1. John Harmen "Jack" Marburger III was an American physicist who directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the administration of President George W Bush, serving as the Science Advisor to the President.
28 Facts About John Marburger
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John Marburger's tenure was marred by controversy regarding his defense of the administration against allegations from over two dozen Nobel Laureates, amongst others, that scientific evidence was being suppressed or ignored in policy decisions, including those relating to stem cell research and global warming.
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John Marburger served as the President of Stony Brook University from 1980 until 1994, and director of Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1998 until 2001.
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John Marburger rose to become chairman of the physics department in 1972, and then dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 1976.
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John Marburger was engaged as a public speaker on science, including hosting a series of educational television programs on CBS.
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John Marburger was outspoken on campus issues, and was designated the university's spokesperson during a scandal over preferential treatment of athletes.
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In 1980, Marburger left USC to become the third president of Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York.
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From 1988 to 1994, John Marburger chaired Universities Research Association, the organization that operated Fermilab and oversaw construction of the ill-fated Superconducting Super Collider, an experience that is credited with convincing him of the influence government had in how science is carried out.
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John Marburger stepped down as President of Stony Brook University in 1994, and began doing research again as a member of the faculty.
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John Marburger characterized his participation as a learning experience, and the experience was credited with profoundly changing his view on the relationship between the scientific community and the public.
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John Marburger had never been to a public hearing prior to his participation in the Shoreham commission, and he said that he initially expected that the issues could be resolved by examining scientific data and establishing failure probabilities.
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In January 1998, John Marburger became president of Brookhaven Science Associates, which subsequently won a bid to operate Brookhaven National Laboratory for the federal government, and he became the director of the lab.
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John Marburger took office after a highly publicized scandal in which tritium leaked from the lab's High Flux Beam Reactor, leading to calls by activists to shut down the lab.
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Rather than directly oppose the activists, John Marburger created policies that improved the environmental management of the lab as well as community involvement and transparency.
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John Marburger presided over the commissioning of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, expanded the lab's program in medical imaging and neuroscience, and placed more emphasis on its technology transfer program.
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In September 2001, Marburger became Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under George W Bush.
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John Marburger was a noted Democrat, a fact that Nature magazine stated was relevant to the decision by the administration to take the unusual step of withholding from John Marburger the title of Assistant to the President that previous science advisors had been granted.
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John Marburger's tenure was marked by controversy as he defended the Bush administration from accusations that political influence on science was distorting scientific research in federal agencies and that scientific evidence was being suppressed or ignored in policy decisions, especially on the topics of abstinence-only birth control education, climate change policy, and stem cell research.
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John Marburger defended the Bush Administration from these accusations, saying they were inaccurate or motivated by partisanship, especially on the issue of science funding levels.
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John Marburger continued to be personally respected by many of his academic colleagues.
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John Marburger has been called a central player opposing new restrictions of international scientific exchanges of people and ideas after the attacks.
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John Marburger later was responsible for reorienting the nation's space policy after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and played an important part in the nation's re-entry into the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor program.
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John Marburger was known for his support of the emerging field of science of science policy, which seeks to analyze how science policy decisions affects a nation's ability to produce and benefit from innovation.
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John Marburger called the report's conclusions illusory and the result of focusing on unrelated incidents within a vast government apparatus, and attributed the controversy as being related to the upcoming elections.
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John Marburger returned to Stony Brook University as a faculty member in 2009, and co-edited the book The Science of Science Policy: A Handbook, which was published in 2011.
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John Marburger served as Vice President for Research but stepped down on July 1,2011.
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John Marburger died Thursday, July 28,2011, at his home in Port Jefferson, New York, after four years of treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
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John Marburger was survived by his wife, two sons, and a grandson.