From super glue to microchips to digital cameras, President Barack Obama on Wednesday celebrated the brains behind these inventions and other breakthroughs as examples of "the promise of science."
In a ceremony in the White House East Room, Obama bestowed the National Medal of Science on 10 researchers and awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to three individuals and a three-person team.
The medals represent the government's highest honor for scientists, engineers and inventors.
Obama said their achievements "stand as a testament to the ingenuity, to their zeal for discovery and to the willingness to give of themselves and to sacrifice in order to expand the reach of human understanding. All of us have benefited from their work."
Other honorees helped unlock the secrets of genetics and disease, nanotechnology, solar energy, and chemistry and biology.
Their work, Obama said, has saved lives, improved health, created new industries and millions of jobs, and transformed education and communication. It serves, he said, "as proof not only of their incredible creativity and skill, but of the promise of science itself."
One of the recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation is Harry Coover of Eastman Chemical Company in Tennessee, for inventing cyanoacrylates, also known as super glues.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment