Flying on the Wings of Laureates

  • Published
  • By Robert P. White, Ph.D.
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
ARLINGTON, Va. --  The United States Air Force has a lot more in common with the Nobel awards than most people realize.

One of the most highly coveted and recognized awards, the Nobel Prize recognizes those who contribute significant achievements in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and the economic sciences. Beginning in 1901, the Nobel Prize became the first international award to be given on an annual basis. Fifty years later, with the establishment of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the paths of Air Force basic research and future Nobel laureates converged.

Since 1951, AFOSR, which manages the basic research effort for the Air Force, has provided research funding to 69 future Nobel Laureates in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine and economics. Significantly, these laureates received AFOSR funding an average of 17 years prior to winning their Nobel awards. As such, the long term accomplishments of these laureates demonstrate the astute ability of AFOSR program managers to choose world-class researchers very early on in their careers to address Air Force requirements and advance Air Force programs. AFOSR has funded 36 laureates in physics, 23 in chemistry, eight in physiology or medicine, and three in economics.

In many ways the most technologically dependent armed service, the Air Force has been the beneficiary of AFOSR's mission to discover, shape and champion basic research that will have a revolutionary impact on the Air Force of the future--thirty to forty years hence. AFOSR's basic research accomplishments have been responsible for the introduction of critically transformative capabilities central to the creation of the world's most formidable Air Force.

AFOSR funding of future laureates has supported significant breakthroughs: the development of the maser and /laser; integrated circuits, superconductors, advanced/conductive polymers, game theory, femto-chemistry, the cooling and trapping of atoms, semiconductor hetero-structures, and magnetic resonance imaging. These discoveries have led not only to more precise and effective Air Force systems, but to commercial applications that surround us in our daily lives in the fields of manufacturing, communications, materials, medicine, travel, and even the entertainment industry. Our lives have been transformed.

Significantly, these discoveries spring from a basic research effort that initially demands no overt military application. AFOSR's world class primary investigators are funded to pursue pure basic research that in the end, has not only benefited the Air Force, but has contributed to a global scientific and engineering knowledge base and led to significant discoveries that have benefited the world at large. And, an important part of that knowledge base, are the graduate students who have been supported by AFOSR over the years--some of whom have become Nobel Laureates.