William F. Brinkman

Director of the Office of Science, Energy Department (since June 2009)

(Lawrence Berkeley Lab.gov)

Why He Matters

Brinkman was a small-town boy with a football scholarship who became one of America's leading physicists. He spent most of his career at Bell Laboratories, first as a researcher and finally as research vice president. Along the way, he had a stint working for the Department of Energy at a national lab in New Mexico.

"I love the intellectual stimulation of physics, the many wonderful discoveries of the field, and the beauty of the fundamental understanding of nature that has come from the field," he said. "I also find it stimulating and very satisfying to create new practical things that become products. Both are challenging and fun, and both require knowledge of science and engineering." Both have made his reputation, since Brinkman's work at Bell is perhaps best known for his ability to transform scientific discovery into marketable technology.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Senior Research Physicist, Princeton University (2001-09), Bell Laboratories (1966-2001), Sandia National Laboratories (1984-1987)
Birthday: July 20, 1938
Hometown: St. Genevieve, Missouri
Alma Mater: B.S.-University of Missouri (1960), Ph.D.-University of Missouri (1965), PostDoc-Oxford University (1966)

Spouse: Sybille Zeldin
DC Office: Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20585 Phone: 202-586-5430
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Path to Power

Brinkman was born in his parents' hometown of Washington, Mo., but he never lived there. He was raised in St. Genevieve, Missouri, a small town on the Mississippi River located south of St. Louis. His father, who had been a farmer, moved there to become a supervisor for the highway department.

Brinkman's father-one of seven children-grew up on the farm and never made it past 8th grade, while his mother-one of nine-came from a more educated family, and encouraged Brinkman and his two sisters to advance to college and experience life beyond their little town. "So we never looked back once we got out," Brinkman said.

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At his rural Catholic high school, Brinkman played basketball, baseball, and football-for which he was awarded a scholarship to the University of Missouri. Since his parents had little money, this was the key to an education. Still, Brinkmanrecalled, "mathematics and physics were always the things I considered to be fun" and he prided himself on earning all As in these subjects. By the time he was a sophomore in college, Brinkman knew he wanted to become a physicist. Since the football scholarship offered him more money than did academic ones, he kept playing, and said the team often used him as a tutor.

After graduating with his B.S. in 1960, Brinkman landed a fellowship to continue studying physics at Missouri, and earned his doctorate at the university in 1965. From there, he went on to become a National Science Foundation post-doc fellow at Oxford, where he spent a year studying theoretical physics.

Bell Labs

The following year, in 1966, Brinkman went to work at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he focused on research in a non-academic setting. In 1972, he became head of the Infrared Physics and Electronics Research Department and was named director of the Chemical Physics Research Laboratory two years later. Throughout the decade, Brinkman had what he recalled as "really a very active research time for me," working with a number of star physicists.One of the scientists indirectly under his purview was Steven Chu, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize and, later, would oversee Brinkman as Obama's Energy Department secretary.

Sandia National Laboratories

In 1984, Brinkman moved to the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., where he served as research vice president. At the lab, located on a military base, he managed research projects for the Energy Department and spent a significant amount of time negotiating with government officials in Washington.

He later recalled that, although he enjoyed living out West, "You know, you're on a military base. It's all cloak-lined secrecy and all that sort of thing. And I just didn't want to stay in that environment the rest of my life. I just didn't like the idea of being in this military, secret environment all the time. And so we came back." He returned to Bell labs in 1987, this time as executive director of the Physics Research Division.

As the labs-owned by AT&T-splintered off into different departments, Brinkman helped to translate scientific research into technology for commercial use at what became the Lucent Technologies company. "One must be careful to distinguish innovation from discovery," he has said. "You can only manage discovery by setting direction and hiring people to work in that direction with the hope of great discoveries. Innovation, the process of taking a discovery or idea to the market, is something that must be managed carefully, and we work hard to do this."

Brinkman became vice president for physical sciences research in 1993, a role that focused on making technology developed in the lab marketable for the business world. In 2000, he was promoted to research vice president, overseeing 1,200 scientists, mathematicians, and engineers.

But after 35 years working at Bell Labs, Brinkman retired in 2001. He took a post as senior research physicist at Princeton University, thinking it would be his last job.

Then in March 2009, Steven Chu, now a Nobel Prize winner and Energy Department secretary, called Brinkman (who he had formerly worked for at Bell), to come work for him in Washington. The next month, President Barack Obama named Brinkman as his pick to run the DOE's Office of Science, which is the single largest provider of basic science research in America, operating on an annual $4.8 billion budget that includes the national laboratories.

Brinkman has also served as president of the American Physical Society, on the council of the National Academy of Sciences, and as a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the 1994 winner of the George E. Pake Prize, an award recognizing outstanding achievement in physics.

The Issues

Brinkman has decades of experience both working in labs and managing them. His role as director of the DOE's Office of Science requires him to apply this knowledge to oversee America's research and education initiatives. A colleague from Princeton, physicist Philip Anderson, said that Brinkman will likely tread carefully "because he knows how difficult it is to move and change DOE," though he added that Brinkman "has definite ideas about what's good and not good [about DOE], and he knows where the bodies are buried."

Competitive Edge

One of Brinkman's tasks at the Bell Labs was thinking about how to convert science research into commercial products that could push his technology company ahead with business in microelectronics, wireless, and optical communications.

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The Network

Brinkman has a history with Energy Department Secretary Steven Chu that dates back to when they both worked at Bell Laboratories. Brinkman reports to Steven Koonin, the DOE's under secretary for science.

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