Saving Our Planet

Dr. Robert H. Grubbs was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for an achievement that will lead to the development of new medicines for illness, and new materials for industry and daily living, while dramatically reducing the hazard of chemical waste in the environment. The Swedish Academy honored Dr. Grubbs for his discovery of the "Grubbs catalyst," a molecule of carbon and ruthenium, which facilitates the formation of new carbon-based compounds. The chemical process of metathesis, in which the atoms of one molecule trade places with the atoms of another, has been compared to a dance in which two partners holding each other by both hands link up with another couple, briefly forming a circle before changing partners and dancing off again. The Grubbs catalyst, already available to laboratories, is a particularly graceful performer in this dance, and enables chemists to replace individual atoms with unprecedented accuracy. Robert Grubbs was born and raised in Marshall County, Kentucky, near the town of Possum Trot. He first fell in love with chemistry at the University of Florida and earned his doctorate at Columbia University. Today, he is the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is thrilled that his discovery, the product of 30 years of research, promises a "greener, " healthier future for all of us. In this podcast, recorded at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, California, Dr. Grubbs recalls the impact that Russia's launch of the Sputnik satellite had on his generation of students. He also discusses the issue of global warming and the challenge of powering the planet without poisoning it. He urges the Academy's student students to educate their policy makers on these pressing issues.

Dean Kamen is an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a tireless advocate for science and technology. His most famous invention may be the Segway powered scooter, but he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. While still an undergraduate, he invented the first wearable infusion pump, a device now in use for chemotherapy and for treating diabetes. More recently, he created the Independence I-Bot, designed to give greater mobility to the disabled. He is the founder of DEKA Research and Development Corp., and of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation of inventors and technology entrepreneurs. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2005 Summit in New York City, Dean Kamen points out that 80 percent of human disease is caused by water-borne pathogens. He presents his plan for a compact, portable water-purification system, which can provide clean drinking water in parts of the world where clean water is the scarcest and most precious of natural resources.

The pioneering conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy awakened the world to the threat posed to life on earth by the loss of irreplaceable natural habitat, and has devised ingenious strategies to apply third world debt to the preservation of endangered ecosystems. Dr. Lovejoy's studies of the Amazon rain forest began in the mid-1960s. Over the years he observed the effects of human intrusion on this unique resource, home to countless species of plant and animal life found nowhere else in the world. In 1980 he introduced the term "biological diversity" to express the incalculable value of environments such as the Amazon. He pursued his environmental advocacy as an officer of the World Wildlife Fund and the Smithsonian Institution, and as the creator of Nature, public television's most popular documentary series. In recent years, he has served as biodiversity adviser to the presidents of the World Bank and the United Nations Foundation. He is a University Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University, as well as President of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. He developed the concept of the "debt-for-nature swap," in which environmental groups purchase the debt of Third World countries at a discount, redeem it in the local currency, and purchase biologically sensitive tracts of land in the debtor nation for environmental protection. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2003 Summit in Washington, D.C., Dr. Lovejoy tells the Academy's student delegates some of the ways they can contribute to the preservation of the Earth's diversity.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

This podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, features two outstanding space scientists, Story Musgrave and Donna Shirley. Story Musgrave grew up on a farm in Western Massachusetts, with what he calls "an extraordinarily dysfunctional family." Following service in the United States Marine Corps, he earned his medical degree at Columbia University. In 1967, he was selected by NASA to be among the first cohort of astronaut-scientists. He practiced medicine as a surgeon for 20 years, while training as an Air Force pilot and helping design much of the equipment that would be used for space walks and other extravehicular activity on the Space Shuttle missions. Dr. Musgrave flew on all six vehicles of the Space Shuttle program. His ingenuity and stamina dazzled the world when he commanded the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, in orbit high above the earth. In this podcast, he tells the Academy's student delegates about the human relationship to the earth, space and all life. He describes his own "calling" to space travel. Donna Shirley grew up in the small town of Wynnewood, Oklahoma. Her parents encouraged her academic interests, but her neighbors and teachers were surprised when the very small girl took an intense interest in flying airplanes. Before she was out of her teens, Donna Shirley was soloing and earning her pilot's licenses. She entered college in the 1950s, with the express purpose of studying aeronautic engineering when engineering schools were still an all-male bastion. From her early teens she had been fascinated by science fiction and dreamed of exploring Mars. After winning a job with NASA, she worked on the very first unmanned mission to Mars in 1966. Her devotion to Mars research came to splendid fruition on July 4, 1997. The entire world watched as the Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars. Two months later the Mars Global Surveyor successfully went into orbit around the red planet. Not only were these events two of the U.S. space program's greatest successes, but they may well provide the world with some of the most important scientific data of the 20th and 21st centuries. In this podcast, Donna Shirley weighs the expense of space exploration against its importance to extending our knowledge of the universe. In a discussion with the Academy's student delegates, Story Musgrave and Donna Shirley consider the possibilities of manned missions to Mars.

