#64 from R&D Innovator Volume 2, Number 11          November 1993

Technology: The Big Picture
Interview With Jerome Wiesner, Ph.D.

Dr. Wiesner served as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1971 to 1979.  He was Science Advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.  Among his many honors and awards is the 1993 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

RD&I:  Your initiation to major research projects was developing radar for the U.S. military at MIT's Radiation Laboratory during World War II.  What factors helped the lab succeed?

Dr. Wiesner:  MIT was probably the ideal place for applied research.  Lower-frequency radar had been invented during the 1930s, and we were assigned the task of developing shorter-wavelength radar, which would have greater range and accuracy.  The military placed high priority on radar, for obvious reasons.

I was working under Dr. Edward Purcell, who later received the Nobel Prize in physics, and we had some of the world's best physicists; so I was thrown into a very high-pressure group, and it made me more inventive and theoretical than I would normally have been.   All around me, people were providing examples of creative problem-solving.  The place was not driven by a spirit of competitiveness among the researchers.  People helped you all the time.  There were many examples of younger people working with older people.

R&DI: What was your specific assignment?

Dr. Wiesner:  Purcell's group was working on the move up from 10 gigahertz to 20 gigahertz radiation.  Theoretically, my job was to transfer our results to the manufacturing people, to make sure that our designs could be produced.  Sometimes, I'd take on projects without being assigned.  That was also part of the culture at the lab--we had to win a war that we believed in--and we thought our work might make the difference between winning and losing.  We worked long hours, six or seven days a week. 

R&DI: You've said the researchers had some freedom to choose projects.  Aside from the obvious motivation--winning the war--what other factors accounted for this "self-starting" atmosphere?

Dr. Wiesner:  The people who ran the lab came from various universities, and they were used to looking for their own research problems.  And nobody censured you for making mistakes.  Your job was to find out how to do things, to solve problems.

When mistakes were made, they were accepted as part of the price of progress.  For example, when we moved to 20 gigahertz, we built an airborne prototype which could "see" 10 to 20 miles out during winter, but as spring arrived, the range fell off.  We thought the trouble was with the detector, or perhaps the signal generator.  But as summer came on, the range got smaller and smaller--and eventually somebody had the good sense to realize that the resonant frequency of water vapor in the atmosphere was about 20 gigahertz.  So, during the humid summer, all our signal was accomplishing was to vibrate water molecules.  This had cost the lab millions of dollars, and was something that the physicists should have foreseen--but there were no recriminations.  We just learned and kept going.

There was another reason we felt so free: none of us expected to be at the Radiation Lab forever--so we weren't worried about our positions at the Lab in the future.  Of course, in my case, I stayed at MIT for quite a while.

R&DI: You've spoken of Dr. Purcell as a mentor.  What did he teach you about training younger scientists?

Dr. Wiesner:  Purcell's way of having me learn was to give me one of the hardest problems to deal with.  The most important thing about being a mentor is to be a good listener--be very sympathetic about research problems, and only as a last resort use your own brilliance to bail someone out. 

There's another thing:  Give people confidence as they go into the work.  It's hard to be confident about research until you've done it quite a few times.

R&DI: What other lessons about research management did you derive from your war research? 

Dr. Wiesner:  The main lesson is simple:  Hire good people and let them follow their instincts.  Obviously, in our lab, we had goals, and unless somebody had an especially exciting idea, we stuck to them.  Just like in industry, we were not ordinarily free of constraints.

Research Roadblocks

R&DI:  What is the most serious roadblock obstructing higher research productivity?

Dr. Wiesner:  In my view, it's the tie-in between applied R&D and production—even in companies with good research labs.  In general, companies that formed before World War II are less attuned to innovation than those formed since the War.  There are exceptions, but in general the steel, oil, and auto companies have been slow to accommodate innovation, whether they developed them or had the opportunity to buy them from outside. 

Why have Japanese cars had far fewer failures than American cars?  This is changing, I admit, but there's no reason why this should have happened in the first place, except that the U.S. auto industry had been doing things the same way for a long time, and did not know how to change.

On the other hand, in the pharmaceutical, medical equipment, and computer industries, you see a rapid transfer of results from the research lab into manufacturing.  So this proves that these transfers can be done within the constraints facing modern corporations.

R&DI: Oil and steel are considered mature industries.  Are you saying they need to innovate as much as anyone else?

Dr. Wiesner:  Yes.  And I think the society and the media bear some responsibility for the sluggish approach to change.  All the talk about the "rust belt" and "mature industries" gave credence to the notion that leading-edge companies must, by definition, exist only in new fields.  Yet if you use a good research lab effectively, even in an old field, you'll continue to be an innovator.  It's partly a matter of attitude.

All this defeatism about "mature industries" also affects university students.  The best ones don't want to go into these industries, because they have bad reputations for innovation.  This attitude seems to be changing, but not fast enough, in my view.  Eventually, a company can get in such bad shape that, even after adapting a more realistic, innovative strategy, it has so many demands for spending that it doesn't know where to start.

Running a Research University

R&DI: You spent most of your career helping manage, and eventually directing, MIT, one of the nation's research powerhouses.  Today, we hear calls for closer ties between industry and university--what are your views on this?

Dr. Wiesner:  I don't think corporations should rely totally on a university for their applied research.  I think they should fund university research with a longer horizon than what the company could do in its own lab.  Aside from producing basic research results that the company may use, this also shows faculty researchers what the industry considers important, and it allows business to get to know promising students, and vice versa. 

That said, I don't think industry is taking enough advantage of the chance to support university research.  I've seen many times when companies from abroad came to MIT labs, and spent more on research than domestic companies--I've seen them getting benefits that domestic companies were missing. 

There are changes in this area.  MIT, for example, is getting much more U.S.  support than it once did.  But even today, I see foreign companies that are willing to take risks that U.S. companies shun.

R&DI: At MIT, you placed considerable emphasis on the arts and humanities.  Why?

Dr. Wiesner:  As people mature, their scope and vision broadens, and they have to be involved in more areas besides science and engineering.  If they are not well versed in arts and humanities, they will be unable to work effectively on larger public policy issues.  And the study of arts and humanities provides a great deal of pleasure to the individual.

R&DI: You advised presidents on science and technology.  How do you assess the current political climate, as it relates to R&D?