Solomon J. Buchsbaum (December 4, 1929 – March 8, 1993) was a

Polish American Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83 ...

physicist and technologist, best known as chair of the White House Science Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and as a senior executive at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

Biography

Born in Stryj,

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, Buchsbaum's parents and youngest sister were murdered in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. He and his other sister escaped capture by the Nazis and made their way to

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, where he was protected in a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

orphanage. There he recited Mass and became an altar boy. After the war, as a teenager, Buchsbaum made his way to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

where he learned English and found a job in a hat factory. With no previous formal training, he won a scholarship to

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous ...

in physics and mathematics, there earning a bachelor's degree in 1952, and a master's degree a year later. He received his Ph.D. from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1957.Kenneth G. McKay
"Solomon J. Buchsbaum"
Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 69, p. 14 (1996) Buchsbaum's career at Bell began as a researcher on gaseous and solid plasmas in 1958. Rising through the ranks, he became vice president in charge of technology systems in 1979. In his 35 years at Bell Labs, he published 50 articles and was awarded 8 patents.Bruce Lambert

The New York Times, March 10, 1993. Nobel Laureate

Arno Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang ...

called him the "vice president in charge of everything else," meaning everything that was not directly phone company business. Buchsbaum's career as a Presidential advisor began with his membership on President Nixon's Science Advisory Committee and continued with President Ford's Committee on Science and Technology. Under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush he was chair of the corresponding committees. He was chairman of the Defense Science Board from 1972 to 1977. Among other boards, Buchsbaum served on those of

, Stanford University, the Rand Corporation,

Draper Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc (sometimes abbreviated as CSDL). The laboratory specialize ...

, and the Argonne and Sandia National Laboratories. Buchsbaum's honors included the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

(from President Reagan) and various defense and energy department medals."Solomon Buchsbaum"
, American Institute of Physics, Array of Contemporary American Physicists. He died in 1993, in New Jersey, of multiple myeloma, after receiving a bone marrow transplant and spending more than a month in a germ-free "bubble", equipped with a telephone and fax machine so that he could conduct "business as usual".

References

External links

Kenneth G. Mckay, "Solomon J. Buchsbaum", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1996)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buchsbaum, Solomon J. 1929 births 1993 deaths American people of Polish-Jewish descent 20th-century American physicists McGill University Faculty of Science alumni Deaths from multiple myeloma National Medal of Science laureates Polish emigrants to Canada Polish emigrants to the United States Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Deaths from cancer in New Jersey Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Scientists at Bell Labs