[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 145 (Friday, October 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9546-H9547]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




TRIBUTE TO DR. WILLIAM PHILLIPS OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS 
    AND TECHNOLOGY ON HIS RECEIVING THE 1997 NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Maryland [Mrs. Morella] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend and to 
congratulate Dr. William D. Phillips of the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology who, along with Steven Chu of Stanford 
University and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, has been awarded this year's 
Nobel Prize in physics from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
  NIST, originally established as the National Bureau of Standards in 
1901, has for nearly a century promoted economic growth by working with 
industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards. 
As the Nation's arbiter of standards, NIST enables our country's 
businesses to engage each other in commerce and participate in the 
global marketplace.
  The invaluable research being conducted at NIST is a vital component 
of the Nation's civilian research and technology development base. 
Through Dr. Phillips' good work, the Nobel Prize has brought long-
deserved attention to the exceptional work done by NIST scientists.
  Dr. Phillips' pioneering research in developing methods to cool and 
trap atoms with laser light is a credit to him and his colleagues at 
NIST. These advances will open up a new world of physics that will 
enable the development of ultra-accurate atomic clocks, improve the 
measurement of gravitational forces, and facilitate the construction of 
atomic lasers. These advances have many practical applications, such as 
improving space navigation and the accuracy of global positioning 
satellites.
  I read with pleasure the two articles in the Washington Post recently 
on Dr. Phillips' many accomplishments. I was especially struck in each 
article at the universal feeling among colleagues and friends that ``. 
. .. it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.''
  Dr. Phillips' unbridled enthusiasm for physics is the spirit we 
strive to achieve throughout our Federal laboratories. His dedication 
to improving our understanding of the world through science holds the 
promise of improving all of our daily lives.
  While Dr. Phillips' daily work is on the cutting edge of research 
into lofty theories involving nature's basic laws. His life is well-
rounded by his wife Jane, his two daughters, Christine and Catherine, 
and his numerous friends. Dr. Phillips' dedication to family and his 
numerous contributions to his community, such as teaching Sunday school 
at Fairhaven United Methodist Church, speaks volumes about his 
character.
  We should all be proud of Dr. William Phillips and his family for 
this remarkable achievement and honor.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the October 16, 1997, articles from the 
Washington Post for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 16, 1997]

             Local Scientist Shares Nobel Prize for Physics

                            (By Curt Suplee)

