PLENARY ADDRESS

The Material Foundations of Modern Scientific
and Technological Advances

George E. Pake
Group Vice President, Corporate Research Group, Xerox Corporation

The following is a transcript of Dr. Pake's address presented at the 1985 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

I,Lt is a pleasure to be with you this evening. In my distant
past as a once active researcher, it seems likely that my
research interests would have impelled me to be active in
the Materials Research Society, had it been flourishing in
those days. But today, I find myself with responsibility for
approximately 1,000 research personnel distributed among
three Xerox research centers. The Webster Research
Center, in Webster, New York, which is located in the
Joseph C. Wilson Center for Technology, was historically
the first Xerox Research Center. As you might expect, its
focus has been on the xerographic imaging and marking
process. With its theme of imaging and marking, many of
its professionals are physicists or chemists, although there
are also some engineers. And materials research is a very
important component of its activities.

The second research center, historically, is the Palo Alto
Research Center founded in 1970. Its focus is on digital
science and technology, along with an important component
of materials research related to electronics and electro-
optics. Our third and newest research center is in Missis-
sauga, Ontario, just a few kilometers west of Toronto. The
theme of this Xerox Research Centre of Canada is materials
science and technology. The materials with which XRCC
concerns itself are those important to all of our business:
copiers, duplicators, and printers, including photoreceptors,
dry toners, inks, and paper.

I suspect that there is very little lean tell this group about
the materials research foundation upon which rest the
many technological advances which enable the functioning
of our modern society. Perhaps the most celebrated of
these advances are those relating to integrated circuits.
Memory chips and microprocessors incorporating LSI or
VLSI technology are becoming ubiquitous. New systems
technology is now enabled by these advances. All of this
goes back to the transistor and its invention as a replace-
ment for the vacuum tube (or for the valve, if you prefer).

The progression from gas envelopes to solid-state devices
has proceeded apace. Gas lasers are now finding themselves
candidates for being supplanted by solid-state laser diodes
in many applications. There is at least the prospect that
some kind of solid-state display technology will supplant

the CRT, but for most applications this transition has
proved difficult and has been slow to take place. That
CRT s are too bulky, too expensive to build, and too
extravagant in use of power have all been evident for
decades, but the ideal low-cost, rapid-response, low-power,
high resolution, solid-state flat panel display remains as a
challenge to materials scientists and technologists.

In Xerox, we have considerable optimism that we can, for
our laser xerographic printers, replace rotating polygons
for laser scanning with solid-state devices having no
moving parts. In general, these transitions to high-reli-
ability, lower-cost solid-state devices are enabled by the
accumulating advances from materials research.

Futurists make a big point of the fact that we are entering
the information age. There is much discussion of the
importance of software and of knowledge-based systems.
All of this emphasis—and our growing U.S. proficiency in
information science, and cognitive processes—is, I believe,
the basis for continuing U.S. technological leadership in the
next two or three decades. The focus on ideas and on
systems that extend and employ human expertise is made
possible by the advances in materials science and technology
generated through materials research.

From a broad perspective, materials research has enabled
modern solid-state microelectronics. Modern electronics,
in turn, advances almost every field of human endeavor. In
a commercial sense, consumer electronics and communica-
tions depend critically on the high function, durability,
reliability, and low cost of solid-state electronics. Auto-
mobiles—which were for so many years simply large
aggregations of low technology—have suddenly, with
concerns for fuel economy and for prevention of pollution,
become dependent on microprocessor control, and the
entire auto is now quite sophisticated technologically. Even
washing machines and dishwashers are now microprocessor
controlled.

But there are other more widely extending applications.
Solid-state electronic instrumentation is important to every
quantitative function in our commercial world. Banking
transactions, petroleum exploration, medical instru-
mentation are just a few examples. And the petroleum and

PAGE 30, MRS BULLETIN, MAY/JUNE 1985

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
https://www.cambridge.org/core


medical examples merely hint at the dependence of other
sciences upon modern electronic instrumentation. Analy-
tical chemistry, biology, earth and planetary science,.and
high-energy physics are all progressing rapidly to new
levels of understanding enabled in large part by modern
electronic instrumentation and also by the properties and
capabilities of new materials resulting from materials
research.

