On NPR’s program “Marketplace”, physicist Lawrence Krauss read a “short essay on the importance of funding the physical sciences, and the danger of cutting that investment”:http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/08/29/PM200508295.html. He used the examples of global positioning and automobile computers, underpinned by the General Theory of Relativity and the theory of Quantum Mechanics, respectively. Without the groundbreaking work of Einstein and others, we wouldn’t have these indispensable modern tools.
Krauss points out that no physicist set out to make a GPS locator, or a computer chip. They set out to tackle esoteric but fundamental questions of their day, driven by curiosity about the natural world. Their investigations gave rise to the innovations needed to eventually design and built these tools. Today, the U.S. is underfunding agencies like the NSF and NASA (NB: Krauss forgot the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds 40% of the physical sciences in the U.S. and has suffered with the NSF and NASA and DOD). Krauss likens this to “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
I applaud Mr. Krauss’ essay. It’s a good start to communicating the importance of basic research to the public. Check it out!
