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President George W. Bush has chosen Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory John H. Marburger, III to serve as Director of the Office of Science and Technology. The lifelong Democrat will be named Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy and will be part of the White House staff, working under Chief of Staff Andrew Card. “I would be delighted to be nominated for this position, which traditionally includes the Directorship of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a post that requires Senate confirmation,” Marburger said. Because of the August Senate recess, Marburger said he does not expect confirmation hearings to begin until September. “That leaves time for an orderly transition of leadership at the Laboratory,” Marburger said. “When I suspected that events might require a search for a new Lab Director at Brookhaven,” Marburger said, “I asked Peter Paul to change his plan to return to Stony Brook University in the fall. Peter has agreed to remain as Deputy Director for Science and Technology for as long as necessary to provide continuity during the transition. The Board of Directors of Brookhaven Science Associates will include issues related to the transition at its regular meeting this coming Friday. I am grateful to Peter for his willingness to accommodate this unexpected turn of events. His high standards for science, and his unrelenting energy in pursuing them, have had a profound and positive impact on the laboratory.” Marburger said that he must respect the integrity of the confirmation process and will limit his contacts with the media, members of Congress and others so as not to presume that the confirmation is a foregone conclusion.
Marburger, who took over the helm of the lab in March of 1998, overhauled During his tenure at the lab: the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the world’s newest and largest particle accelerator for nuclear physics research, became operational and produced intriguing results in record time, and BNL scientists detected what may be the first truly significant deviation from the standard model of particle physics. Prior to joining the BNL, Marburger had a distinguished career in both science and education. From 1980 to 1994, he served as president of Stony Brook University. In the fall of 1994, he returned to the Stony Brook faculty, teaching and conducting research in optical science. Three years later, he became president of Brookhaven Science Associates – a partnership founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a non-profit applied science and technology organization – which was awarded the contract to manage and operate Brookhaven Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Marburger came to Long Island in 1980 from the University of Southern California, where, in the 1970s, he had been a professor of physics and electrical engineering. He had served as chairman of USC’s Physics Department and dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. While at USC, Marburger contributed to the field on nonlinear optics, an area of growing interest since the invention of the laser in 1960. He had developed a theory for various laser phenomena and was co-founder of USC’s Center for Laser Studies. His teaching activities included “Frontiers of Electronics,” a series of educational programs on CBS television. During his presidency at Stony Brook, Marburger served on numerous boards and committees. His service included being chairman of the New York State Governor’s Commission on the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and chairman of the 80-campus Universities Research Association, which operates Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago and the former Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory in Texas.
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