John Harmen "Jack" Marburger III (February 8, 1941 – July 28, 2011)
was an American
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who directed the
Office of Science and Technology Policy in the administration of President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
, serving as the Science Advisor to the
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
. His tenure was marred by controversy regarding his defense of the administration against allegations from over two dozen
Nobel Laureates, amongst others, that scientific evidence was
being suppressed or ignored in policy decisions, including those relating to
stem cell research and
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. However, he has also been credited with keeping the political effects of the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
from harming science research—by ensuring that tighter visa controls did not hinder the movement of those engaged in scientific research—and with increasing awareness of the relationship between science and government. He also served as the President of
Stony Brook University from 1980 until 1994, and director of
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...
from 1998 until 2001.
Early life
Marburger was born on
Staten Island, New York
Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull and ...
, to Virginia Smith and John H. Marburger Jr., and grew up in
Severna Park, Maryland
Severna Park is a census-designated place (CDP) in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States. Severna Park is part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, and is located approximately north of Annapolis, south of Baltimore and east ...
. He attended
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, graduating in 1962 with a
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
, followed by a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in
applied physics
Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered to be a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering.
"Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination ...
from
Stanford University in 1967.
After completing his education, he served as a professor of physics and
electrical engineering at the
University of Southern California
, mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it"
, religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist
, established =
, accreditation = WSCUC
, type = Private research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $8.1 ...
beginning in 1966, specializing in the
theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...
of
nonlinear optics
Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in ''nonlinear media'', that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity is typic ...
and
quantum optics
Quantum optics is a branch of atomic, molecular, and optical physics dealing with how individual quanta of light, known as photons, interact with atoms and molecules. It includes the study of the particle-like properties of photons. Photons have ...
, and co-founded the Center for Laser Studies at that institution. He rose to become chairman of the physics department in 1972, and then dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 1976. He was engaged as a public speaker on science, including hosting a series of educational television programs on
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
. He was also outspoken on campus issues, and was designated the university's spokesperson during a scandal over preferential treatment of athletes.
Stony Brook University
In 1980, Marburger left USC to become the third president of
Stony Brook University on
Long Island, New York. At the time, state budget cuts were afflicting the university, and he returned it to growth with increases in the university's science research funding from the federal government.
From 1988 to 1994, Marburger chaired
Universities Research Association, the organization that operated
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...
and oversaw construction of the ill-fated
Superconducting Super Collider
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (also nicknamed the desertron) was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas.
Its planned ring circumference was with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was ...
,
an experience that is credited with convincing him of the influence government had in how science is carried out.
During this time he also served as a trustee of
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
. He stepped down as President of Stony Brook University in 1994, and began doing research again as a member of the faculty.
Chair of Shoreham commission
In 1983, he was picked by New York Governor
Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo (, ; June 15, 1932 – January 1, 2015) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 52nd governor of New York for three terms, from 1983 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, Cuomo previously served as ...
to chair a scientific fact-finding commission on the
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant
The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor located adjacent to Long Island Sound in East Shoreham, New York.
The plant was built between 1973 and 1984 by the Long Island Lighting Company (L ...
, a job that required him to find common ground between the many viewpoints represented on the commission. The commission eventually recommended the closure of the plant, a course he personally disagreed with.
Cuomo had formed the commission in mid-May 1983 to provide him with recommendations regarding the plant's safety, the adequacy of emergency plans, and the economics of operating the plant. The commission's consensus recommendations included unanimous findings that no emergency evacuation of the plant could be conducted without the cooperation of
Suffolk County, which was refusing to approve an evacuation plan; that the construction of the plant would have been prevented if it had been started after new
Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations were put into effect after the
Three Mile Island accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclea ...
in 1979; and that operating the plant would not reduce utility costs. Marburger himself at the time emphasized that the governor had not been seeking a consensus but rather encouraged multiple viewpoints to be reflected, and characterized the consensus conclusions as not the only important section of the report.
