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John Yellen: Giving Direction to Science
| Article
# : |
11075 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1986 |
3,382 Words |
| Author
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Tom Nugent
Tom Nugent teaches journalism at the University of Maryland
in
Baltimore. His works include Death at Buffalo Creek,
published
by W.W. Norton. |
Ask Dr. John Yellen to describe the most challenging science project on which he has ever worked, and the veteran archaeologist will immediately begin to tell you about his years of living with Africa's Kalahari tribesmen in an effort to better understand the evolutionary origins of the human race:
"It was a very exciting project for us," he said. "We found sites that were over 100,000 years old--made by archaic humans, people who looked and acted differently from you or I today."
Ask polar research administrator Dr. Peter Wilkniss about the "cutting edge" of American science in the 1980s, and he will instantly deliver a mini-lecture about the importance of understanding the global climate:
"By drilling ice-cores [in Antarctica], you can uncover the record of past climate changes--simply by measuring the effect of "trace gases' on the samples you get."
For Dr. Bodo Bartocha, meanwhile, who runs a $15-million-a-year program in international scientific research, the most intriguing challenge of the 1980s can be found in the dank Amazon rain forests of Brazil where dozens of scientists are now studying the ecology of a threatened natural resource. He explains:
"We're trying to assess the plant and animal population--to catalog the various species--before people destroy the tropical forest completely."
Dr. Peter Pesch currently monitors about 100 ongoing grant projects under NSF's "Stars and Stellar Evolution" program in the Division of Astronomical Sciences, which includes studies of our own star, the sun. He sees his program's research as providing advances in knowledge which are important in maintaining and improve the quality of life on planet Earth.
Like many of the other 1,200 staffers at their NSF complex, located in Washington only two blocks from the White House, Drs. Yellen, Wilkniss, Bartocha, and Pesch are tantalized by mysteries that provoke a perpetual curiosity even as they stubbornly refuse to be solved.
While Dr. Yellen, a Harvard-trained archaeologist, struggles to understand the process by which man's earliest ancestors finally stood up on two legs over 4 million years ago, Antarctic voyager Dr. Wilkniss labors to chart the
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