There is one of these areas of science about which I want
say a few words, that is, particle physics or high-energy
physics. As some of you may be aware, I accepted appoint-
ment last year to the Board of Overseers for the projected
new particle accelerator, the Super Conducting Super
Collider—generally known as the SSC. The community of
high-energy physicists has concluded, with a consensus
and internal discipline not always to be found within
communities of research scientists, that the most important
next requirement to advance elementary particle physics is
a 20 trillion electron volt proton synchrotron, constructed
of two adjacent rings in the same large diameter tunnel.
The tunnel will be approximately 100 kilometers in circum-
ference or about 20 miles in diameter. (See Figure 1).

Our knowledge of the elementary particles constituting
matter has proceeded to the point where high-energy
particle physicists require center-of-mass energies of 20
TeV to effect the close interaction of the constituent
quarks within colliding protons in order to ferret out the
remaining pieces of the puzzles relating to particle species
and the strong force. Our current experience with large
proton synchrotrons provides a useful base from which to
work in planning to achieve these desired 20-TeV energies.
Already functioning since 1983 at Fermilab in Batavia,
Illinois, is the Tevatron (Figure 2). It provides 1 TeV reliably
using 1,000 large superconducting magnets.The main ring
is 6.3 kilometers in circumference, and the machine is being
upgraded for operation as a proton-antiproton collider, 1
TeV on 1 TeV.

The European CERN laboratory in Geneva, is home to
the Super Proton Synchrotron with a total collison energy
of 640 GeV (Figure 3). The main ring is 7 kilometers in
circumference, buried underground. This is the world's
largest energy collider now in operation.

A 20-mile-diameter particle accelerator having 5,000 or
more superconducting magnets in a subterranean tunnel
will, of course, cost much money to construct and to

Figure 2
Aerial view of the Fermi National Accelerator (Fermilab) at
Batavia, Illinois. The main ring of this fixed-target proton
synchrotron is 6.3 kilometers in circumference. It is presently
being upgraded for operation as a proton-antiproton collider
with a total collison energy of 2 TeV. (Courtesy of Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory.)

operate. In order to estimate the costs and schedule, the
Department of Energy commissioned the Universities
Research Association (URA), a consortium of 56 U.S.
universities, to conduct a study in the summer of 1984. The
major technological design issue has to do with the design
of the superconducting magnets to bend the high-energy
proton beam into its circular orbit (See Figure 4).The initial
SSC design study concluded that the total accelerator cost
would be relatively independent of the magnet design
selected (within 10%) at about $2.8 billion. This estimate
does not cover site acquisition cost, nor cost of measuring
and detection instrumentation.

URA has established a Boardof Overseers to watch over
the SSC project. The chairman is Prof. Boyce McDaniel of
Cornell University, and as I said, I happen to be a member of
that board. The URA and the DOE are establishing site
selection criteria. A Central Design Group under Dr.
Maury Tigner of Cornell is in residence at Lawrence
Berkeley Laboratory pursing magnet design and other
design issues, under research contract support from the
DOE.

Figure 1

Schematic of possible payout for
the SSC, which would be
roughly 100 kilometers in
circumference. The injection
system is drawn to scale; the six
experimental halls and other
components on the main ring
are not. In the detail of the
detector, the beam pipe and its
magnets are shown oversized.

MRS BULLETIN, MAY/JUNE 1985, PAGE 31

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
https://www.cambridge.org/core


' , - ?;•.:<*.?:>>

Figure 3

Aerial view of CERN in Geneva, showing the location of the
Super Proton Synchrotron, a proton-antiproton collider with a
total collison energy of 640 GeV. It is the world's most powerful
collider. The main ring, which is 7 kilometers in circumference, is
buried underground. The land above it is undisturbed and retains
its traditional use for farming. (Courtesy of CERN.)

