[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19368]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                TRIBUTE TO DR. KATHARINE BLODGETT GEBBIE

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I wish to pay tribute to Dr. Katharine 
Blodgett Gebbie, the past director of the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology's--NIST--Physics Laboratory and its successor, 
the Physical Measurement Laboratory. On December 10, 2015, the 
Precision Measurement Laboratory at NIST's Boulder campus will be 
formally renamed in honor of Dr. Gebbie, the first time in more than 50 
years that a major NIST building has been named for an individual. This 
incredible recognition underscores and celebrates Dr. Gebbie's 45 years 
of service to NIST and her contributions on behalf of the scientific 
community and our Nation.
  At a time when a much smaller percentage of women were a part of the 
American workforce and pursued advanced academic degrees, Dr. Gebbie 
received an undergraduate degree in physics from Bryn Mawr. She went on 
to receive a B.S. in astronomy and a Ph.D. in physics from University 
College London. She began her career in 1966 by doing astrophysics 
research at the Joint Institute for Lab Physics--JILA--a cooperative 
enterprise between the University of Colorado at Boulder and NIST. She 
later joined NIST as a physicist in 1968, working in the quantum 
physics division of JILA.
  Dr. Gebbie's ascent into a leadership role began in 1981, when she 
was named as a scientific assistant at the National Measurement 
Laboratory. In 1983, she became a program analyst for then-NIST 
Director Ernest Ambler and his deputy, Ray Kammer. In 1985, Dr. Ambler 
appointed Dr. Gebbie as the chief of JILA's quantum physics division, 
and in 1989, she was named as acting director of the new NIST Center 
for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics at NIST's main facility, in 
Gaithersburg, MD.
  From there, Dr. Gebbie's responsibilities only grew, reflecting her 
outstanding leadership, effective integration of emerging technologies, 
and unwavering dedication to the team of scientists and engineers who 
served under her. In 1990, Dr. Gebbie was named as the founding 
director of NIST's physics laboratory, which merged elements of five 
predecessor facilities based in Maryland and Colorado. Under her 
management, the NIST physics laboratory flourished. Her extensive 
support for her staff in the form of increased funding, encouragement, 
and logistical support contributed to an overall environment of 
scientific freedom, creativity, and innovation. The physics 
laboratory's scientific advances under her directorship are too 
numerous to recount here. Chief among them were progress in atomic 
clock technology, nanotechnology, advanced research on ultra-cold 
matter, and Bose-Einstein condensation--all of which prompted 
developments in a variety of scientific fields and helped to further 
establish NIST's status as ``America's laboratory.''
  Out of this atmosphere, an impressive four physicists in Dr. Gebbie's 
organizational unit--Bill Phillips, Jan Hall, Eric Cornell, and David 
Wineland--were awarded Nobel prizes between 1997 and 2012. Other 
scientists honored under her leadership include MacArthur Fellowship 
winners Debbie Jin and Ana Maria Rey and International Union of Pure & 
Applied Physics--IUPAP--Young Scientist Prize winners Till Rosenband, 
Ian Spielman, Jacob Taylor, and Gretchen Campbell.
  Among Dr. Gebbie's greatest contributions to the scientific community 
include her early promotion of the internet as a means of sharing 
scientific data at NIST through the laboratory's Electronic Commerce in 
Scientific & Engineering Data program and her support of a broad range 
of NIST initiatives and external programming like the Center for 
Nanoscale Science & Technology and the Joint Quantum Institute, a 
research partnership between the University of Maryland and NIST, 
founded in 2006.
  Perhaps the most enduring aspect of Dr. Gebbie's legacy, however, 
will be the programs she pioneered to support diversity and her 
tireless efforts to promote the inclusion of women and minorities in 
so-called STEM--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--
fields around the country. In 1993, NIST implemented the Summer 
Undergraduate Research Fellowships--SURF--program, aimed at integrating 
under-represented minorities into the laboratory, allowing students to 
participate in the cutting-edge scientific and mathematical research at 
NIST. The program has since expanded to every NIST laboratory and is 
jointly funded by the National Science Foundation.
  For her contributions to the scientific community and to the Nation, 
Dr. Gebbie has been recognized with numerous accolades, including the 
Women in Science & Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award, the 
Presidential Rank Awards for Meritorious Senior Executives, the 
Partnership for Public Service's Samuel J. Heyman Service to America 
Career Achievement Award, the Women in Science & Engineering WISE 
Award, and two Department of Commerce gold medals. She also serves as a 
fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the 
American Physical Society, a fellow of the Washington Academy of 
Sciences, and she previously participated in the 2nd IUPAP 
International Conference on Women in Physics.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in saluting Dr. Gebbie and in 
celebrating her legacy as one of the American scientific community's 
trailblazers. Her work will undoubtedly open the doors for countless 
scientists to come.

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