    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1991, Book I)]
    [March 4, 1991]
    [Pages 210-212]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Westinghouse Science Talent Search 50th Anniversary
    Banquet
    March 4, 1991

        Thank you. Please be seated. Let me just say how pleased I am to be
    here, salute the members of my Cabinet here, Secretary Sullivan; and
    Governor and Mrs. Sununu; Dr. Bromley, outstanding science adviser to
    the President; Dr. Seaborg, an old friend who's been so instrumental in
    all of this; Mr. Lego, Mr. Sherburne, Ms. Luszcz, Monsignor Quinn, Mr.
    Flatow; and trustees of the Westinghouse Foundation. And then, of
    course, the past and current Westinghouse Award recipients; also, the
    judges of the Science Talent Search; distinguished guests of science--
    and that leaves me as the only one. [Laughter]
        I went in and saw five of these displays in there on the condition
    that they'd not give a test after they explained exactly what they had
    wrought. [Laughter] And I wish all of you could have seen it; it was
    wonderful.
        But thank you, sir, for introducing me and for all you do, for this
    warm reception out here. And let me welcome to Washington the trustees
    of our posterity: high school students, the best and the brightest, high
    school students who act for the Nation and neighbor. And it's a pleasure
    for me to be here at this Super Bowl of science.
        You know, we meet tonight on the 50th anniversary of the
    Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a program which has helped to make
    the past half-century a time of extraordinary exploration. Fifty years
    ago, 1941--just think of the changes since then. As for the VCR--people
    couldn't set their clocks on the VCR back then either. [Laughter]
    Because there wasn't any VCR. [Laughter] When I was growing up in 1941,
    PacMan was a hiker, not a video game. [Laughter] And there have been so
    many changes, so much scientific change for the good. And who knows how
    future endeavors will make ours a richer, more decent world?
        Tonight, we honor distinguished scientists and researchers who are
    opening doors into an age where mankind not only moved into the future
    but reinvented it. Think of discoveries like biotechnology and
    microchip, and of pioneers like Kilby and Noyce, Cohen and Boyer, the
    first two people to splice a gene. All knew, as Thomas Jefferson wrote
    to a Polish general who fought with us in the Revolutionary War, ``The
    main objects of all science are the freedom and happiness of man.''
        Since the dark days of World War II, Westinghouse recipients have
    aided this freedom, becoming an instrument of liberty and the symbol of
    the information age. From the first man to win the top prize in the
    Science Talent Search--Paul Teschan, saving soldiers' lives with the
    artificial kidney in the Korean war--to Raymond Kurzweil, whose reading
    devices make life easier for the blind, each has reached for the stars
    so that future generations of Americans might someday travel to them.
        This program's history reaffirms that truth. Five Westinghouse Award
    recipients have won the Nobel Prize. Eight have received MacArthur
    fellowships. Three have

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    been admitted to the National Academy of Engineering. Twenty-eight have
    also been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of your
    profession's highest honors.
        Albert Einstein put it best when he noted that everything that is
    really great and inspiring is created by individuals who labor in
    freedom. In short, he believed what all of these honorees believe:
    freedom works. This year's national winners, 40 in all, were culled from
    more than 1,400 entries. Many belong to their school debate team or
    baseball club or their newspaper or their church group or their band.
    All have created research projects which show how the trailblazers of
    today can indeed be the heroes of tomorrow.
        Consider Clifford Wang of Vero Beach. He proposed that seaweed can
    be grown in the ocean to remove metal pollutants and then harvested for
    methane generation, cleaning the environment while at the same time
    producing energy. Or Tara Bahna-James of New York City, who explored the
    relationship between math aptitude and musical talent. In Spring,
    Texas--right there in my old congressional district--Wade Butine
    developed a varnish to withstand the rigors of weather and salt water.
    And in Pittsburgh, Susan Criss recently completed a 2-year project--it's
    one of the five I saw--that showed how betacarotene in the bloodstream
    may reduce the risk of cancer.
        These and other projects show how learning is always a continuation,
    never a consummation; that because freedom works, dreams make possible
    even greater dreams. Here's a story which magnifies that fact. In 1843,
    a Commissioner of Patents made a report to President Tyler. And he said,
    ``The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity and
    seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must
    end.'' He went on to urge that the Patent Office be liquidated--even
    Ripley wouldn't believe this--[laughter]--because, he allegedly
    believed, there was nothing else to be invented. [Laughter]
        Today, all of us know better. We realize this nation has no natural
    resources like its intellectual resources. So, we must, and are,
    assisting the knowledge that is our most enduring legacy, vital to
    everything we are and can become.
        The Nation's Governors and I have set a goal--a national goal--for
    U.S. students to be number one in the world in math and science learning
    by the year 2000. And we can achieve it. We will achieve it. To start
    with, we will achieve it through our own National Educational Excellence
    Act that I will soon send up to Congress. Last fall Congress acted
    favorably on our initiative for a National Science Scholars program,
    which will give America's youth a special incentive to excel in science,
    math, and engineering.
        We will also achieve this goal through research and development in
    all areas of science, technology, and engineering. Last month, I
    submitted our new budget to the Congress, and it includes special
    emphasis on math and science education. We propose an increase of $225
    million for math and science education, new funding for R&D that totals
    $76 billion, including a record high of over $13 billion for basic
    science research.
        Our budget will continue our basic commitment to double the funding
    for the National Science Foundation; devote over $16 billion for major
    space activities, and that's up 15 percent over last year; and support
    the development of worthy ideas from electric powered vehicles to high
    performance computing to the human genome project. It gives more money
    than ever to the small science research--research by individuals
    embodied, if you will, by the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. And it
    urges Congress to provide the 28-percent increase I seek to raise the
    quality of precollege math and science education, which we must do if
    American science and technology will continue to lead the world.
        This budget will help freedom work at home. And yet this freedom has
    also helped advance the cause of liberty abroad. For evidence, look
    halfway around the world at the Persian Gulf, where achievements in
    science are responsible for the high-tech equipment which has served our
    military so well.
        In the past, some have urged that we