       A government scientist from Montgomery County has won the 
     1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with colleagues in 
     California and France, for their development of ways to 
     ``trap'' atoms by herding and subduing them with laser beams. 
     The chemistry award went to an American, a Briton and a Dane 
     for discoveries related to ATP, a compound that is the 
     fundamental energy currency of life.
       William D. Phillips, who works at the National Institute of 
     Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, will share 
     the $1 million physics with Steven Chu of Stanford University 
     and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of the College de France, the 
     Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced yesterday.
       The Nobel committee divided the chemistry prize into two 
     parts. Half goes to Paul D. Boyer of the University of 
     California at Los Angeles and British researcher John E. 
     Walker of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of 
     Molecular Biology in Cambridge for explaining the complex 
     molecular process whereby living things create ATP. Jens C. 
     Skou of Aarhus University in Denmark won the other half of 
     the prize for discovering the key ATP-related enzyme that 
     controls the transit of sodium and potassium across cell 
     membranes--a process essential to life.
       ``I'm totally stunned,'' said Phillips, 48, who lives in 
     Darnestown but was in California for a meeting of the Optical 
     Society of America when he was notified. ``At 3:30 this 
     morning California time they called from Stockholm. It was a 
     very nice wake-up call.'' As things rapidly turned hectic, he 
     said, he got some expert commiseration. ``There are two 
     previous Nobel Prize winners here,'' Phillips said, and one 
     of them, Robert F. Curl Jr. of Rice University ``told me, 
     `Well, welcome to the roller coaster.' ''
       The prize is the first Nobel won by a NIST scientist since 
     the institute was founded as the National Bureau of Standards 
     in 1901. Phillips has worked at NIST since 1978.
       The physics laureates were recognized for separate, 
     complementary efforts that spanned nearly 20 years. Their 
     common goal was to come as close as possible to stopping 
     atoms in their tracks--a horribly difficult prospect. Even 
     when cooled to the temperature of the cosmic void between 
     stars (about 3 degrees above absolute zero) atoms of gases 
     are still vibrating at hundreds of miles an hour. Sedating an 
     atom enough to observe it well for even a fraction of a 
     second requires temperatures millions of times colder.
       The physicists devised various means of slowing atoms by 
     striking them with laser beams, a process somewhat analogous 
     to stopping the motion of a ricocheting cue ball on a pool 
     table by shooting hundreds of Ping-Pong balls at it. 
     (Phillips also experimented with magnetic trapping, the 
     equivalent of tilting the pool table to slow the ball.) The 
     general idea was to use the momentum of individual units of 
     light, called photons, to slow the target atoms when the 
     photons were absorbed and reemitted.
       One major problem is that an atom will not absorb just any 
     photon, but only those of specific frequencies that 
     correspond to distinctive energy levels in that particular 
     kind of atom.
       Moreover, because the atom is in motion, the frequency of 
     the cooling photon has to be adjusted for the Doppler effect. 
     That is the phenomenon that makes a train whistle sound 
     higher in frequency as it approaches the listener than it 
     does when the train is standing still--and that makes a light 
     ray act like one of a higher frequency if an atom is moving 
     toward it. So the scientists had to micro-tune the 
     frequencies of their laser photons to compensate for the 
     estimated speed of the atoms.
       Chu, then at Bell Labs, achieved a slowing effect, called 
     ``optical molasses,'' with an array of six lasers in 1985, 
     reaching a temperature of 240 millionths of a degree above 
     absolute zero. In 1988, Phillips attained an astonishing 40 
     millionths of 1 degree. This was below the theoretical 
     minimum for Doppler cooling until the theory was revised by 
     Cohen-Tannoudji and co-workers, who finally hit .2 millionths 
     of a degree in 1995. And temperatures have plummeted since, 
     to billionths of a degree, allowing atoms to be interrogated 
     in unprecedented detail.
       The work is ``one of the great developments of physics in 
     the past couple decades,'' said Eric Cornell of NIST's 
     Boulder, Colo., facility, who with colleagues used the 
     trapping techniques in 1995 to create a completely new state 
     of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate in which very 
     cold atoms in effect coalesce into a ``superatom.''
       Physicist Daniel Kleppner of the Massachusetts Institute of 
     Technology, Phillips' alma mater, said the work had opened up 
     a ``new world'' that would lead to ultra-accurate clocks to 
     improve space navigation and global position system 
     satellites, among other possibilities. (Atomic clocks operate 
     by measuring the frequencies given off by subfrigid atoms 
     stimulated by radiation; the colder the atoms, the longer 
     they can be

[[Page H9547]]

