ways that are hard to even imagine right now. The only person who saw this coming was Richard Feynman in his famous 1959 APS talk at Caltech, in which he said, "There's plenty of room at the bottom." Good for you, Richard Feynman.

Zierler:

Of course, NNI is still ongoing. And from the time that it was announced presidentially, I'm curious what your long-term impressions are of how it’s evolved today from its inception.

Lane:

When we put the initiative together, we laid out ten grand challenges to revolutionize technologies. I think that so far nanotechnology has not revolutionized many technologies. It would not be fair to say it's had that large an effect on information technology, biotechnology, medicine, and so forth. But the advances have really been quite extraordinary, and there are companies making a lot of money from nanotechnology. And there are experiments going on at my campus and startup companies formed by a group--for a long time now, and it's advanced much further--using nano objects, little golden coated nano shells, for example, that have attached to them antibodies in ways that physicists don't normally do, but biomedical engineers know how to do. These are injected into the body, and then irradiating it with infrared radiation. The antibodies find the cancer cells, and the radiation heats them up and fries them. I believe that it’s in clinical trials. We don't know ultimately what will happen. But there are a lot of things like that being tried in medicine, both on the diagnostic side and the therapeutic side, as well as computing. Moving down in scale from the micrometer to the nanometer scale, electronics bumps into quantum effects, and one has to understand how to deal with those, for example, in quantum computing. I think a lot's happening and much has happened. Nanotechnology hasn't yet revolutionized medicine, computing, materials and so forth, but it's changed those industries. And a lot of the money is being made from new kinds of materials that are created and manipulated at the nano scale.

Zierler:

Given your relationship with Vice President Gore and the fact that you came into the White House mid-term, was your sense that he would have asked you to stay on had the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency?

Lane:

I don't know. At one point, Gore or his chief of staff asked me if I would stay on. I said that I would be glad to stay through the transition, assuming the transition would not be long. But I don’t recall any discussion of staying on for a term, nor would I have wanted to. I just can't imagine eight years in the White House. John Holdren did that, and Jack Marburger served most of two terms, from his confirmation to the end of the G.W. Bush administration. I just don't see how I would've had the energy and been able to avoid all the pitfalls. I have to hand it to them all. Jack Gibbons also served the whole first term and part of the second term. I was in the White House two and a half years, following five years at NSF. So, I served in Washington nearly eight years, but in two different jobs, and that was fine. I was ready to leave after the Clinton administration. I would have served Al Gore any way I could and would certainly have stayed through the transition.

Zierler:

Was the decision to go back home to Rice almost reflexive for you? Did you consider other opportunities? Or did you always have it in your heart that that's where you'd go back?

Lane:

Early on, I didn't know. I was approached by different universities when openings for president came up. And I always felt honored, and still do, to have been on any of those lists. But, when I was in those jobs in Washington, I was totally focused on that job, so I wasn't really interested in looking at another position. But I was very lucky because Rice's president, Malcolm Gillis, whom I had only worked with a short time before going to NSF, was determined to bring me back to Rice. I had served over seven years as provost under the previous President George Rupp up until the time he left to be president of Columbia University. Rice then hired Gillis as its new president, and I worked for him briefly. He had asked me to stay on as provost. But, I said, "Seven and a half years as provost is enough. I'll stay through your transition."

When the NSF offer came, I made the decision to leave Rice, and he understood and supported my decision. From that time on, though, every year, sometimes several times a year, Gillis would call me. And of course, there was no reason I couldn't talk with him. And he would say, "We want to know how it's going. How are you getting along? We miss you back at Rice. Want you to know that when you're ready to come home, Rice wants you back." And you can imagine how good that feels when you don't have any idea what your future might be. He just kept that up and apparently worked with the board to create a university professorship for me if I returned. Rice had never had a university professorship. He made it clear that, first of all, Rice was extending my leave all that time I was in Washington. I could not ask for that, but the government ethics rules did not require that I tell them what they can or cannot do. As long as they're not paying me or entering into any kind of post-federal service commitment.

Zierler:

Was the university professorship specifically tailored so that you would have a public policy component to your portfolio?

Lane:

That's certainly what President Gillis had in mind. And we talked about that. He wanted me to work with the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy, which was still young and had nobody working in science policy. So, he, and presumably others, wanted me to come back to Rice for that purpose, not to teach physics. And so, the way the position was written, I could teach in any department at the university that I wanted to. I would have no particular obligations to physics and astronomy, and my compensation was budgeted in the president’s office, but I could be a member of the physics and astronomy department. And, supposedly, I could teach in any department. I thought, "What am I going to do if they call and say, 'We've got this opening to teach a course in French Literature. How would you like to do that?'" But that never happened. The understanding was that I wouldn't have formal teaching responsibilities but could teach from time to time. Gillis, and Baker Institute Director Ambassador Edward Djerejian and Secretary James Baker were anxious that I would start a science policy program at the Baker Institute. The university professorship was university-wide; but the understanding from day one was that I would work in science policy. And yes, teach when I wanted to, and give lectures, and work with the Baker Institute colleagues, and with public officials, and so forth.

Zierler:

Did you have a courtesy appointment in the physics department? Did you take on graduate students? What level of connection did you have when you got back?

