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2004 World Technology Awards Winners & Finalists

Kurt Gottfried

Please describe the work that you are doing that you consider to be the most innovative and of the greatest likely long-term significance.

In broad terms, upholding the ethos of the Enlightenment in a culture that is resistant to the meaning of science even as it becomes ever more dependent on the products of science. Have played lead role in formulating and organizing protest by top echelon of US scientific community about the distortion, censorship and manipulation of the processes by which scientific knowledge enters into the policy formation of the current administration when such knowledge is in conflict with the administration's policies or the views of powerful constituencies -- practices that could well continue in a new administration. Formulation of proposals for protecting US government scientists when their scientific ethics are compromised by political superiors, and for compelling future presidents to report regularly to Congress about the current knowledge and policies regarding controversial issues in which science plays a crucial role, in particular climate change.

Brief Biography

Born, Vienna, Austria, 1929. Ph.D. theoretical physics MIT 1955 Junior Fellow, research fellow, assistant prof. Harvard 55-64 Guggenheim Fellow 1963-64 physics prof. Cornell 64 -- senior staff member, CREN, Switzerland, 19070-73 member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Council on Foreign Relations chairman, Division of Partcles & Fields, American Physical Society co-founder (1969) Union of Concerned Scientists, board of directors, 1978 --; chair 1999 --

The 2005 World Technology Summit and Awards

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