35 



sonalities in our country, perhaps even more than in other coun- 

 tries, and therefore I am not too afraid. But one must be careful. 



Mr. Brown. Would the gentleman yield? 



Mr. Walgren. I would be happy to yield. 



Mr. Brown. Are your thoughts on this at all influenced by the 

 success of people like Dr. Teller in getting funding for the space de- 

 fense initiative and x-ray lasers? 



Dr. Weisskopf. Look, I think that is a completely different field. 



Mr. Brown. It is a different field, but it is a strong personality 

 who is getting funding for projects that he is deeply interested in. 



Dr. Weisskopf. I certainly cannot help thinking of it. [Laughter.] 



Mr. Walgren. If I might ask just one maybe more clear way, 

 how would you approach the distributive function that we obvious- 

 ly have as funders, as Mr. Lujan said? I understand that you are 

 pleased with what has happened with physics, and in your testimo- 

 ny you indicate that, as a physicist, as a high energy physics physi- 

 cist, you look with satisfaction on what has happened. 



But what about stepping away from that or above that and look- 

 ing at the various levels of decisionmaking which we have in our 

 society? How would you approach the distributive obligation at 

 that point? 



Dr. Weisskopf. That is, of course, a tremendous problem, and I 

 was faced with it just a few months ago when I was supposed to 

 testify before the British commission that had to decide whether 

 they should go ahead with CERN. There, of course, there were rep- 

 resentatives of other sciences, but that was not the first time. 



Your problem is a very difficult problem; namely, how can one 

 evaluate one science against the other? Every science, of course, 

 has not enough support, really, and so you have here a very hard 

 problem. 



Again, I would say there are two points of view. Let me mention 

 that which is nearer to my heart first, namely the point of view of 

 how much will it contribute to new ideas about the structure of 

 nature. Now, here I think high energy physics would be high up; 

 other science would be less; biology would be very high up, and 

 brain science, for example. If I were young now, I would go into 

 brain science. I think, there, there are new horizons coming in. 



So that, is the scientific point — well, almost, I would say, philo- 

 sophic. What brings us nearer, fastest, and most importantly, to 

 the secrets of nature? 



The second point, of course, is a practical one; namely, applica- 

 tion — cornmercial and, I am afraid, also military. Here, this is a dif- 

 ferent point of view, and the applied-science point of view. From 

 this point of view, of course, high energy physics and astronomy, 

 which now are the most exciting sciences — by the way, I have not 

 mentioned astronomy; also not in the printed one. This unification 

 of particle physics with astronomy and cosmology is one of the 

 most exciting things that has happened in science, in my view. 



Both astronomy and high energy physics may have applications, 

 but they are far off. This is, then, of course, always a very difficult 

 decision. 



But I always like to make this parallel. If you look, for example, 

 at the history of world development, you will always see that those 

 countries that were ahead in the fundamental sciences were also 



