March for Science on Saturday — get off sidelines, make a difference
As an oceanographer, I am fortunate to visit some of the most beautiful and unique places in the world. But no matter where I go, from the very center of the Atlantic Ocean to the aquamarine ports of the South Pacific, I am always glad to come home. I am proud to be an American, and even prouder to be an American scientist. It is for this pride that I will join friends and colleagues at the March for Science on Saturday. I hope you’ll join us.
The U.S. has always been a leader in science and technology. Benjamin Franklin, one of our country’s Founding Fathers, was also a scientist. He was especially interested in electricity, proving that lightning is electricity in his famous kite experiment. Franklin was also an oceanographer and was the first person to chart and name the Gulf Stream. Other illustrious American scientists include Grace Hopper, the Navy rear admiral and World War II veteran who invented the computer program compiler, and Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the practical telephone.
One scientist you may be less familiar with is the chemist Barnett Rosenberg. In the 1960s, Rosenberg observed something curious. When he exposed E. coli bacteria to electricity, they grew to nearly 300 times their normal size. Following his curiosity, he determined that the platinum electrodes he used in the experiment were corroding into a chemical called Peyrone’s salt. Scientists later built on this work and discovered that platinum compounds like Peyrone’s salt can stop cells from dividing — in other words, they have the potential to halt the uncontrolled cell division we call cancer.
Peyrone’s salt, now known as cisplatin, is now one of the most common chemotherapies used to treat ovarian, testicular, and other cancers. It is crucial and invaluable for people who are afflicted with these terrible diseases. And it would not have been discovered without the work of an American scientist.
If you’re reading my words on a phone or computer screen, you can be proud of U.S. scientists for that, too. The internet was envisioned by computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and born when the first “packet” of information was sent from one computer at the University of California, Los Angeles to another at Stanford University. Today the internet is a pervasive part of our lives, connecting us to faraway friends, family, and co-workers. The U.S. is still the front-runner in information technology and computer science, and none of this would exist without the leadership of American scientists.
As a graduate student in oceanography, I stand on the shoulders of these giants. It makes me proud to think of them and look forward to my own future.
I go to sea to study the smallest organisms that live there — the beneficial bacteria that make up the base of the ocean’s food web and provide 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe. If you took a teaspoon of seawater from the coast of Florida and counted all the bacteria in it, you would find about 5 million cells (and you would be counting for a long time). We know so little about these tiny wonders, but one of them may hold the key to a new antibiotic, cancer drug, or detoxifying agent. The only way to find out is to learn more about them.
As Americans, we cannot take our scientific leadership for granted. Our success depends on maintaining fertile ground for innovation, risktaking, collaboration, and freedom of expression. Generations of scientists have flocked to the U.S. to build on this foundation — from Albert Einstein, to all six of the American scientists who won Nobel prizes in 2016.
Science helps us build safer, healthier, more prosperous communities. But, more important, science provides us with hope for a brighter future. That, to me, is something worth standing for.