Investing in the Future

“Billions of dollars are being spent on weapons of mass destruction. A small fraction of that could go so far to engage more Israeli and Arab scientists in collaborative projects in order to create a critical mass that will bring about peace.” The speaker is Dr. Zafra Lerman, President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which organizes conferences in nonaligned Malta for Israeli, Palestinian and Middle Eastern scientists. These bi-annual conferences, attended by researchers from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, focus such neutral topics as materials science, as well as common interests like water and…
Professor Daniel Zajfman, president of the Weizmann Institute of Science, is a physicist in the fields of atomic and molecular physics. He has a strong interest in the popularization of science George Mallory, the man who almost made it to the top of Everest, is probably most famous for his terse reply when asked why he attempted to climb it: "Because it's there." Scientists often resemble mountain climbers: We want to understand nature because it's there. Why, in today's world, should we be devoting precious resources to finding out what happened in the Universe's first billionth of a…