     measured and thus the more precise the timing.) Cornell 
     predicted that the ability to control atoms on that scale 
     would make it possible to detect extremely small effects such 
     as the change in gravitational force at ground level over an 
     oil deposit.
       The chemistry award recognized more than 40 years of 
     research into what was once one of the deepest mysteries in 
     biology: How cells create and deploy ATP (adenosine 
     triphosphate), the basic material that provides energy for 
     all living things.
       This ubiquitous fuel is produced in enormous quantities in 
     cellular sub-components called mitochondria, each of which is 
     sur- rounded by its own tiny membrane. Just as one can store 
     energy in a mousetrap by cocking the spring, organisms 
     store energy in the chemical bonds of ATP. It is done by 
     grafting a third bit of phosphate onto an ever-present 
     cellular substance called ADP (adenosine diphosphate), a 
     strand of adenosine that already has two phosphate groups 
     attached. When energy is needed for muscle motion, nerve 
     transmission or sundry metabolic chores, ATP sheds its 
     added third phosphate, liberating the energy of that 
     chemical bond and becoming ADP again.
       ATP had been discovered in 1929, but until the work of this 
     year's laureates, nobody knew exactly how it was made except 
     that it was produced by an enzyme called ATP synthase and 
     apparently involved differences in concentrations of charged 
     hydrogen atoms on either side of the mitochondrial membrane.
       In the 1950s, Boyer began to study the function of ATP 
     synthase, which has a very complicated structure. The lower 
     part, imbedded in the membrane, gathers energy from the flow 
     of hydrogen atoms like a water wheel picks up energy from a 
     moving stream. The top part, which protrudes above the 
     membrane, resembles a grapefruit with six segments, through 
     the middle of which runs an asymmetric rotation axle 
     connected to the lower section.
       As the hydrogen-powered axle turns, it distorts the 
     segments into different shapes that cause them to do various 
     things, such as bind ADP to phosphates, or to cast off 
     freshly minted ATP molecules into the surrounding cellular 
     goo. Boyer also determined that ATP synthase doesn't use 
     energy the way most enzymes do. This ``molecular mechanism'' 
     model was subsequently confirmed and clarified by Walker and 
     colleagues, who also explained the peculiar axle 
     configuration.
       ``It's a discovery of fundamental significance to 
     understanding the way living organisms work,'' said Peter 
     Preusch, a program director at the National Institute of 
     General Medical Science here, which supported Boyer's work 
     for 30 years.
       Meanwhile, since 1957 Skou had been trying to understand 
     the processes that cause the normal chemical imbalance 
     between the insides of cells and their surroundings. Within 
     the cell, sodium content is normally very low and potassium 
     very high; outside, it's the opposite. Numerous essential 
     biological processes--such as the electrical build-up and 
     firing of nerve cells--depend critically on changes in the 
     transport of these elements across cell membranes. Skou found 
     that those actions are controlled by an enzyme called Na-K-
     ATPase that also degrades ATP in cells, and described how it 
     works.
       ``The insight he had was really crucial, and not just for 
     this one enzyme but for understanding a great deal about the 
     physiology of the cell,'' said biochemistry expert Kathleen 
     J. Sweadner of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard 
     Medical School. ``It opened [Researchers'] minds to studying 
     a whole bunch of other processes.''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 16, 1997]

               One of Science's Nice Guys Finishes First

                         (By Michael E. Ruane)

