Helping guide gifted physicists

Katherine B. Gebbie: Director, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Best known for: Turning the NIST Physics Laboratory into an organization that has produced three Nobel Prize winners. Gebbie pioneered the practical application of emerging technologies and helped enhance career opportunities for women, minorities and other young scientists in the field.

Government service: Gebbie joined NIST in 1968 as a physicist in the Quantum Physics Division of JILA, a cooperative enterprise between NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder. She worked extensively on the physics of the solar and stellar atmospheres, served as chief of the Quantum Physics Division and acting director of the Center for Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics. In 1991, she was named director of the newly formed Physics Laboratory, a job she has since held.

Biggest challenge: Competing with private industry and academia to attract the best and the brightest scientists. The best measure of any laboratory or agency's success is the quality of the young people it attracts, Gebbie said. Despite the competition for new talent, she says, NIST manages to hire world-class young scientists and keeps most of the more senior ones.

Quote: "I consider myself enormously privileged to work with world-class scientists in many different roles. Within NIST, I guide and support scientists in developing and implementing their programs so they can perform world-class research."

-- From the Partnership for Public Service

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