[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 121 (Tuesday, September 11, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6103-S6105]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       CELEBRATING STAN OVSHINSKY

 Mr. LEVIN. Over the August recess, I had the pleasure of 
attending a 90th birthday party for a remarkable Michiganian, Stan 
Ovshinsky. I would like to share with my colleagues some of my remarks 
from that event.
  The word ``visionary'' is over used, but surely it applies to Stan 
Ovshinsky.
  His vision for decades has been a world freed from its dependence on 
fossil fuels. One in which we create good jobs and a growing economy on 
the strength of green ideas. One in which science lights the way to a 
brighter future, and in which justice and fairness prevail.
  He has worked for that vision every day of his 90 years, beginning in 
the machine shops of Akron, OH.
  The science behind what Stan has accomplished might be 
incomprehensible to most of us, even though Webster's New World 
Dictionary tries to make it simple. Webster's defines the word 
``ovonic,'' from the name Ovshinsky, as ``designating, of, or utilizing 
various glassy, amorphous materials that undergo electronic or 
structural changes, act as semiconductors when subjected to voltage, 
light, etc., and are used in computer memory elements, electronic 
switches, etc.'' That may still be pretty hard to understand for many 
of us.
  But we certainly can understand the impact these innovations have had 
on the world. Through his work on advanced batteries, solar cells, 
hydrogen power and more, Stan is one of the people who has brought us 
closer to breaking our dependence on energy sources that endanger our 
environment, our economic well-being, and our national security.
  We can also understand Stan's passion. Spend a few minutes talking to 
him about his vision, and you see the world as it could be, a world in 
which American innovators pioneer the technologies that power a new 
economy and create good jobs.
  So his vision isn't just that of a scientist. It is the vision of a 
patriot.
  Stan knows that the visionary's path is not an easy one. Those who 
seek to change the world embark on a lifetime of ups and downs.
  He never attended college, but lack of formal education didn't stop 
him. As Edison showed us, humankind's creative juices aren't always 
meant for the more confined spaces of academia.
  Two centuries ago, a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, toured our 
brandnew Nation, traveling from its major cities to the raw frontier of 
places such as Detroit and Saginaw.
  Reflecting on the American character, de Tocqueville wrote that the 
average American was ``above all an innovator. . . . Nothing prevents 
him from innovating. Everything leads him to innovate.''
  Stan is proof positive that the American spirit of innovation de 
Tocqueville described is alive and well.
  Many others joined me in celebrating Stan's accomplishments. I would 
like to share with my colleagues the remarks of two distinguished 
guests: those of Hellmut Fritzche, the former chairman of the Physics 
Department at the University of Chicago; and of Harley Shaiken, the 
chair of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of 
California-Berkley. I ask unanimous consent that their remarks be 
included in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                      Remarks of Hellmut Fritzche