Figure 4

A dual-beam-line superconducting SSC model magnet in the
assembly stage. Its operation requires cooling with liquid helium
to a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero. /Courtesy of
Brookhaven National Laboratory.I

Notwithstanding all of this activity, the SSC still does
not have official DOE approval, much less authorization
and funding by Congress. The SSC represents quite clearly
a major decision and potential commitment for U.S. science.
Some of my colleagues in the scientific community have
substantial reservations about the wisdom and desirability
of the United States going forward with SSC. Doubtless
there are a number of people at this MRS meeting who hold
such skepticism. With this state of affairs, I thought it
might be worthwhile for me to describe to you why I
accepted appointment to the Board of Overseers, and why I
strongly support the proposition that the United States
should build the SSC.

My own research interests in the couple of decades
during which I was an active researcher were condensed
matter physics and chemical physics. Now, I hold respon-
sibility for the entire research program of a business
corporation which sustains itself and its stockholders by
surveying technological applications to the business office.
In view of my own vested interests in condensed matter
physics and in commercialization of technology, you may
well ask why I support a taxpayer subvention of $3 billion
to construct the world's largest most powerful particle
accelerator.

Before I offer my rationale, let me concede some points:
Although the SSC is intended to improve our most
fundamental understanding of the ultimate composition of
matter, I do not contend that the SSC will directly produce
substantial advances for condensed matter physics. Al-
though there will be substantial technological and engi-
neering fallout from the SSC project—for example, in
advancing superconducting magnet technology—these are
by-products and do not in themselves constitute adequate
justification for the SSC.

"Nothing is more pragmatic than the
broadest and deepest knowledge base
mankind can attain/'

Why do I favor the major investment—this gargantuan
particle physicists' "boondoggle" or whatever worse name
its critics may give it? How can a hard-bitten industrialist,
with all his pragmatic concerns, be an outspoken advocate
of such a large and costly project that has so little direct

PAGE 32, MRS BULLETIN, MAY/JUNE 1985

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
https://www.cambridge.org/core


economically tangible return? It is simple: For the near-
term and long-range future vigor and benefit of the U.S.
industrial and even military economy, the most pragmatic
posture I can imagine is one that opts by overt choice for
the most advanced knowledge and deepest understanding.
For the United States instead to deliberately choose a "me-
too" or "also-ran" research science status is to opt for
ignorance rather than knowledge. Nothing is more prag-
matic than the broadest and deepest knowledge base
mankind can attain. And I am just chauvinistic enough to
believe that the welfare and economic vigor of the United
States is best assured if we lead the world in advancing
knowledge and in developing that broad, deep knowledge
base.

The imperatives of science—and the imperatives even of
the academy in the broad sustained quest for knowledge —
are very nearly congruent with the requirements for
industrial technological leadership. Nothing is more prag-
matic than technological leadership, which while it requires
many ingredients, rests primarily, I believe, on world-
leading science and on our cadre of the world's best,
brightest, and most effective research practitioners.

For any part of science where we have world leadership,
or where it is within our grasp, I would never run the risks
entailed in deliberately opting to be an "also-ran." I believe
that, in some deep sense, it is un-American to choose to be
one of the world's scientific "also-rans." In respect to world
leadership in science, we condemn this nation to protracted
miseries if we opt for ignorance. I believe this deeply in a
philosophical sense, but it is quite evidently also for me a
highly pragmatic point.

