GIBBONS DEPARTS AS SCIENCE ADVISER

Abstract

On April 3, John H. Gibbons ended almost five and a half years as President Clinton's science adviser. Gibbons' service at the White House science post occupies a special niche among his 11 predecessors. He was a science adviser who worked within an Administration that already had made a strong commitment to science and technology as part of a defined political agenda and for two bosses who almost by natural instinct understood the play of science and technology in politics and policy. Gibbons' term was eventful, in places tumultuous, and in some ways historic. The Clinton Administration came in with the most ambitious set of policy plans for science and technology of any Administration, and it was Gibbons' job to implement them. The Administration stayed largely true to those plans—involving information policy, new cooperative arrangements between government and industry, an activist environmental agenda, a focus on educational needs for a new technological era, a revamped ...