                          STAN'S 90TH BIRTHDAY

       This is a very special occasion! We are getting together 
     with love, admiration and gratitude to celebrate the 90th 
     birthday of Stan. He has deeply touched and profoundly 
     influenced each one of us and changed our lives. Let me tell 
     you about myself.
       Exactly 49 years ago began our most fruitful and exciting 
     collaboration and a deeply enriching friendship that includes 
     all our family members. Max Powel picked me up from the 
     airport and I looked in vain for a sign saying Energy 
     Conversion Devices at any of the big buildings we passed; Max 
     said ``they haven't put up a big sign yet''. Soon I was 
     sitting across Stan at his storefront office and laboratory 
     at W. McNichols Rd. Right away Stan showed me the completely 
     symmetric switching characteristics of his new devices on his 
     oscilloscope. I was flabbergasted, astonished, puzzled and 
     curious about the materials covering the two crossing wires 
     which formed his device. All this was new. I was hooked. This 
     was the opening to a new science which started a fruitful 
     phase of my research.
       I was captivated by Stan's immense intellect, exuberance, 
     and his personal warmth and that of his young wife Iris. 
     Iris, Stan's soul, spirit and closest collaborator. Soon I 
     was guest in their small house in Birmingham and played 
     violin with their eight year old Steven.
       I realized that Stan had discovered a huge unexplored field 
     of material science. This happens very rarely. We were in 
     unchartered territory. In Stan's disordered Ovonic materials 
     we were confronted with phenomena of bewildering diversity 
     and complexity which required for their explanation a new 
     language and concepts. Stan's intuition and deep 
     understanding of the roles of different elements in his 
     materials were ingenious.
       You would think that the scientific community welcomed with 
     enthusiasm Stan's lead into an entirely new field of 
     materials with promising device possibilities. What a 
     disappointment! Stan's discoveries were contemptuously 
     dismissed and attacked by mainstream physicists. Was it 
     because Stan did not carry the union card of academic 
     credentials? Stan who rightfully views science as the noblest 
     endeavor was greatly disappointed by the pettiness, 
     irrationality and lack of curiosity of a good fraction of 
     scientists. Stan's reaction was admirable. He did not respond 
     impatiently or in anger. Since he was absolutely convinced of 
     the correctness of his ideas and the potential of his 
     materials, he trusted that his opponents would be won over as 
     soon as they understood his ideas and discoveries. However, 
     since his enemies were from the established research 
     institutions, they were able to block all federal research 
     support. That brought out Stan's other talents, that of 
     attracting and convincing like-minded people to help him 
     accomplish his goals and realize his vision. These usually 
     were likewise extraordinarily creative and imaginative 
     personalities. Frequent visitors to Stan and Iris and ECD 
     were Sir Nevill Mott, Isidor Rabi, Robert Wilson, Ed and Haru 
     Reishauer and Edward Teller.
       Since I am name dropping, I have to tell you about a 
     fascinating dream. I dreamed that Stan and Albert Einstein 
     had become close friends, Stan was sitting at the desk and 
     Einstein on his bed, there was no other furniture in 
     Einstein's Spartan room--They were in the house near Berlin 
     which Einstein designed and had built for himself after the 
     city of Berlin rescinded on its promise to present a house to 
     Einstein as a gift of the city to his 50th birthday. Stan and 
     Einstein were in a deep discussion. Einstein had just said 
     ``Stan, we have much in common. We both feel that the 
     greatest joy in life is to discover a new truth of nature, we 
     both were fortunate to experience it a number of times.'' 
     Stan objected to equating their achievements but Einstein 
     stopped him ``No, my work was much easier. Both of us follow 
     our intuition and are doggedly stubborn like mules, but I 
     needed only pencil and paper and was kept on a safe track by 
     the logical rules of mathematics. You, on the other hand, 
     navigated in unchartered territories, gathering all knowledge 
     by experiments of your design on new materials of your making 
     and interpreting measurements of limited accuracy. Yet you 
     succeeded many times in discovering new materials and new 
     laws of material science. Not only that, you designed these 
     materials to be of great value to society.''
       ``I know some of the difficulties you must have 
     encountered. I did an experiment only once in my life, with 
     the young De Haas. It was a complete flop. We made such an 
     unforgivable mistake that our experiment is still quoted 
     under the demeaning rubric ``Pathological Science'' serving 
     as an example of what experimentalists must avoid: `Never 
     let your preconceived notion influence your experiment!'. 
     We fell into that trap. We knew the value which we should 
     find in our experiment because I had calculated it. We 
     indeed measured it quite accurately. However, we were 
     influenced and fooled by our prior knowledge. The true 
     value turned out to be different by a factor two. My 
     calculation, based on classical concepts, was wrong.''
       ``Now you see, Stan, how much I admire your successful 
     forays into completely unknown territories with naysayers and 
     enemies lurking around you. Who was this Oxford professor who 
     claimed amorphous semiconductors cannot exist because he 
     taught his students that their energy gap is formed by 
     interference of the electron wave functions at the periodic 
     lattice of crystals? We both had plenty of enemies, but for 
     us they lived in a different universe because we knew we were 
     right. I could easily disregard them, but for you they were 
     serious, they tried to prevent your work from getting funded, 
     experiments are expensive. So you had to play all the other 
     roles: being an entrepreneur, fund raiser, inventor and 
     engineer and machine builder, all in one person. Now you know 
     why I consider you to be the one to be admired.''
       Stan was speechless, so Einstein carried on and said ``I 
     learned to protect my solitude, uncombed and dressed in my 
     ragged sweater--I protect my privacy. You notice there is no 
     living room and no telephone in this house I designed, and my 
     wife Elsa has a great talent shunning away visitors.''
       I don't remember what Stan said, but Einstein continued: 
     ``People are in awe of me but no one loves me. I never had 
     true friends, I failed in my marriage. I envy you and Iris 
     for your talent to form deep friendships and to elicit love. 
     People are drawn to you; you understand them and you care. 
     Even more, you bring out their best, many working with you 
     feel you changed their lives. You and

