The Hobby of Energy Secretary Steven Chu

quanminoan writes "Nobel Laureate and US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has continued to publish even while in federal office. While previous research topics include gravitational redshift, Chu has coauthored a paper entitled 'Subnanometre single-molecule localization registration and distance measurements' which discusses a way to optically image objects as small as 0.5 nm — a major step down from the previous limit of 10 nm. Chu does this in his free time, claiming 'I just consider it my equivalent of ... vegging out in front of the TV.'"

Comments

Not too surprising

[Weezul]

There are people around with amazing personalities, definitely not all top level academics are this dedicated, but they exist. Anyone who's done a PhD and postdoc(s) at top tier research universities will have spent time schmoozing with several.

Obama got this guy largely because he asked. If a president doesn't get high level people, he's very likely got a reason he doesn't want them. Bush (cough)

Re:He's Qualified Because He's a Nerd?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I work with people who have titles like "Chief Scientist". Some of them, sure, I'd vote for them for some office or another because I've seen them handle things like management and budget (this is the private sector after all) and how it pertains to pushing the edges of R&D. Concepts like "We can afford *this* cool breakthrough this year. Put *that* even cooler idea in your top drawer, and we'll explore it next year when we'll have more budget, but put hooks into your current design here and here for it so we can leverage the hardware we build this year."

Others, if they were in charge, well, let's just say I'm not a violent person, but I'd personally lead the rebel army that took them down.

Scientists are just people. The geekverse needs to let go of this scientist worship. Yes, this country needs to appreciate math and science more and yada yada and all that. I grok that and support it wholeheartedly. I'm ever considering writing a book to reach segments of our society previously written off for such things. But this idea that some here and elsewhere have that scientists are automatically these cool people dedicated to truth, justice and unbiased world views is pure fantasy. I can't even figure out where it came from other than as a reaction to all the religious loonery,

I know this is supposed to be an article where we

[Rei]

.. make fun of Chu, but I am such a Chu groupie. A surefire way to draw me to a conference is to announce that he'll be speaking there. ;) I just loved him during his confirmation hearing, how he perked up when finally asked a question that was even remotely technical. "Now we're getting to Science! I love this!" I had read some of his papers before he was even tapped for the position; I was so thrilled to hear he was picked. He really knows his stuff.

His big weakness is that he's no politician, and he sometimes has trouble keeping is mouth shut from speaking politically inconvenient things. For example, dealing with the hydrogen people... ;)