Marburger characterized his participation as a learning experience, and the experience was credited with profoundly changing his view on the relationship between the scientific community and the public. He had never been to a public hearing prior to his participation in the Shoreham commission, and he said that he had initially expected that the issues could be resolved by examining scientific data and establishing failure probabilities. However, he quickly became aware of the importance of the public participation process itself, stating that it was "one of the rare opportunities for the public to feel they were being heard and taken seriously." Marburger's conduct on the committee was praised by activists on both sides of the debate, with his focus on listening to all viewpoints and his ability to not take disagreements personally being especially noted.
Brookhaven National Laboratory
In January 1998, Marburger became president of
Brookhaven Science Associates, which subsequently won a bid to operate
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...
for the federal government, and he became the director of the lab. He took office after a highly publicized scandal in which
tritium
Tritium ( or , ) or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with half-life about 12 years. The nucleus of tritium (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of ...
leaked from the lab's High Flux Beam Reactor, leading to calls by activists to shut down the lab. Rather than directly oppose the activists, Marburger created policies that improved the environmental management of the lab as well as community involvement and transparency. Marburger also presided over the commissioning of the
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by a ...
, expanded the lab's program in medical imaging and neuroscience, and placed more emphasis on its
technology transfer
Technology transfer (TT), also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the person or organization that owns or holds it to another person or organization, in an attempt to transform invent ...
program.
The tritium leak, combined with other disclosures about improper handling and disposal of
hazardous waste, had caused
Secretary of Energy
The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when Pr ...
Federico Peña
Federico Fabian Peña (born March 15, 1947) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 12th United States secretary of transportation from 1993 to 1997 and the 8th United States secretary of energy from 1997 to 1998, during the pre ...
to fire the lab's previous manager,
Associated Universities, Inc.
Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) is a research management corporation that builds and operates facilities for the research community. AUI is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, headquartered in Washington, DC. The President is Dr. Adam ...
Upon starting as the laboratory's director, Marburger noted the increased importance of health and environmental concerns since the beginning of the Cold War, stating that "getting the people at Brookhaven to understand that won't be simple, and there may be some disagreement on how we should do it, but that's my job." Marburger set up a permanent community advisory council and met with local environmental groups to increase communication between them and the laboratory's management. By 2001, when Marburger left to join the Bush administration, local environmental groups credited him with having largely dissipated the distrust that had existed between the groups when he started.
In 2001 he was elected a
Fellow of the American Physical Society for ''"his contributions to laser physics and for his scientific leadership as Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory"''.
Bush administration
In September 2001, Marburger became Director of the
Office of Science and Technology Policy under
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
. Marburger was a noted Democrat, a fact that ''Nature'' magazine stated was relevant to the decision by the administration to take the unusual step of withholding from Marburger the title of
Assistant to the President that previous science advisors had been granted.
His tenure was marked by controversy as he defended the Bush administration from accusations that
political influence on science was distorting scientific research in federal agencies and that scientific evidence was being suppressed or ignored in policy decisions, especially on the topics of
abstinence-only birth control education,
climate change policy
The politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels ...
, and
stem cell research. Marburger defended the Bush Administration from these accusations, saying they were inaccurate or motivated by partisanship, especially on the issue of science funding levels. Marburger continued to be personally respected by many of his academic colleagues.
Marburger's tenure as Director was the longest in the history of that post. After the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, he helped to establish the
DHS Directorate for Science and Technology within the new
Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...
. He has been called a central player opposing new restrictions of international scientific exchanges of people and ideas after the attacks. He later was responsible for reorienting the nation's
space policy
Space policy is the political decision-making process for, and application of, public policy of a state (or association of states) regarding spaceflight and uses of outer space, both for civilian (scientific and commercial) and military purposes. I ...
after the
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and played an important part in the nation's re-entry into the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ''iter'' meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy by replicating, on Earth ...
program. Marburger was also known for his support of the emerging field of
science of science policy
Science of science policy (SoSP) is an emerging interdisciplinary research area that seeks to develop theoretical and empirical models of the scientific enterprise. This scientific basis can be used to help government, and society in general, ma ...