[[Page S6104]]

     Iris created a unique ECD culture of innovation and 
     collaboration. Enough said. So stop admiring me, you are 
     great!''
       ``We share fundamental human values, I talked about them, 
     but you practiced them; you were effective starting as a 
     Union organizer and continued fighting against injustice and 
     prejudice all your life. It is typical for you to be the only 
     Fellow of the American Physical Society who, at the same 
     time, is a union member of the International Association of 
     Machinists.''
       Einstein then talked about his work in the patent office 
     and how he enjoyed reading many of Stan's 400 or so patents. 
     Their discussion became too technical for me to include in 
     this talk. Getting up, Einstein finally said: ``by the way 
     Stan, I learned about your explanation of dark matter, the 26 
     percent of all matter in the universe, one of the great 
     puzzles of modern Cosmology. You said it is not matter at all 
     but pure gravitation without matter. It is space/time 
     curvature produced by non-uniform expansion of the universe 
     instead of by matter. I agree with you, the expansion cannot 
     be uniform because mass, that is the galaxies and nebula fill 
     space in clumps. That will cause wrinkles in space time and 
     hence additional curvatures, which of course act 
     gravitationally, just what dark matter does. The referee was 
     wrong rejecting your paper on the grounds of my field 
     equations. These were written for a stationary universe in 
     order to keep the mathematics simple and tractable. Modern 
     scientists must not take as a gospel what I wrote down more 
     than 80 years ago.''
       Here our dog jumped on my bed waking me up--what a dream! I 
     had to tell you about it. I hope you appreciate my effort to 
     imitate Einstein's German accent.
       You might be surprised to hear Stan thinking about 
     cosmological problems. I always stayed with Stan and Iris 
     when I visited ECD. When we got to his home after a grueling 
     and strenuous day for Stan, we swam in the lake, had a 
     martini and enjoyed Iris' delicious dinner. Then Stan said 
     ``Let us relax and talk about physics''. Besides high 
     temperature superconductivity, Bose Einstein condensation, 
     non-silver photography, high remanence magnets, catalytic 
     actions of nano-crystals, and of course the Ovonic switching 
     and memory phenomena, we discussed current problems of 
     cosmology. We sat in his basement study surrounded by 
     thousands of his books, discussed and argued about scientific 
     problems. Between my visits we exchanged letters summarizing 
     and clarifying our thoughts in preparation of our next 
     session. I found a bundle of our letters. These are the ones 
     of 6 years between 1994 and 2000 dealing with cosmology. They 
     awake fond memories.
       I mentioned thousands of his books. They fill all rooms and 
     the study, the guest room, the former gym and sauna in the 
     basement. The books, most of them heavily annotated with 
     colored markers, lead you through the history of the labor 
     movement, biographies of all important and admirable people 
     including some anarchists, books on Japanese Haiku, Chinese 
     art, history of social movements and world history. With his 
     incredible memory, Stan picks from the books piling up to the 
     ceiling and finds the passage supporting his argument. Stan 
     is a Renaissance man except for the important difference that 
     in the Renaissance no one was at the same time a scientist, 
     social activist, entrepreneur, machine builder, inventor, and 
     manufacturer. We have to find a new name for a person with 
     the incredible scope of knowledge and creativity of Stan. On 
     the other hand, there is no other person, so let's just call 
     him Stan Ovshinsky.
       We wish you good health, success and a happy birthday.
                                  ____


