12 - The Unpaid Debt

Summary

Money is required to do fundamental scientific research, but the potential benefits of this research are often not clear in advance, even though their worth in terms of contributions to the gross domestic product, historically, have been enormous. Who should pay for fundamental research and why?

This essay is based on an article originally published in Nature Physics on December 1, 2007.

Preparing for a talk on the fiftieth anniversary of the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity I was struck by a footnote on the first page of our 1957 paper: “This work was supported in part by the Office of Ordnance Research, U.S. Army” – a program officer whose mission might have included improving artillery shells found it appropriate to fund a project in fundamental science. This spurred me into reflection on funding for scientific research, then and now.

Money is required to do science and, as systems become more complex, more people, equipment, and therefore more money is required for each new result. Naturally, people hark back with sentimentality to the good old days when results could be obtained on a tabletop. In fact, some results are still obtained on tabletops, but the tables are getting larger and the tops more expensive.