Think Tank for Academies Is Dedicated Next to UCI

On a bluff next to the UC Irvine campus, more than 500 scientists and Orange County business leaders gathered Saturday to dedicate the West Coast headquarters of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

For the first time since the academy was founded 125 years ago as the scientific adviser to the federal government, the nation’s best scientists, engineers and research doctors will have a national conference center in California as well as in the nation’s capital, academy officials said.

The new center also “will make it easier for us to increase our activities with the Pacific Rim nations,” said geophysicist Frank Press, president of the academy.

The academy’s members--drawn from the best scientists in the nation--will use the new 45,000-square-foot research center for meetings on such cutting-edge issues as bioengineering and the decline in U.S. industrial strength. But no laboratory research will be performed at the Irvine think tank, academy officials said.

It also will be West Coast headquarters for the two of the National Academy of Sciences’ sister institutions: the Institute of Medicine, composed of 500 research doctors, and the National Academy of Engineering.

Press used Saturday’s dedication ceremonies to talk of the need for funding basic research.

“We ought to resist fiercely tendencies to turn science into a sort of appliance that turns out goods on demand,” Press said. “Basic research, the very best of science, is a Monte Carlo game. You never know where the ball will drop.

”. . . No one envisioned that basic studies in the microwave spectrum of ammonia would lead to the laser, now used variously to print documents, to weld ships, and to repair detached retinas. No one thought that research on magnetic moments and nuclear spin would lead to nuclear magnetic resonance, used today in medical diagnostics,” Press said.

After his speech, Press said he hoped the center would help foster that basic research.

Fortunate Discoveries

“The greatest discoveries,” he said, “were serendipitous.”

Industrialist Arnold O. Beckman and his wife, Mabel, donated $20 million to build and endow the new center, officially named the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering. The 7 acres of land for it and $500,000 in landscaping were donated by the Irvine Co.

Smiling broadly, Beckman, founder of Fullerton-based Beckman Instruments, spoke briefly about why he thought Orange County had long needed a privately funded think tank.

“There is a westward tilt in science and engineering,” said the 88-year-old philanthropist from Corona del Mar.

By 1986, he noted, one-fourth of the 1,500 scientists elected to the National Academy of Sciences were from California, as were one-fourth of the 1,400 engineers elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

As a member of the engineering academy himself, Beckman had noticed that many of the California members were spending a lot of time traveling to academy meetings in the East.

“I felt I had to establish another center,” he said. So I talked to (Irvine Co. chairman) Donald Bren and he agreed and contributed this beautiful 7-acre site.”

That conversation occurred about three years ago. Now the Beckmans’ $20-million donation has built an airy, two-story research center with red-tiled floors and pastel-colored conference rooms that open to outdoor terraces or patios.

Stark Contrast

The new center is in stark contrast to the National Academy building in Washington, a heavy, Greek-style structure with white columns, dark mahogany interiors and a copper roof, said Robert N. Smith, administrator of the academy’s National Research Council.

As he led a quick tour through the California-style conference center, Smith said some of the patio’s trellises had yet to be installed--”along with the hot tub,” he joked.

Though the Beckman center is not affiliated with UCI, it does border the campus. University officials are hoping the academy’s prestige and the top-notch scientists it will draw will enhance the university’s intellectual climate.

“It’s very significant. It’s our next-door neighbor,” Chancellor Jack Peltason said. “We’re out to put UCI on the map and this is a very big step in doing that.”

Academy officials said they could not yet predict how many scientists would use the new center each month. But by the end of May, at least 500 scientists were scheduled to attend meetings there.

The center has planned a series of inaugural symposiums including seminars on “Energy Issues for the 1990s,” on May 11 and 12; “Biological Research and Human Values,” on May 23 and 24; “Mathematics Education: Wellspring of U.S. Industrial Strength,” planned for fall, and a symposium on affordable health care scheduled for January, 1989.

Local Impact

In addition to holding meetings for the best of the nation’s scientists, it is hoped that the center will reach out to the Orange County community “in a more general way--educating, bringing to the people of this community what it is that moves the world,” said Ralph Landau, vice president of the National Academy of Engineering.

As part of the inaugural celebration, officials announced Saturday that they will hold a free festival of science films today and Monday at the center.

Orange County residents are invited. The address is 100 Academy, off California Drive, from 11 a.m to 10 p.m. today (and 6 to 10 p.m. Monday. Ten prize-winning science films from the first International Science, Technology and Medical Film and Television Festival will be shown. The films were sponsored by the National Academy and television station WQED in Pittsburgh.