[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.