[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 70 (Friday, May 14, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3174-H3175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




BASIC SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FUNDING IMPORTANT FOR LIFE-SAVING DISCOVERIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, as the Members well know, I am a scientist. 
In fact, I am the first physicist ever elected to the Congress. That is 
not a particular badge of merit, but it does give me a different 
perspective.
  I just want to elaborate a bit on some of the issues surrounding 
basic research, or fundamental research as it is sometimes called. I am 
frequently asked by my colleagues, and by the citizens of this land, 
why should we spend money for all this esoteric research? What good can 
it possibly do? What can come of it?
  I want to just give my colleagues one little example that I think is 
interesting and important. When I was a graduate student at the 
University of California (Berkeley) in the 1950s, some of my fellow 
graduate students and some professors down the hall from my laboratory 
were working on nuclear magnetic resonance.
  This was a method that they expected would allow them to measure the 
magnetic moments of nuclei very accurately. The immediate question that 
a layman might ask, ``Who cares?'' The nucleus is so tiny, we cannot 
see it. In fact if one magnified it 10,000 times, one could barely see 
it with the world's best microscope. Why do we want to know what the 
magnetic moment of the nucleus is?
  The answer at that time was simply, ``It is there, and we would like 
to measure it and see what we can find out.''
  My colleagues succeeded. Just a bit earlier, Felix Bloch at Stanford 
and Ed Purcell at Harvard also succeeded, and they won Nobel Prizes for 
their discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance. It was used to measure 
the magnetic moments of a number of nuclei, and we learned a great deal 
more about the nucleus and its structure as a result of that. But that 
was not the end, as I will get to in just a few moments.
  Also while I was at Berkeley, they had the world's largest particle 
accelerator there, the Bevatron, which succeeded in accelerating 
protons to very, very high speeds, very close to the speed of light, 
thus giving them a great deal of energy. Then they would use these 
protons to smash into other particles, other protons or other nuclear 
particles. This generated many subnuclear particles, and detectors were 
built to observe all the different particles generated, and to measure 
their charge, mass and velocity.
  The bubble chamber was invented, and was very useful for this 
purpose. Its inventer also won a Nobel Prize. Then the spark chamber 
was developed, and was also useful for observing nuclear reactions.
  But then a new problem developed. There was so much data flowing in, 
it was hard to collect it all and analyze it. So the physicists 
developed very sophisticated, computerized methods of collecting and 
analyzing the data. They were successful, and we learned a

[[Page H3175]]

lot about nuclear and subnuclear physics.
  But so what? Well, I will tell my colleagues what is ``so what.'' We 
have scientists who took those two very esoteric results of basic 
science, which had no conceivable everyday use and combined them. By 
using nuclear magnetic resonance and very rapid computerized data 
gathering and analysis techniques, we developed the MRI, magnetic 
resonance imaging, which is the greatest breakthrough in diagnostic 
medicine in a century, likely the greatest step forward in diagnostic 
medicine since the discovery of X rays, which incidentally also were 
discovered by a physicist doing basic research.

                              {time}  0915

  So the next time someone asks about the importance of basic research, 
why should we do it, and why should we spend all this money on it, just 
ask them if they know someone who has had an x-ray or someone who has 
had an MRI, and ask them if they think this would have occurred if we 
had not invested money in basic research.
  Basic research drives the engine of medicine, it drives the engine of 
our economy, and it is high time we recognize that investing in basic 
science is a good investment for the future, with a very good rate of 
return. Indeed is a very long-term investment, but, nevertheless, has a 
very good rate of return. And it is something that is very beneficial 
to our Nation, to our people, and to the peoples throughout the entire 
world.

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