Dr. Peter Raven is a world-renowned plant biologist, conservationist, and an outspoken defender of endangered plant species. For 40 years, he was the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Born in China and raised in California, his interest in plants dates from his childhood. As a 14-year-old boy wandering in the hills above San Francisco Bay, he discovered a previously unnamed, nearly extinct shrub now called "Raven's manzanita." When Dr. Raven arrived at the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1971, after teaching at Stanford, he found an institution that was under-financed, under-developed and virtually ignored by its community. Under Dr. Raven's leadership, the Garden's collection was expanded, educational programs were developed, and annual attendance tripled. Raven restored the Garden's geodesic-domed conservatory, the Climatrona, and built the largest Japanese garden in North America. Today, the major research focus of the Missouri Garden is on the tropics, where much of the earth's biodiversity is centered, but where it is also exceptionally threatened by human activities. Dr. Raven helped create the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the world's pre-eminent center for plant research, where scientists explore new means to fight hunger, disease and environmental degradation. He is the author of a number of essential books in his field, including Environment and The Biology of Plants, as well as the influential essay Coevolution of Insects and Plants. He is the co-editor of Flora of China, a joint Chinese-American project to inventory all the indigenous plants of China, which constitute about an eighth of the total plant species in the world. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dr. Raven discusses the pressures placed on the environment by an ever-expanding human population, and urges the Academy's student delegates to consider what they can do to protect the planet from further destruction.

John Young is a legendary American astronaut, test pilot, and aeronautical engineer who, in 1972, was the ninth person to walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 16 mission. Young had the longest, busiest and most diverse career of any astronaut in American history. Over the course of 19 years of active NASA service, he made six spaceflights, the first person to do so; and was the only person to have piloted four different classes of spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo Command/Service Module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Space Shuttle. In 1965, Young flew the on the first manned Gemini mission, and in 1969, was the first person to orbit the moon alone during Apollo 10. He journeyed twice to the Moon and drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon's surface. Young also commanded two space shuttle flights, including the historic first Shuttle flight in 1981. In 1974, he became chief of the Astronaut Office after the retirement of Alan Shepard. An honors graduate of Georgia Tech, he joined the U.S. Navy and entered test pilot school and set world records. In 1962, Young was selected to be an astronaut. Over his extraordinary 42-year career, he has earned more than 80 major awards, including the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, three NASA Distinguished Service Medals, three Navy Distinguished Flying Crosses, and induction into the Aviation Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. John Young addressed the student delegates at the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park about space exploration.

Henry Way Kendall (December 9, 1926 - February 15, 1999) was a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist and an ardent advocate for environmental causes. He enrolled in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1945 and served on a troop transport ship on the North Atlantic. Kendall graduated from Amherst in 1950 and while in college operated a diving and marine salvage company during two summers and co-authored books on diving and underwater photography. He obtained his doctorate in nuclear and atomic physics from MIT and then spent five years at Stanford in the late 1950s and early 1960s, studying the structure of protons and neutrons. Kendall returned to the MIT Physics Department, where he remained the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he worked in collaboration with researchers Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor on experiments that demonstrated the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be the up and down quarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluons. Kendall won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics (with Friedman and Taylor) for their pioneering investigations concerning the deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which were of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics. Kendall was also one of the founding members of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and served as chairman of the anti-war group for more than 25 years. He composed the highly publicized but politically-ignored "World Scientists Warning to Humanity" published in 1992 and co-signed by 1,700 scientists world-wide, which called for policy changes in government and business to avert environmental destruction that would cause widespread human misery and leave the Earth irretrievably damaged. In 1997, he was among the scientists who presented President Bill Clinton with a detailed explanation of the coming crisis of global climate change. In 1999, Kendall died of natural causes while scuba diving in the caves at the Wakulla Springs State Park in Florida. Henry Kendall addressed the student delegates at the 1993 Achievement Summit at Glacier National Park on the environment, population growth, and climate change.