       Bill Phillips is 48, lives in Darnestown, wears a beard and 
     works for the government. He has a wife and two kids. His 
     office is down a brown tile corridor in a government building 
     off I-270. He teaches Sunday school at Fairhaven United 
     Methodist Church and founded the church's gospel choir.
       Yesterday, Bill Phillips won the Nobel Prize.
       ``Couldn't happen to a nicer guy,'' said Paul Lett, a 
     member of Phillips's team of physicists at the federal agency 
     that used to be known as the Bureau of Standards and now has 
     an even duller name.
       A blaze of glory and a bunch of money fell into the life of 
     the anonymous government scientist, who happens to know how 
     to make atoms almost stand still.
       ``It really is a thrill, an emotional thrill, a physical 
     thrill, like riding a roller coaster,'' Phillips said in a 
     telephone interview from California, where he was attending a 
     conference when he received the news. ``I am surprised, 
     astounded.''
       Phillips will share the $1 million Nobel award for physics 
     with two other scientists, in California and France, who 
     worked separately in the same field. The award recognized 
     their success in chilling and ``trapping'' atoms for deeper 
     scientific study.
       Phillips has worked in Gaithersburg at the 585-acre campus 
     of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or 
     NIST, since 1978. He is the agency's first Nobel winner since 
     the institute was founded as the Bureau of Standards in 1901.
       Phillips and his colleagues labor in a casual atmosphere, 
     wearing jeans and T-shirts, but they use state-of-the-art 
     equipment and enjoy an esprit de corps that comes from 
     knowing they are at the cutting edge of research into some of 
     nature's basic laws. Although they struggle for the most 
     exact measurement attainable of the location and other 
     attributes of atomic particles, NIST scientists say only God 
     can get it precisely.
       Phillips was born in Wilkes Barre, Pa., the son of social 
     workers who fueled his interest in science with books, 
     microscopes and chemistry sets.
       His wife, Jane, 50, whom he met in high school in Camp 
     Hill, Pa., said: ``He was always the one who got all the A's 
     in physics class, in all the classes, and threw off the curve 
     for everyone.''
       Phillips said: ``It seems like I've been interested in 
     physics for as long as I can remember.''
       He explained: ``It's the simplicity of it. Physics is the 
     simplest science. You're dealing with things that are 
     fundamentally more simple, so you have more of a chance to 
     understand something fully.
       ``I work with single atoms. More and more, we're finding 
     that single atoms are incredibly rich in the things they have 
     to teach us. . . . Whenever I go into the lab to make a 
     measurement, there are things that we don't understand, 
     things that aren't clear at all.''
       The ``trapping'' of normally frenetic atoms has allowed 
     scientists to scrutinize their properties more deeply. It 
     could lead to such things as a new, more precise definition 
     of the duration of a second--that is, an improved way to 
     measure time.
       ``The trick is getting atoms to stay still,'' said Michael 
     E. Newman, an institute spokesman. ``Trying to get atoms to 
     stay still . . . is a very, very difficult thing to do.''
       The institute operates one of the nation's two atomic 
     clocks, which keep time according to the known rate of the 
     natural oscillation of cesium atoms. The institute's atomic 
     clock, in Boulder, Colo., is so accurate that it would 
     neither gain nor lose a second in a million years.
       If that were not precise enough, Phillips's study of slowed 
     sodium atoms could produce an atomic clock that is even more 
     accurate. Such insanely precise time-keeping can improve such 
     things as global navigation systems, which depend on the 
     time-keeping abilities of orbiting satellites, Phillips's 
     colleagues said yesterday.
       There was jubilation yesterday on the institute's campus 
     and in the laser lab, where Phillips's experiments were 
     arrayed along tables like a fantastically complicated 
     electric train set. Printouts of complex graphs and schematic 
     drawings hung on the walls.
       In a conference room adjacent to the lab, colleagues 
     toasted Phillips with sparkling cider and carrot cake brought 
     by his wife. Aides scrambled to arrange interviews, fielded 
     an avalanche of phone calls and struggled to explain 
     Phillips's complex work.
       Phillips cut short his trip and caught an afternoon plane 
     back to Washington.
       ``We're tremendously excited by this news and as proud as 
     can be to have Bill Phillips on the . . . staff,'' Robert 
     Hebner, the institute's acting director, said in a statement. 
     ``The elegant work that Bill and his colleagues have done at 
     the frontiers of atomic measurement opens up new 
     possibilities both in science and measurement technology.''
       Some of Phillips's colleagues heard about the prize while 
     they were still in bed yesterday. Steven Rolston, 38, one of 
     the four members of Phillips's atom-trapping team, said he 
     heard the news when his clock radio clicked on about dawn. 
     ``I couldn't believe it. Great way to wake up. I shouted to 
     my wife, who had just gotten up a few minutes before me, 
     `Bill won the Nobel Prize!' ''
       Rolston said Phillips is ``really just a great guy. He's 
     enthusiastic, happy, always willing to help people, very 
     involved in his church.''
       Katharine Gebbie, director of the institute's physics 
     laboratory, said she, too, had been in bed when the word 
     came. She had just returned from a long trip, and she said 
     the deputy who called said: ``You know I wouldn't be calling 
     you now if there weren't some good news.''
       Gebbie said, ``I held my breath.''
       ``It's a wonderful honor for Bill and his colleagues in the 
     physics laboratory,'' she said. ``We have cherished them very 
     much.''
       Phillips ``is one of the greatest guys in the world, that's 
     all I can say,'' Gebbie said. ``Anybody who listens to him 
     gets a sense of the great thrill of physics that he's doing . 
     . . He just loves it and wants everybody else to love it.''
       Another member of Phillips's group, Lett, 39, said he was 
     ``thrilled.''
       ``It's well deserved,'' he said.
       Phillips, who has been married for 27 years, has two 
     daughters, one in high school and one in college. Group 
     members said he is ``very much a family man.'' Physics, 
     though, has kept him in thrall.
       ``It's the same thing that gets a grip on all of us,'' Lett 
     said. ``Wanting to know the nitty-gritty of why things 
     work.''
       Rolston said, ``I always tell my daughter: Everything's 
     physics.''

                          ____________________