[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 11691-11692]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE VANNEVAR BUSH AWARD FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO ERICH BLOCH

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to bring to my 
colleagues' attention the fact that the National Science Board, NSB, 
has honored Erich Bloch as the 24th recipient of the Vannevar Bush 
Award for Science and Technology, its highest award for scientific 
achievement and statesmanship. Mr. Bloch's record of innovation and 
leadership in the advanced technology sector and the immense impact 
that his career has had on the field make him especially deserving of 
lofty praise. He received the award on May 7 in Washington, DC.
  Mr. Bloch is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on 
Science and Technology, a distinguished fellow at the Council on 
Competitiveness, a former director of the National Science Foundation, 
and an outspoken supporter of fundamental research in leading 
innovation. He occupies a senior statesman status in science and 
engineering and has been a longtime supporter of science and 
mathematics education programs funded by the Federal Government.

       Erich Bloch is a visionary innovator of enormous stature--
     in both high technology for the private sector--and in the 
     organization and objectives of science and engineering 
     research,'' Eamon Kelly, National Science Board chair, stated 
     in announcing the honor. ``He has been an exceptionally 
     effective communicator of the benefits of public funding for 
     science and technology, and a leader in establishing widely 
     emulated mechanisms for productive partnerships in research 
     and education across public, academic, and private sectors.

  Before moving to Washington to become the National Science 
Foundation's only director from industry, Mr. Bloch was a famed 
electrical engineer at IBM and was one of the key figures responsible 
for IBM's STRETCH Computer Systems Engineering Project and in the 
groundbreaking developments of the IBM Systems 360. Until the 1960s, 
every computer model was generally designed independently, and at times 
individual machines were custom modified for a particular customer. The 
advent of the IBM-360 family of computers changed this forever. All 
these machines had the same user instruction set, taking advantage of 
IBM's engineering leadership in powerful disk drive systems. On the 
smaller machines, many of the more complex instructions were done in 
microcode rather than in hardware. Mr. Bloch headed IBM's development 
of the solid logic technology program, which provided IBM with the 
microelectronics technology for the System/360. Mr. Bloch's leadership 
ability was one of the key reasons for the success of the System/360. 
His strategy was to work around organizational structures and, as 
technical problems were identified, to assign groups or individuals who 
offered the best proposals. Mr. Bloch was the first to develop an IBM 
product with a ferrite core memory--a significant achievement in the 
search for memory technology. Mr. Bloch's accomplishments on the 
system, and the developments that occurred as part of his management 
style, helped revolutionize the computer industry and led to his 
receiving the 1985 National Medal of Technology with his IBM 
colleagues, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., and Bob O. Evans.
  In his 6-year term as NSF director, Erich Bloch built national 
support for advances in high-performance computing and networking. Mr. 
Bloch's important leadership in transitioning

[[Page 11692]]