   Stan Ovshinsky: Celebrating the Past and Illuminating the Future--
                      Harley Shaiken, UC-Berkeley

       It is an honor and a joy to be here today with Stan and 
     Rosa, with their family and friends, to celebrate Stan's 90th 
     birthday. I will take my cue from Stan who has always 
     celebrated the past while looking to the future.
       From a very young age Stan set out to change the world in a 
     progressive--no, in a radical way--and the world is a far 
     better place for his efforts. As impressive as his works have 
     been, I believe they will prove defining for future 
     generations.
       Stan has combined brilliant science with a deep commitment 
     to social justice and he has pursued both with exceptional 
     vision and courage. They are fully intertwined in his mind 
     and his heart. They are not separate sides of Stan, they are 
     Stan.
       If the term were not already used in physics, we might call 
     the passionate combination of science and social justice: 
     Ovonics.
       His path has never been easy. When the times were toughest, 
     when the night was darkest, Stan persevered. Since it's his 
     birthday, let me begin with a verse by Ralph Chaplin, the IWW 
     poet and troubadour, who at times wrote from a jail cell and 
     who Stan reads in difficult times.
       Chaplin wrote in ``No Truce for Us":
       ``Stubborn we stood against the stars to span
       The night with dreams, our faces to the gale''.
       Stan has spanned a lifetime with dreams, surmounted the 
     fiercest gales, and turned those dreams into profound new 
     realities.
       Stan for me has been the dearest of friends, the most 
     exceptional of mentors. There is no one with whom it is more 
     exciting to share good news. When I met a beautiful young 
     woman from Chile in 1973, who is the love of my life, I first 
     brought her to meet Stan and Iris. And, there is no one who 
     is more supportive when the sky appears to be falling. I 
     wouldn't be who I am today without Stan.
       Out of a lifetime of special moments I will speak briefly 
     about two separated by decades and thousands of miles: the 
     first was when I met Stan and Iris so many years ago in 
     Detroit and, the second, when I stood with Stan and Rosa only 
     a few years ago on an 8,000 foot mountain in the north of 
     Chile.
       I first met Stan and Iris when I was 15 in a basement 
     community room in Northwest Detroit at a meeting to organize 
     a chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil 
     rights group. Their ideals and their love for each other 
     flowed through the room. The 1960s were just beginning. The 
     times were very heady and the times were deeply troubled. 
     Stan and Iris's commitment to civil rights was inspiring. 
     They supported students in the South who were being brutally 
     beaten for sitting at lunch counters and they stood with 
     African American families in Detroit who were threatened for 
     wanting a decent home down the block.
       I would soon learn that Stan had organized workers into 
     unions in the 1930s and 1940s, on occasion being chased or 
     beaten for his efforts, and I would see him stand proudly 
     with labor throughout his life; I would see Stan champion 
     human rights throughout the world whether in Russia or Chile; 
     I would see his support of women in his life and in his 
     company far ahead of the curve; and I would witness him 
     oppose unjust wars guided by a moral compass whatever the 
     personal cost.
       In the weeks and months after we met a friendship bloomed. 
     I would meet Stan and Iris after school in the storefront 
     offices on Six Mile Road of a company they had just founded. 
     At the time, the company had an oscilloscope or two and was 
     about to hire its first employee. It's name and its mission 
     would prove prophetic: Energy Conversion Laboratories. What a 
     name to choose in 1960!
       In Stan's office, there was a periodic table of the 
     elements on the wall and shelves of books from Albert 
     Einstein to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, from the British 
     philosopher Bertrand Russell to the American labor leader A. 
     Philip Randolph.
       As we talked, Stan would pull books off the shelves and put 
     them into my hands, books that would change my life. George 
     Orwell's Homage to Catalonia; John Reed's Ten Days That Shook 