Some peole may say "Well, okay. But in particle physics!
And to the tune of $3 billion?" My answer is "Yes, and even
to the tune of $3 billion." I know that $3 billion is a great
deal of money, but it is comparable to the cost of a modern
aircraft carrier—maybe less if you count its complement of
jet planes. I believe that, on military grounds alone, the SSC
buys the nation more security than an aircraft carrier does.
And who among us would miss one fewer nuclear powered
aircraft carrier? I'm not sure that even the Admirals would
miss just one fewer carrier. What does the SSC buy in a
military sense? First, it keeps us sharp in certain highly
skilled craftsmanship and technological domains. Perhaps
most important, it helps us to build and sustain a cadre of
very bright scientists accustomed to world-class technical
activities and aiming at world leadership. Recall the critical
roles filled in World War II by our laboratory and theoretical
scientists from even the most esoteric of scientific pursuits.
The SCC project will build a world-leading, vigorous
human technical capability.

My comparison with an aircraft carrier can be critized
because Congress will not actually make the decision on the
SSC by asking itself, "Would we really rather spend the
money on a nuclear carrier and a few dozen jet fighters?"
Nor will it say, lets have SSC but, to pay for it, we'll simply
knock $3 billion out of the Defense Department budget.
These are valid criticisms.

The foregoing criticism brings to mind another objection
I have heard from some scientists about the SSC. They say
it will over the years place too big a lien on the annual
budget for science and research. There is only a very
limited sense in which that comment has any validity: it will
surely place an annual lien on the DOE budget for research.
But in the larger sense, the argument is wrong, because
there is no U.S. science budget considered and enacted as a

whole. There are the respective agency budgets, many of
which have an identifiable science component. After the
fact, analysts can look over the total federal budget and
aggregate these components into the total number of
dollars expended for science. Congress however does not
arrive at the constituent elements of the so-called science
budget by using this aggregating procedure.

Still another criticism I hear about the SSC expenditure
runs as follows: $3 billion construction and $X hundred
million a year for operation could better be spent on cancer
research or, perhaps from this group, on materials research.

"Nothing is more pragmatic than
technological leadership, which while it
requires many ingredients, rests
primarily on world-leading science and
on our cadre of the world's best,
brightest, and most effective research
practitioners."

This kind of argument is, I feel, somewhat specious. It is
really a version of the so-called principle that if something
is good, more of it is better—surely a flaky principle, at best.
There are at least hypothetical ways in which the criticism
could have validity. If the further advance of cancer
research or of materials science depended upon one major,
identifiable $3 billion next step, then we could argue the
relative merits of world leadership in particle physics, of
advancing cancer research, or of the technological benefits
from this one major leap forward in materials research.

But materials research is not of such a nature that a
single $3 billion project determines its future advance. lam
willing to wager that, if materials research were such an
intrinsic nature that its future can depend on a single major
facility, most of the people in this room would not have
made the career choices that now lead then to be members
of the Materials Research Society.

In my experience with budgets, whether as a physics
department chairman, a university executive vice chan-
cellor, an industrial research director, or now as a vice
president for corporate research, the issue is never whether
a given activity could use a lot more budget beneficially.
Instead, each proposed activity must meet certain tests of
relative importance to the task or domain in question, and
tests of whether the people proposing it have the requisite
skills and a credible track record. From my perspective, the
particle physicists of the United States pass these tests with
flying colors. We need to support particle physicists in their
efforts to provide the United States with world leadership
in this most fundamental area of modern physics.

Furthermore, to an important degree, the proposal for the
Superconducting Super Collider is the result of the activ-
ities of the members of the Materials Research Society: the
SSC project is only possible because of advances in super-
conducting materials which enable the magnets, in the
understanding of critical materials elements of the particle
detectors, and of course in the transistors of the integrated
circuits that perform the data measurements and analyses.

MRS BULLETIN, MAY/JUNE 1985, PAGE 33

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
https://www.cambridge.org/core


Seriously, I don't really hold you people responsible for
the SSC proposal. But I do urge you to support the bold
U.S. practitioners of our most fundamental branch of
physics as they take the steps to lead the world in this high
scientific calling.

