As many are aware, Stephen Hawking died March 14 in Cambridge, England. Hawking was a physicist, most known for revolutionizing our understanding of black holes, objects so dense that light cannot escape them, by proving that they should, in fact, glow faintly. This surprising finding defined a new area of physics that continues to puzzle scientists decades later.
Hawking is also famous for his remarkable struggle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease characterized by the degeneration of motor nerves, which control motion. The disorder is aggressive; when Hawking was diagnosed in his twenties, he was given a few years to live, yet he passed at the ripe age of 76. The discoveries Hawking made are even more astounding considering that ALS confined him to a wheelchair for much of his life, forcing him to work with equations entirely in his head.
Most of all, Hawking was notable for his devotion to public outreach. Even though he studied some of the most complex and abstract theories of the universe, he wrote numerous books explaining these ideas in accessible terms, first among them was “A Brief History of Time.” These books and his background made him a celebrity in the United States, a status few scientists, living or dead, have managed to achieve.
His success highlights a deficit in our attention as a society: despite the pivotal role of science and technology for our modern way of life, we give little credit to the brilliant minds that inspire such developments. As students at a strongly STEM-oriented institution, but more so as citizens of a technological society, we ought to recognize the impact scientists have on our lives and, with our attention and resources, support humanity’s attempts to better understand the world around us.
Computers run the information age, yet many of the pioneers of computing technology are unknown to the general public. Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage were the first to dream of a generally programmable machine for calculating mathematics, and of methods for programming it. Lovelace predicted that such machines could be used beyond the sphere of math to manipulate letters, an idea far predating the first computers.
Alan Turing, although recently the subject of the movie “The Imitation Game,” was another fairly obscure researcher involved in early computing. After the events of the movie, Turing went on to make designs that, while never constructed, would serve as inspiration for some of the first true computers ever created.
The work of Lovelace, Babbage and Turing surely highlights the need for encouraging people to study science and engineering, but their stories also demonstrate an often underlooked factor: government funding. Babbage’s first machine cost the English treasury £17,500, the price of 22 trains in that day, and was never completed. The machine used by Turing to crack encrypted German messages was priced in the movie at £100,000, a large sum of money for the government to pay out.
The real issue with society’s lack of focus on science is that people don’t get nearly as enthusiastic about funding it as it deserves. NC State, which prides itself on its commitment to research, has a projected spending of $298 million on “Organized Research” in the 2017-18 fiscal year.
By comparison, the National Science Foundation, which provides funding for research projects across the country, received $7.47 billion for the 2017 fiscal year, only 31 times more, and only a 0.1 percent increase from 2016. With the 2.2 percent inflation rate in 2016, that actually amounts to a slight cut in the organization’s funding.
This is absurd. If the public were more passionate about scientific advancement, President Trump couldn’t have proposed massive cuts in his 2018 budget from last May, slashing funding for many scientific research agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) loses 31 percent, the Energy Department’s Office of Science loses $900 million and the budget for the National Institutes of Health loses 18 percent.
These agencies provide funding for scientific research and development throughout the country, including at universities like our own. Especially for schools which can’t afford the amount NC State spends on research, these cuts could dramatically impede their ability to do science. Research should not be a political issue.
Everyone benefits from the development of new technologies, whether improved agricultural output lowering food costs, smart devices which provide convenience in daily life or research on disease prevention. Additionally, everyone at this university will have to deal with the impacts of climate change within our lifetimes, but without proper funding for the EPA and other environmental groups, we won’t have enough knowledge about how to resolve these issues.
The best way to change this is to raise the profile of science as a whole. For those of us in STEM majors, we should work to better communicate our research to the public. For those of us in other majors, we must try to find out more about the discoveries taking place all around us, including right here on campus. Inspiring everyone with the beauty and power of science would be the truest way for us to cement Stephen Hawking’s legacy, for the benefit of all humanity.