     the World; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's Stride Toward 
     Freedom; and the German expressionist George Grosz's 
     paintings and drawings, among many others.
       Although Stan has honorary doctorates in physics from the 
     University of Michigan and great universities throughout the 
     world, he says he acquired his advanced degree at the Akron 
     Public Library; I acquired mine in that Six Mile Road office.
       In his office and in his living room, Stan spoke 
     passionately about science, he spoke about energy and 
     information as the pillars of a new age, and he spoke about 
     building a better world with urgency.
       As I would quickly learn, for Stan speaking was the prelude 
     to action. Ideas led to new theories, new materials, new 
     areas of science; they led to machines and factories; they 
     laid the foundation for new industries.
       Stan's path-breaking science harnessed the energy of the 
     sun and his values sought to use science to create jobs, 
     avoid wars over energy, and preserve the environment.
       His vision was always international. He has traveled the 
     world tirelessly I suspect with the words of Eugene Debs in 
     mind ``if there is a lower class I am in it, if there is a 
     criminal element I am of it, if there is a soul in prison I 
     am not free.'' And, his practice seemed to have added ``if 
     someone sits in darkness my world becomes dimmer.'' Among so 
     many global achievements, forgotten villagers in Oaxaca, 
     Mexico were able to light the night using his solar materials 
     and illuminate a path to a better future.
       Three years ago I came with Ricardo Lagos, the legendary 
     former president of Chile, to Detroit to meet Stan and Rosa.
       He was so impressed by the visit--Stan and he proved to be 
     kindred spirits--that he organized a trip for them to Chile a 
     few months later.
       We were invited to spend a magical day at the Paranal 
     Observatory on an 8,000-foot peak in the Atacama desert, the 
     driest place on the planet. Under a sundrenched sky and 
     during a night overflowing with stars, Stan expressed 
     admiration for what democratic governments had achieved in 
     Chile and spoke eloquently about solar possibilities for the 
     future. Over an intense week, he added a vital, transforming 
     voice to thinking about renewable energy in the country.
       The magic continued at the home of President Michelle 
     Bachelet, a remarkable woman and an exceptional president. 
     Stan and her shared an instant rapport and a deep, personal 
     connection on values and ideals. The commitment for a better 
     world burned brightly for both of them.
       These special moments made me realize that Stan has changed 
     the world in ways that he and we may not yet fully recognize. 
     We will look back and see that his science and his life 
     defined our age in profound ways.
       He has inspired far more deeply and far more widely than he 
     may know. He has inspired because, as Senator Carl Levin so 
     eloquently put it, ``Stan has allowed us to see the world as 
     it could be.''
       Those who worked with him at Energy Conversion Devices saw 
     his ideals in practice. He created a culture that celebrated 
     the worth and capacity of people--whatever

[[Page S6105]]

     their formal qualifications, whoever they were--and inspired 
     unparalleled innovation and achievement over five decades.
       Along the way there have been setbacks and tough defeats. 
     How could there not be given the powerful interests he has 
     challenged and the profound ways in which he has upended the 
     status quo? I am reminded about something his friend Norman 
     Thomas once said, which is now enshrined on a plaque in the 
     library at Princeton University. ``I am not the champion of 
     lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won.''
       Let me conclude with another poem. In a world spiraling 
     toward nightmare in 1938 Bertolt Brecht wrote ``To 
     Posterity.''
       He lamented ``Alas, we who sought a world of human kindness 
     could not ourselves be kind.''
       Stan has rewritten the poem with the work of a lifetime. 
     His version would read ``we who sought a world of human 
     kindness could only achieve it through kindness, generosity, 
     and solidarity with our fellow human beings.''
       Happy birthday, Stan!

                          ____________________