"We need to support particle physicists
in their efforts to provide the United
States with world leadership in this
fundamental area of modern physics/'

QUESTION: What choices have already been made that have ruled out
other alternatives for big science in order to pursue the advanced
knowledge in this particular area?

ANSWER: First of all, I probably cannot enumerate all the
various accelerator proposals of one kind or another that
have come forward, but the high-energy physics com-
munity, which has emplaced a thing called the High Energy
Physics Advisory Panel, has looked at this question, and
decided that there is only one thing that they urge as a next
step: the SSC. That community has been very good over
the years. It has closed on many accelerators. It's taken a
very tough posture with respect to keeping the community
researching at the frontier. It made some very hard
decisions, and I think it's quite unique that there is almost
no other community of research scientists that can decide
what should be the next thing for its science and what
other things may have to be put aside.

QUESTION: You mentioned that you want to answer the ultimate
question: the fundamental behavior of nature. How do we know that
after we reach there, we will not find more mystery that will require
higher energy? How do we calculate the ultimate limit beyond which we
may not go before we understand all that?

ANSWER: It is quite likely we will only arrive at some point
where we will have still further questions if we advance in
this field using this new machine. The quest is to try to
unify the theoretical comprehension of the various forces.
Already the electro-weak forces have been, in some sense,
unified by the theorists. If we come close to that with this
machine, we will not have erased or eliminated further
curiosities. However, we will have made a very fundamental
advance. There is a debatable point about whether the
United States should wait and try to involve other nations
to help them share the cost. That's worth debating and
thinking about. High-energy physics has been quite re-
markable for the extent to which international cooperative
research has taken place. We have had scientists go to work
at European laboratories and in Russian laboratories.
There is a fair amount of exchange back and forth. We see
very few other domains in which there's that kind of
international cooperation. I don't want to speculate on
what happens after the $3 billion SSC gets built, but I
certainly will concede that there will be many unanswered
fundamental questions. Science would be pretty disap-
pointing if we got all these fundamental questions
answered.

QUESTION: The sites committee has recently made a series of
recommendations on upgrading existing facilities and creating new
neutron facilities, as well as some new synchrotron sources, which would
be about $1 billion total over an eight-year period for major facilities.
Now you are telling us that the SSC is $3 billion over about a 10-year
period. How does one balance out these different areas and different
directions within the major facility funding issues?

ANSWER: There truly is and will be competition for
funding between those kinds of recommendations. But the
distinction that the materials science, solid-state physics, or
whatever portion you choose to express as your domain if
interest does not hinge critically on that particular set of
expenditures or facilities for its future advance. People will
continue to move forward with existing facilities. I contend
that, very great advances toward fundamental questions
concerning particle physics or high-energy physics cannot
be made without some machine in this energy domain. The
distinction is that these facilities, while important to
materials or solid-state science—the ones that were pushed
for by the sites report—are not in themselves absolutely
indispensable to further progress in the field.
QUESTION: When you play a chip like this for funding, you can only
play it once. Is this the most advanced blue sky, high-energy thing? Are
you sure you're not going to turn around and build another one in six
years?

ANSWER: As best I can understand from being on the SSC
Board of Overseers, it is the boldest step that can be taken
to advance the field that has any amount of assurance of
being successful. That's based upon the positive experience
with the superconducting magnets in the Trevatron at
Fermilab. It would be hard to imagine really a larger step
that might compete with this. There are some secondary or
short-fall types of compromises that have been discussed.
For instance, there is a plan to build an even larger
accelerator at Lausanne. And there is a proposal for us to
put a machine like this in their tunnel when they build it.
But that turns out to be almost or very nearly as costly,
without providing the real breakthrough in energy that is
needed to get into this domain to understand the whole
business about quarks and gluons, etc. There is almost no
other really bold step that you can take which has any
assurance of being feasible or technically implementable.

PAGE 34, MRS BULLETIN, MAY/JUNE 1985

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Carnegie Mellon University, on 06 Apr 2021 at 00:56:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400043098
https://www.cambridge.org/core