NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR NATURE|Vol 462|24/31 December 2009 THE POWER PLAYER As a physicist, he found a way to capture atoms and won a Nobel prize. Now he is marshalling scientists and engineers to transform the world’s biggest energy economy. Eric Hand profiles the US energy secretary, Nature’s Newsmaker of the Year. TEVEN CHU is heading home on a bright Chu plans to tackle climate change by reviving the day in October. His motorcade of government cars scientific and technological urgency of the Manhattan powers up the slope of Cyclotron Road, past the fra- Project — enlisting some of the nation’s best minds to find Sgrant stands of eucalyptus and through the guard a way to power the world without ruining it. His plans start station at the entrance of Lawrence Berkeley National Labo- at home, where he is trying to push the ponderous DOE to ratory. The vehicles continue along Chu Road and come to support riskier research that could yield huge dividends. a stop near the top of the hill. With a budget of US$27 billion, the department runs The man after whom the road is named heads into Build- 17 national laboratories, oversees America’s nuclear ing 50, which housed his office for the five years that he stockpile and manages the environmental clean-up after ran this laboratory overlooking the University of Califor- the early nuclear age. It is the largest source of funds for nia, Berkeley. Inside an auditorium, 225 former colleagues physical-science research in the United States, and this year await his arrival. Some wear suits; others slouch in hooded Chu had a much bigger pot to dole out. Just one month sweatshirts and sandals. There is an eager anticipation in into his tenure, Congress gave the agency $37 billion in the air, and moments before Chu arrives, the crowd grows economic stimulus money — funds that Chu is steering quiet. Orange-vested security guards, armed with walkie- towards renewable energy, nuclear power, carbon-seques- talkies, open the doors, and Chu walks down to the podium, tration pilot plants and projects to modernize the electric his entourage trailing. grid, all of which should help to solve the climate problem. “It’s very good to be back here,” he says, flipping open his “They say that necessity is the mother of invention and this computer. “You people know I do my own PowerPoints. is the mother of all necessities,” he says. “So we’re going to That has not changed.” He launches headlong into a fast- get the mother of all inventions. And it’s not going to be paced and scattered talk that leaps across dozens of topics, just one, it has to be many.” all under the banner of climate change. He clicks ahead to the crucial slide — the one that shows actual measure- Hands-on manager ments of rising global temperatures outpacing what would In the 1980s, Chu made his name scientifically by trapping be expected without all the carbon dioxide that humans atoms using lasers tuned with the utmost precision. Now have spewed into the atmosphere. “Here’s the evidence,” he he is applying that same mastery of detail to a vastly more says. “I have to play this over and over again.” complex system: an agency of 100,000 people working on Such is his task back in Washington DC, where Chu now all aspects of energy and nuclear issues. works as Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) and Some Washington veterans have questioned whether a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet — the first Chu’s research talent and hands-on style of management Nobel-prizewinning scientist to hold such a high office in will serve him well, both at the DOE and amid the harsh the US government. political environment of the nation’s capital. He has made He is charged with transforming the world’s biggest some mistakes, notably in his dealings with Congress. But energy economy, and he has assumed the role of persuader- nearly a year into his tenure, Chu has proved that he is a in-chief, trotting before Congress to explain the science of quick learner. He has established himself as a voice that can climate change and his plans for combating it. Meeting reg- be trusted by politicians of various stripes. He has helped ularly with representatives and senators, he targets sceptics to bridge international divides, particularly between the and walks them through the data. “I say, ‘Come to my office United States and China. And he has lured some top sci- and we’ll talk about it’,” he explains. “At the very least you entists from industry and universities to join him at the can put a little doubt in their minds. If they’re so sure it’s DOE in his quest. natural causes, they may be less sure.” It helps to have a Carol Browner, Obama’s climate tsar, works often with Nobel prize, he adds. “Necessity is Chu as part of the president’s ‘green cabinet’, a group of sen- In confronting what he sees as the most pressing problem ior officials who oversee environmental matters. “I think facing the world today, Chu looks back in time to chart a the mother he’s going to turn out to be the best energy secretary ever,” way forwards. The Berkeley lab he once ran is the descend- of invention she says. Praise also flows from some Republican politi- ant of the Radiation Laboratory, where the physicist Ernest and this is the cians. Samuel Bodman, who led the DOE for former presi- Lawrence helped find ways to enrich uranium for the Man- dent George W. Bush, says that Chu has “shown skills as a hattan Project. Chemist Glenn Seaborg’s team discovered mother of all manager. I think it was an inspired choice by the president plutonium there, and theoretical physicist Robert Oppen- necessities.” to pick him.” heimer worked just down the hill before heading into the — Steven Chu Growing up in a New York suburb during the 1950s, New Mexico mountains to build the first nuclear bombs. Chu and his two brothers learned quickly that academic 978 © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NATUREVol 462|24/31|Vol 462 December|24/31 December 2009 2009 NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR excellence — and competition — were family traditions. recalled nearly getting into a fist fight with Chu because The boys would watch College Bowl, a 1960s television quiz he was being “bossy about the lasers”, until a third student, show, and “the three of us would shout out answers and try who had studied with Chu at Rochester, explained to to beat the contestants”, recalls Morgan Chu, the youngest Bucksbaum: “It’s the way he always has been. Focused and brother and a high-profile lawyer in California. brusque,” says Bucksbaum. Chu’s father and mother fled China during the Second Chu’s graduate work using polarized light to probe C. OMMANNEY/GETTY World War and both did graduate work at the Massachu- atomic transitions was good enough for him to get a job setts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The at Bell Labs in New Jersey, then a utopia for basic research. eldest son, Gilbert, followed the path of academic prestige Chu thrived there, but he also made sacrifices. As his work — accumulating science degrees from Princeton Univer- progressed, he spent more time away from home, says his sity in New Jersey and MIT before gaining an MD from ex-wife, Lisa Chu-Thielbar. Sometimes, she would smug- Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Morgan gle his first son, Geoffrey, under her overcoat onto the did a PhD in social science before heading to Harvard Law laboratory campus to catch some time with his father. “He School. Steven, on the other hand, was the A-minus stu- was always a scientist first and a father second,” says Chu’s dent who favoured tinkering over schoolwork. In a family second son, Michael, who doesn’t fault his father for the of Ivy Leaguers, he says he was the “academic black sheep”, singular focus that allowed him to achieve so much. “The who settled for the University of Rochester in New York, ambition was all intellectual and scientific. Steve never cared where he studied mathematics and physics. Family pres- about money. He didn’t even care about advancement,” says sures, he says, drove him — and frustrated him — early on, Chu-Thielbar. but once at Rochester, his facility for science flourished. After seven years at Bell Labs, Chu had a key insight “All of a sudden, the things they wanted me to do were very in 1985 into how to trap atoms. He crossed six lasers to natural,” he says. form what he called “optical molasses”, a goo of photons. On entering graduate school at Berkeley in 1970, Chu It slowed atoms nearly to a standstill, making them slug- began a love affair with lasers. The work that was once a gish enough to be held by the electromagnetic forces of an chore became the focus of an obsessive energy. “I’ve never additional laser. been that good at apportioning time,” he says. “When I A year later, in the winter of 1986, Chu glimpsed the got really excited about something, I would dig into it. It foundation of his Nobel prize through the windows of a turns out that is a quality that the best researchers have.” vacuum chamber. Sodium atoms, cooled in optical molas- Another Berkeley graduate student, Phil Bucksbaum, ses to 240 millionths of a degree above absolute zero, grew 979 © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited.