UC Berkeley Nobel prize winners worry about federal cuts impacting future research

By John Ramos

It was a good week for the University of California. Three Nobel Prizes in three days.  And while there was much celebration, there were also warnings that the removal of public funding for research could be an obstacle for the United States back on the scientific world stage.  

At UC Berkeley on Tuesday, it was physics professor John Clark’s turn, although he admitted he didn’t really believe it when he got the call from Sweden.

“I wasn’t quite sure at the beginning whether or not this was a junk call,” he said.  “But it soon became clear that it was real.  And I was just sitting there feeling completely stunned.  It never occurred to me in my entire life that anything like this would happen.”

Clark moved from the UK in the 1960s to begin teaching at Cal. He worked with an international team to develop breakthroughs in quantum tunneling, which is helping create a whole new class of supercomputers. But when he began his research, he admits he wasn’t sure where it would take him.

“It’s so important to do this basic science because you don’t know what the outcome is going to be,” he said.  “Some outcomes are more important than others.”

Another important outcome came on Wednesday with the announcement that Cal Professor Omar Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

“It was absolutely thrilling,” he said.  “It’s — You cannot prepare for a moment like that.  So, I was just surprised and delighted by the news.”

Professor Yaghi was part of a team that created spaces in molecules through which gases can flow.  It will allow water to be harvested from the air in desert environments and potentially create ways to chemically remove toxic contaminants and even carbon dioxide from the environment. Born in Jordan, the UC Berkeley chemist shared the award with scientists located in Australia and Japan.

“Science is a language that allows all people to talk to each other,” said Yaghi. “Scholars can be exchanged and learn from other scholars in other countries. And this is how knowledge was spread.”

But both Nobel winners said America is in danger of losing that exchange of knowledge. They say funding cuts to all areas of scientific research, especially at public universities, run the risk of isolating the United States from the scientific community.

“This is an immensely serious problem,” said Clark.  “I certainly know personally people who have lost most of their funding.  And this will cripple much of the United States’ science research unless they reverse this procedure.  If this continues, assuming that the present administration finally comes to an end, it may take a decade to get back to where we were, say, half a year ago.”

“Without funding, you can’t do science,” said Yaghi.  “Science costs money and it’s an investment into our future.  We do have to compete with other countries, who also compete for our talent.  So, we need to make sure that we fund science to a level that allows us to excel and to compete with others.  Our science is the jewel in the crown of our country.  So, we cannot allow that to slip.”