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    depend more for our protection on theories of deterrence than
    technologies of defense. Well, thank God that when those Scuds came in,
    the people of Israel and Saudi Arabia had more to protect them than some
    abstract theory of deterrence.
        You just go over to Riyadh or Tel Aviv. And a theory didn't protect
    those citizens. Patriot missiles born of technology did. Because of
    science and technology, because of American creativity, thousands of
    innocent civilians--priceless human lives--have been spared. The Patriot
    and other missiles show how American innovation stems from American
    inspiration.
        If the cause of peace is to continue being served by American
    military power, it must continue being advanced by American brain power.
    Ask our troops in the Gulf--yes, those finest soldiers, sailors, airmen,
    marines, coastguardsmen any nation has ever had. Today, all of us are
    especially grateful that 10 coalition POW's, including several
    Americans, are on their way back home. And our remaining POW's should
    not be far behind. Welfare of our troops was our top priority in the
    war. And as we forge a new peace, all of them will be on our minds until
    all of them are back home. Each of these brave men and women know how
    science and technology brought closer freedom's ultimate victory.
        Ask, too, those other great heroes, our teachers. Each day they give
    perhaps the greatest gift of sharing their knowledge with others. And
    ask, finally, America's students and parents. They know that while
    learning is very practical, it is also among mankind's most noble
    endeavors. It can presage a new golden age--a bold, new world order
    where creativity flows more than ever from the human heart and mind.
        Over the past half-century, scientific breakthroughs have benefited
    us all. From the first radar to pioneering advances in shock and burn
    treatment, to the revolutionary laser, to the high-tech of today,
    America's scientists have done their duty, as they will in the future,
    helping us not merely to prevail at war but also, more importantly, to
    win the peace.
        What a magnificent legacy for the Westinghouse Science Talent
    Search. What a magnificent metaphor for the dream that is America. Thank
    you for all you do. Congratulations to each and every one of you. Please
    continue--I would ask this of all of you--to pray for our sons and
    daughters in the Gulf and for peace--lasting peace in that troubled
    corner of the world.
        God bless you all, and thank you very much.

                        Note: The President spoke at 7:28 p.m. in the
                            International Ballroom of the Washington Hilton
                            Hotel. In his opening remarks, he referred to
                            Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis L.
                            Sullivan; John H. Sununu, Chief of Staff to the
                            President, and his wife, Nancy; D. Allan
                            Bromley, Assistant to the President for Science
                            and Technology; Glenn Seaborg and E.G.
                            Sherburne, Jr., chairman and president of
                            Science Service; Paul Lego, chairman and chief
                            executive officer of Westinghouse Electric
                            Corp., who introduced President Bush; Carol
                            Luszcz, program director for the Westinghouse
                            Science Talent Search; Msgr. Louis Quinn of
                            Saint Matthew's Cathedral; and Ira Flatow,
                            president of Samanna Productions, Inc.