Lane:

I didn't ask for that. It was a courtesy appointment in the sense that my salary wasn't coming from them. But I was still a tenured member of the faculty. I still held a position, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, in addition to the university professorship. The department just seemed happy to have me back on the campus. I was invited to all the faculty meetings, I still am, and can participate in the discussions, but I was not a regular attendee. I had not attended physics faculty meetings when I was provost. I still knew many of the faculty from the old days. So, it was all very collegial without any pressures one way or the other.

Zierler:

Given the wide view of the world you got from your vantage point at the White House, what were some issues that you weren't able to take on, but you might have wanted to that you were able to focus on back at Rice?

Lane:

I guess there were many, but the one that stuck out as just kind of nuts and bolts. I just think the budget process is crazy. And I didn't have any vision of grandeur that somehow I was going to change the way the federal government approves budgets, through the appropriations process, or the way OMB works with the agencies, essentially treating them as silos, which makes it so difficult to work across agency lines. One agency can start a project assuming the other agency's going to do X, Y, Z, and then the other agency says, "Oh, we changed our mind." Now, you have a project that you spent a billion dollars on hanging out there. It's nuts. Doesn't make any sense. We've seen it in satellites, to some extent in particle physics with the underground project in South Dakota, and other things like that. Coordination among agencies is very poor. And along with lack of coordination, or maybe in part because of that, there's no real unified voice for science and technology in the government. There are all these bits and pieces. In order to try to define a federal S&T effort, you have to try to add up many budget lines, and try to describe how the people in different agencies and some of the agencies’ dollars come together, e.g., in nanotechnology or computing or anything else.

Zierler:

Tell me about your collaboration with Kirstin Matthews.

Lane:

Kirstin received her PhD from the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston. She decided she didn't want a research career. She has family in the area, so she wanted to stay nearby. Kirstin came over to see me shortly after I arrived and said, "I want to learn about and work in policy." And I told her, "You need to work with somebody who's a policy scholar. I'm not a scholar, I just have scars and bruises. I’ve just come back from the battlefield." I didn't know anything about mentoring a young policy scholar. I said, "You need to go talk with some people." And I had several people in mind. And she did, and then she came back and said, "No, I haven't really found anything." I said, "I have some money that Rice’s president has provided me. I could take you on as a post-doc."

And Kirstin helped me get settled, dealing with papers, talks, boards and other things I had committed to do. I had a very heavy travel and speaking schedule. And Kirstin said, "Sure, I could learn that way." And I enjoyed working with her, and I guess she did with me. She has, for some time now, served as director of the Baker Institute’s Science and Technology Policy Program. And I think it has allowed her to build her reputation in science policy, particularly in biomedical science areas, e.g. stem cells, regenerative medicine and several other key areas. That's really her territory at the Baker Institute. In addition to directing and managing our S&T policy program, she holds a position with the Health and Biomedicine Center at the Baker Institute. She has connections with other parts of the institute as well.

Zierler:

This has been a fantastic and epic journey across the decades in science policy and all your research. As a mentor, given all that you've learned and been involved in at the intersection of research and policy, what advice would you give the up and coming generation who cares about these things and wants what's best for this country's future?

Lane:

It's a hard question, and I don't know that there's a kind of magic answer. But what I tell young people is, get as much education about things you care about as you possiby can. Because to be in any sort of authoritative or influential position, including a major policy position in government or anywhere else that touches policy, you really need the knowledge base and credentials. And let's assume you have earned your PhD, then I'd say, you can try out working in federal policy, e.g., through one of the fellowship programs - APS, Chemical Society, AAAS. Most of the people who have done that decide to stay in Washington. And the fellowship really gives them a get quick learning experience on policy. They will know whether they're going to like policy as a career or not. But I usually point out that they’re likely to get hooked. And then, I would say, when asked how to be successful in those policy jobs, I offer the following observation.

It's all about people. The facts are important, and being able to learn the language and translate, the usual communication skills, are important; that’s true in every profession. But success really depends on how you handle interactions of people. And if you don't establish a kind of rapport, if you aren’t able to form a trusting relationship at some significant level with people, you really can't influence them. And so, you just have to think about that all the time. And what I tell our students in particular is, "Remember, in your lifetime, a lot of opportunities are going to be created for you. They're going to be opportunities for jobs, for tenure maybe, for serving on an advisory committee, opportunities to go to Washington and be a program officer, be the science advisor, be the NSF director. You don't know what's coming. But those opportunities are going to be created by people, and they're people who you interact with. They may be sitting next to you in the classroom right now. Look around. They may be your thesis advisor, or other people you are working with early in your career. You won't necessarily know who they are. They're going to get a cold call sometime saying, ‘Who would be good for this?’ You want to be a name that comes to their mind.”

“So, whenever you're working with people, be nice." And then, I add, "By nice, I don't just mean pleasant. Be respectful, be responsible. If you say you can help them, do your best to help them. You say you can give them something by five o'clock, give it to them by five o'clock. It goes a long way for people to respect your judgment and your integrity." I don't know any better way to proceed than that.

Zierler:

Neal, this is an instant historical treasure. Five hours jam packed of perspective, insight, and good humor. I'm so happy we were able to do this. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate it.

Lane:

Thank you. It was great to be with you, David.