, which seeks to analyze how
science policy
Science policy is concerned with the allocation of resources for the conduct of science towards the goal of best serving the public interest. Topics include the funding of science, the careers of scientists, and the translation of scientific disc ...
decisions affects a nation's ability to produce and benefit from innovation.
In February 2004, the
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
published a report accusing the Bush administration of manipulating science for political purposes, listing more than 20 alleged incidents of censoring scientific results or applying a
litmus test in the appointment of supposedly scientific advisory panel members. In April 2004, Marburger published a statement rebutting the report and exposing errors and incomplete explanations in it, and stating that "even when the science is clear—and often it is not—it is but one input into the policy process," but "in this Administration, science strongly informs policy." The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a revised version of their report after Marburger's statement was published. Marburger also called the report's conclusions illusory and the result of focusing on unrelated incidents within a vast government apparatus, and attributed the controversy as being related to the
upcoming elections. It was noted that Marburger enjoyed close personal relationships with President Bush,
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card
Andrew Hill Card Jr. (born May 10, 1947) is an American politician and academic administrator who was White House Chief of Staff under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006, as well as head of Bush's White House Iraq Group. Card served as ...
and
Office of Management and Budget
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). OMB's most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, but it also examines agency programs, pol ...
Director
Joshua Bolten
Joshua Brewster Bolten (born August 16, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician. Bolten served as the White House Chief of Staff to U.S. President George W. Bush, replacing Andrew Card on April 14, 2006. Previously, he served as the Directo ...
, attesting to his active involvement within the administration.
Marburger responded to criticism of his support for Bush administration policies in 2004, stating "No one will know my personal positions on issues as long as I am in this job. I am here to make sure that the science input to policy making is sound and that the executive branch functions properly with respect to its science and technology missions." On the topic of stem cell research, he in 2004 said that stem cells "offer great promise for addressing incurable diseases and afflictions. But I can’t tell you when a fertilized egg becomes sacred. That’s not my job. That’s not a science issue. And so whatever I think about reproductive technology or choice, or whatever, is irrelevant to my job as a science adviser."
However, in February 2005, in a speech at the annual conference of the
, he stated, "
Intelligent design
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...
is not a scientific theory.... I don't regard intelligent design as a scientific topic". Also In 2005, he told ''The New York Times'' that "global warming exists, and we have to do something about it."
Sherwood Boehlert
Sherwood Louis Boehlert (September 28, 1936September 20, 2021) was an American politician from New York. He represented a large swath of central New York in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 until 2007. Boehlert, a Republican, ...
, the Republican chair of the
House Committee on Science during most of Marburger's tenure, said that "the challenge he faced was serving a president who didn't really want much scientific advice, and who let politics dictate the direction of his science policy... and he was in the unenviable position of being someone who had earned the respect of his scientific colleagues while having to be identified with policies that were not science-based."
On the other hand,
Robert P. Crease, a colleague of Marburger at Stony Brook University, characterized him as someone who "
entto the White House as a scientist, not an advocate. He refused to weigh in on high-profile, politically controversial issues, but instead set about fixing broken connections in the unwieldy machinery by which the government approves and funds scientific projects.... Some bitterly criticized him for collaborating with the Bush administration. But he left the office running better than when he entered."
Later life
Marburger returned to Stony Brook University as a faculty member in 2009, and co-edited the book ''The Science of Science Policy: A Handbook'', which was published in 2011. He also served as Vice President for Research but stepped down on July 1, 2011. Marburger died Thursday, July 28, 2011, at his home in
Port Jefferson, New York
Port Jefferson (informally known as "Port Jeff") is an incorporated village in the town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island. Officially known as the Incorporated Village of Port Jefferson, the population ...
, after four years of treatment for
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), also known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, is a group of hematological malignancy, blood cancers that includes all types of lymphomas except Hodgkin lymphomas. Symptoms include lymphadenopathy, enlarged lymph nodes, fever ...
. He was survived by his wife, two sons, and a grandson. His final publication, a book on quantum physics for laypeople called ''Constructing Reality: Quantum Theory and Particle Physics'',
was published shortly after his death.
References
External links
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