Steven Chu: Obama Pick For Energy Secretary

6:52 pm EST December 10th, 2008 | News | 8 Comments

steven chuReuters: “Obama will also nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, a Democratic Party official said.”

>> Steven Chu: Nobel Prize in Physics 1997

>> Video: “Steven Chu proposes an aggressive research program to transform the existing and future energy systems of the world away from technologies that emit greenhouse gases”

>> Berkeley Lab’s Steve Chu on what termite guts have to do with global warming

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8 Responses to “Steven Chu: Obama Pick For Energy Secretary”

  1. Quaker in a Basement says:
    December 10, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    Fantastic!

  2. Jaim says:
    December 10, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Wow, an actual scientist with real credentials being appointed to the appropriate job.

    This hasn’t happened for eight years.

  3. ed says:
    December 10, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    Yeah, but will he swear allegiance to Dear Leader, endorse Creationism, and not mention Global Warming?

  4. Parthenon says:
    December 10, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    Smart guys in charge! huzzah!

  5. Ian Aleksander Adams says:
    December 10, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    Holy crap – I know that you have to be a tiny bit of a politician to get high up in academia, but still – HE’S FROM ACADEMIA!

  6. Warren Terra says:
    December 10, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    As an embryonic, or perhaps larval, academic, I’ve been a bit curious about the question of advanced degrees in the cabinet. Without bestirring myself to actually look, the only Bush appointee I know has a postgraduate research degree was Condoleezza Rice. I say “postgraduate research degree” so as to exclude postgraduate professional degrees such as MBA, JD, or MD, and obviously not to denigrate those degree.

    Now, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that the skill set to get a PhD and a professorship is different from running an agency with thousands or tens of thousands of professionals, and negotiating with Congress, but it would be nice to see more people from an academic background. Just to throw out one obvious example, Shirley Tilghman. Member of the National Academy, President of Princeton for most of a decade, on the board of Google – she’d make a great HHS secretary or maybe an NIH director.

  7. Obama’s Energy Secretary is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who believes in global warming | England for Obama says:
    December 12, 2008 at 5:04 am

    [...] Oliver Willis via Bob [...]

  8. Robert says:
    December 12, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    A Nobel Laureate as a cabinet member?!

    Kull wahad. This reminds me of GB Shaw’s cranky
    remark in the preface to “Heartbreak House” to the
    effect that the only way someone burdened with a
    serious cultural equipment could get into Parliament
    was by the accident of being born a hereditary peer.

    And an actual veteran has been named Secretary of
    Veterans Affairs.