NSFNET to a commercialized Internet helped create an immense economic 
and societal impact from the 1990s to today. Mr. Bloch supported NSF's 
take over of the Defense Department's ARPANET, creating the government-
owned and managed NSFNET connected to five university-based 
supercomputer centers via a 56-Kbps backbone. NSFNET replaced ARPANET 
in 1990 and expanded to include a variety of regional networks that 
linked universities into the backbone network. The only other wide-area 
networks in existence, all government owned, supported only limited 
numbers of specialized contractors and researchers. Mr. Bloch supported 
key colleagues at NSF, like Steve Wolff, and they had the vision to see 
the power of networking in the academic and research communities, and 
in the process created a powerful user base, the first real customer 
base, that would not let the networking revolution stop. Just 10 years 
later, the Internet was ``owned'' by no one and managed by a wide 
variety of commercial and nonprofit organizations on a decentralized 
basis. NSFNET's backbone operated at 45 Mbps, which was raised to 155 
Mbps after NSFNET was decommissioned. NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995 
when there was enough commercial Internet service providers, web 
browsers, and search engines to sustain the networks, operations, and 
management--nearly 60,000 networks were connected to the backbone. Now, 
61.4 percent of the U.S. population has online access according to the 
latest Nielsen Net Ratings.
  According to a report published by the policy division of non-profit 
corporation SRI International entitled ``The Role of NSF's Support of 
engineering in Enabling Technological Innovation,'' Erich Bloch played 
an important leadership role in three key decisions that spurred 
today's Internet. First, he influenced the NSF decision to make NSFNET 
an ``open'' network rather than one that served supercomputer 
researchers exclusively. NSF decided to make NSFNET a three-tiered, 
distributed network consisting of backbone, regional or mid-level 
networks, and local, initially campus-based, networks. Finally, NSF 
decided to make the Internet self-supporting, and a series of decisions 
Mr. Bloch backed concerning the implementation of the self-supporting 
Internet led to its burgeoning. DARPA in the '70's developed the 
prototype for the Internet, ARPANET. Assisted by Erich Bloch's 
leadership, NSF played a crucial role in transitioning NSFNET in the 
1980s into the remarkable Internet system so important to us today.
  Internet innovation was not Mr. Bloch's only role at NSF. Before his 
arrival at NSF, the agency largely saw computing as a research tool for 
existing science disciplines. As detailed in the book, ``Funding the 
Revolution'' by the National Research Council, Mr. Bloch treated 
computing as a new scientific field in its own right, both a new 
science and an interdisciplinary science connector. Mr. Bloch created a 
new science directorate at NSF entirely for computing, consolidating 
all of NSF's computing initiatives in one place, and recruited another 
famed computer pioneer, Gordon Bell of DEC, to head it up. Computer 
science was now on a par with the established physical and biological 
sciences and budgeting at NSF grew from $23 million in 1984 to $100 
million in 1986 and has continued to rise since then. While NSF had 
followed distantly behind DARPA's leadership in computing, under Erich 
Bloch it came into its own and began sponsoring important scientific 
computing advances.
  Erich Bloch has always realized government's significant role in 
technology development, in coordination with the academic and 
commercial sectors. In receiving this award, he acknowledged that, ``we 
have learned that in these days of rapid development and keen 
competition much is to be gained from cooperative activities.'' He 
continued that, ``the global market is a reality'' due to the 
development of computers, communication networks and IT. ``This 
paradigm change has pushed science and technology to the forefront of 
policy issues and policy considerations, here and across the globe.''
  Along with Erich Bloch's key contributions to computing and the 
Internet and his foresightedness in matters of public policy, he 
deserves acclaim for the role that he has played in education. His 
creation of the NSF engineering research centers and science and 
technology centers reflect his belief in knowledge transfer. He brought 
together university scientists and industry researchers to provide 
educational benefits and help transform engineering education as well 
as to extend fundamental research benefits to industry. In education, 
Mr. Bloch also oversaw NSF's support of system wide reform for K-12 
math and science education, including emphasis on participation by 
women and minorities in science and engineering. During his tenure, the 
budget for education and human resources more than tripled and NSF's 
overall budget increased to $2 billion.
  As a distinguished fellow with the Council on Competitiveness, a 
private, non-profit organization dedicated to furthering U.S. economic 
leadership, Mr. Bloch continues to advocate policies that promote the 
effective use of innovation in the development of the U.S. economy. He 
is also a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and 
Technology, has been a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason 
University, has been awarded 13 honorary degrees from major 
universities and ten major awards and medals, and serves as a member of 
numerous boards in both the public and private sectors.
  For his remarkable vision, innovation, and continued contributions to 
the advanced technology sector and to the national interest in the 
economy and education, Erich Bloch is most deserving of the venerable 
Vannevar Bush Award. Very few can boast of having made similar 
contributions to society. I am delighted to bring this honor to the 
attention of my colleagues, awarded to a computer and Internet pioneer, 
a visionary research administrator and science educator, to the 
attention of my colleagues and to express my sincere congratulations to 
Mr. Bloch.

                          ____________________