Bill R. Appleton

Texans think big. After leaving his natal state for a  Ph.D. in solid state physics at Rutgers and a tour of duty at  the nearby Bell Laboratories, in 1967 Bill R. Appleton headed  for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, America’s center of big science  since the Manhattan Project. There, he researched ion-beam and  laser interactions with solids. One spin-off was an artificial  hip joint; its titanium alloy surface, implanted with nitrogen,  markedly reduced corrosive wear. To pursue such work, Appleton  says, “It turns out you need lots of equipment” and lots of people  using it to justify the cost, so he gradually expanded his scientific  team and segued into research management. By this spring, when  he retired from Oak Ridge—the enterprise employs 5,000 people,  one-third of them degreed scientists and engineers—he was deputy  director for science and technology, responsible for the decade-long  design and approval of the $1.4-billion spallation neutron source  being built there. Now directing Harvard’s nascent Center for  Imaging and Mesoscale Structures—in the tiny realm from atoms  to protein-sized biological molecules—Appleton continues to think  big. On the desk of his office in Cruft Laboratory are plans for  an electron-beam lithography system, one of several new machines,  together costing millions of dollars, that the Faculty of Arts  and Sciences is installing to examine the realm of “quantum-dot”  fabrication and molecular electronic devices. A new interdisciplinary  lab building is being planned, to facilitate the necessary “very  close marriage of fundamental science and high technology.” Meanwhile,  Appleton and his wife, Priscilla, are settling into Newton (three  grown sons populate the Sunbelt) with his mesoscale hobby, a bonsai  collection.