In 1964 Dr. Alvin Nielsen (then head of the Physics Department) was instrumental in securing a Ford Foundation grant that allowed Oak Ridge scientists to teach courses at UT on an adjunct basis. By 1968 roughly 50 Oak Ridge scientists were involved in this program.

Despite these successes and the advantage of having the state's research university and a national laboratory within a half hour's drive of each other, no strong program was in place to pool the resources of the two institutions. At least, not until physicists Paul Huray, Lee Riedinger, and Ivan Sellin gathered around Huray's dining room table one Sunday afternoon in October 1982. It was there that the Distinguished Scientist Program, the cornerstone of the Science Alliance, took shape.

In June 1982 then-Chancellor Jack Reese orchestrated a task force to investigate the possibility of UT taking over management of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Huray, Riedinger, Sellin, and Dr. Bill Snyder were all part of that team, along with representatives of the Benefits Office and the UT Legal Council. The task force also asked a series of Nobel Prize winners (Glen Seaborg, Sheldon Glashow, and Norman Ramsey) to visit the university and, as Huray said, "to give us advice about whether or not UTK should pursue the idea of an ORNL management. To a man, they told us it was the only way that UTK would join the ranks of the top research institutions, and they fully supported our efforts."

Task force members visited other Department of Energy laboratories (Berkeley, Argonne, and Brookhaven) managed by universities or university consortia to get advice on putting together a management contract. The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was the closest match to the UT-ORNL situation, and, according to Huray, "both the LBL director and the UC-Berkeley president stated their strong support for UTK to take more steps. They also offered to council a group of high-level UTK administrators in how we should proceed."

A primary concern for the task force was finding a way for the university to separate itself from the rest of the competition vying for management of ORNL, most of whom were corporations. Huray said "we decided that, as a non-profit organization, the university could produce a competitive edge by reinvesting the management fee it would receive back into excellent science and facilities between the two institutions."

The strategy was mapped out at Huray's dining room table that Sunday afternoon in October. Riedinger and Sellin came over to meet with Huray to find some way to set UTK's proposal apart using the reinvestment advantage. In their discussions, they pondered "why ORNL and UTK did not have any Nobel Prize scientists or National Academy members, and why so many were at Berkeley," Huray said. "We concluded that UTK and ORNL were not members of the unspoken "prestige clubs' and that even the best scientists at the two institutions would continue to have an uphill battle to be recognized for their work."

To attract top-notch scientists who would abolish the stigma and level the playing field for UT and ORNL researchers, the three physicists concluded that the best way to reinvest the management fee would be to support a series of Distinguished Scientists. The task force presented the idea to the UTK administration, who enthusiastically supported it. Additional endorsement came from Fred Bernthal, then Senator Howard Baker's science assistant, as well as from the deputy Secretary of Energy, Tom Heffelfinger.

Huray acknowledges the plan had its critics.

"Chemical and Engineering News reported our Distinguished Scientist ideas and called them a pipe dream,'" he said. Opposition came from a member of the faculty senate, a top manager of the DOE Operations Office in Oak Ridge, and other UT and ORNL personnel, he explained.

"An ORNL employee said, "it would be better to have MIT as a manager rather than a football school,'" Huray said.

Undeterred by these criticisms and confident of the plan's eventual benefits for both institutions, Herman Postma of ORNL and Jack Reese signed a memorandum of understanding on February 11, 1983.

However, after the UT-ORNL management proposal was laid out, word came that the Department of Energy would not separate the three Oak Ridge facilities (ORNL, Y-12, and K-25), which meant that whomever managed the operation would also be responsible for the production of nuclear weapons and the separation of 235U. In light of these circumstances, the university's board of trustees decided not to bid on the management job, but instead to consider partnering with a corporation. Although UT had fortuitously drafted an agreement with each the three finalists in the bid battle (Westinghouse, Rockwell, and Martin Marietta), not one of them put up any money for the Distinguished Scientist program, even though they supported the idea in principle.

At the same time the finalists were jockeying for management of ORNL, the Tennessee legislature approved $10 million for the State Centers of Excellence program. Sensing the opportunity to make the Distinguished Scientist program a reality, Huray and his colleagues penned a proposal entitled, "An Alliance between the Sciences at the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory," to request state funding for their plan. They shortened the name to the "Science Alliance," won the funding, and in 1984 laid the foundation for a strong scientific collaboration going on its 14th year.

Huray said "the many physics faculty who worked across institutional lines were proof that excellence already existed between the two organizations," and helped make the Science Alliance a reality. Enhancing this relationship with top scientists and facilities "meant that a nationally recognized program with existing excellent researchers could be raised to an international level of perception," he said.

Although the Science Alliance has four divisions (Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Sciences, and Physical Sciences), physicists have an important part in the center's operations. Dr. Gerald Mahan was the university's first Distinguished Scientist, and one of three physicists (along with Dr. Joseph Macek and Dr. Ward Plummer) in the total group of 12. Dr. Lee Riedinger has served as director of the Science Alliance (1988-91), and physicist Tom Callcott is the current director.

Another strong element of the Science Alliance is the joint institutes, collaborations between government and academic partners to make the most of scientific talent and resources. Physics professor Carrol Bingham is the fiscal director of the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research (a partnership forged by the Science Alliance, ORNL, and Vanderbilt University). The joint institutes program looks to hold more success for physics with the proposed Joint Institute for Neutron Science. The state of Tennessee has committed $8 million for ORNL and the university to construct this facility. If the Department of Energy wins funding for an Oak Ridge-based Spallation Neutron Source, the JINS will then become what ORNL calls "an intellectual center and gateway for outside users of the SNS and ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor."

Although the Science Alliance has grown into a strong and successful research initiative in mathematics, chemistry, computer science, biology, and other sciences, physics has played a key role in bringing that success to fruition.

"As an outsider, I now think of the UTK /ORNL scientists as among the best in the world in several specialized fields," Huray said. "I believe the promise of even greater recognition awaits the two institutions."

To learn more about this Center of Excellence, visit the Science Alliance home page at http://www.ra.utk.edu/scialli/

Back to Cross Sections, Spring 1998 issue.