D. Allan Bromley, 79; Crafted Science Policy for George H.W. Bush

Nuclear physicist D. Allan Bromley, a Yale University professor and an architect of U.S. science policy during the administration of former President Bush, has died. He was 79.

Bromley died Thursday afternoon, the university said. The cause of death was not immediately released.

As science and technology advisor for the elder Bush from 1989 to 1993, Bromley pushed for government partnerships with high-tech industries in an effort to keep the United States ahead of Japan and Germany in the manufacturing rush of the late 1980s.

Born in Ontario, Canada, he became a U.S. citizen in 1970 under unusual circumstances.

“I had been shown the deepest, darkest secret known in the United States out at the Weapons Flats in Nevada. And just about the time it was all finished, someone said, ‘Oh, my God, Bromley is not a citizen,’ ” he recalled in a 1992 interview with the Toronto Star.

A judge was dispatched, and Bromley was hurriedly sworn in, he said.

Bromley received the National Medal of Science, the country’s highest scientific award, in 1988, and served as president of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

Recently, he had criticized the current Bush administration for cutting funding for the sciences.

“Congress must increase the federal investment in science,” he wrote in a New York Times opinion piece in 2001. “No science, no surplus. It’s that simple.”