Lawrence Krauss New Board of Sponsors Chair, Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman Chair Emeritus

Bulletin Media Contact: Janice Sinclaire, [email protected]

CHICAGO– July, 21, 2015 – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has announced that Lawrence Krauss has been elected Chair of the organization’s Board of Sponsors; Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman has been elected Chair Emeritus, marking the first time the Bulletin has bestowed such an honor.

Lederman is an experimental physicist who received the National Medal of Science in 1965, the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1972, and the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988. He was director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 1978 to 1979 and remains the lab’s Director Emeritus. Lederman has served as Chair, and then co-Chair, of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors since 2001.

Krauss is a theoretical physicist and the director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, and has won several honors for translating difficult scientific concepts into language general readers can understand.  He was named to the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors in 2006, along with Stephen Hawking, Lisa Randall, and Brian Greene. He is the author of more than 250 scientific papers and is a regular contributor to the Bulletin’s pages.

Lederman and Krauss have co-chaired the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors since 2009. “Leon Lederman has been a remarkable scientist and humanitarian throughout an equally remarkable career in physics research,” said Krauss today. “He boldly served as the face of an organization that I have admired since I was an undergraduate in physics over 40 years ago: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my career to co-chair the Board of Sponsors along with a scientist of his distinction, and it is my greatest honor to now chair this remarkable group of scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals.”

“It is an awesome responsibility to lead an organization that has been shaped and cherished by Leon Lederman,” said Rachel Bronson, Executive Director and Publisher of the Bulletin. “I am enthusiastic to work with Lawrence Krauss to continue to build on Leon's towering legacy."

Members of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors are recruited by their peers from among the world’s most accomplished scientific leaders to amplify the gravity and importance of what the Bulletin publishes, and to provide expert counsel on issues of global security, science, and survival, particularly for the organization’s annual Doomsday Clock statement. The Board was founded in 1948 by Albert Einstein and its first Chair was J. Robert Oppenheimer; it currently includes 16 Nobel Laureates.

Krauss elaborated on the broadened mission of the Bulletin in recent years to include existential threats beyond that of nuclear war. “In the 21st century new threats have emerged, from global climate change to the possibility of cyber terrorism,” explained Krauss. “This recent vote of confidence from the board has re-energized me to help my colleagues at the Bulletin and on the Board of Sponsors continue to lead the effort to explore and expose such threats, and in so doing also examine ways that humanity can avert them.”

Krauss will be featured as a keynote speaker at the Bulletin’s 70th Anniversary dinner on Monday, November 16, 2015, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). The dinner will follow the half-day 2015 Clock Symposium, open to the public, in partnership with the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists engages science leaders, policy makers, and the interested public on topics of nuclear weapons and disarmament, the changing energy landscape, climate change, and emerging technologies. We do this through our award winning journal, iconic Doomsday Clock, public access website, and regular set of convenings.  With smart, vigorous prose, multimedia presentations, and information graphics, the Bulletin puts issues and events into context and provides fact-based debates and assessments. For 70 years, the Bulletin has bridged the technology divide between scientific research, foreign policy, and public engagement.

Bulletin Media Contact: Janice Sinclaire, [email protected]

###