Jack Marburger, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology under President George W. Bush, died on Thursday.
National Science Foundation Director Subra Suresh issued this statement honoring Marburger:
I wish to express my condolences to his surviving family members and all those who were close to him. A well-known physicist, Jack was held in high esteem by his colleagues, and the nation benefited from many of his policy contributions at the White House.
He will especially be remembered at NSF for urging the creation of a new “social science of science and innovation policy” at the 2005 annual Science and Technology Policy Forum of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., to help guide policy-makers in assessing the impact of the nation’s significant investment in research and development. Since that time, a Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) community has formed to provide federal and other policy-makers with additional quantitative data and scientifically informed information to help evaluate and guide the nation’s science policy. Cross-disciplinary investigators, researchers and experts have come together to examine the effects of culture on institutional effectiveness, the global evolution of technology and a number of other socially pressing issues relevant to science policy. NSF has supported this community with its formal SciSIP program and its National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
We at NSF will help continue Jack’s philosophy, with which he characterized his OSTP position: “In a job like this, the most important accomplishment is to make sure that this vast machinery of science continues to move forward and produce the kind of results that have made America strong and great and an exciting place to be a scientist.”
