Despite his inquisitive nature, Bement wasn’t necessarily convinced of a need for formal education. After high school, he admitted, “I didn’t even have it in my mind to go to college.” He took a job working for a mine in Climax, Colo. “I was a roustabout,” he confessed. So how did he make the leap to a career so illustrious that highlights include being a professor at MIT and director of the National Science Foundation? He said he owes it all to his boss at the mine. One day, he and his boss were on opposite sides of the lunchroom – both were reading copies of a book by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. When his boss discovered Bement’s reading material, he encouraged the young roustabout to get an education, and even offered to pay for the first semester at his own alma mater, Colorado School of Mines. Bement took his boss up on the offer, and then some. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he attended the University of Idaho for his master’s degree in metallurgical engineering, now the materials science and engineering program. He was drawn to Idaho by engineering faculty and department head Joseph Newton, who had written a prominent textbook in the field. Attending Idaho also meant much of Bement’s work would be hands-on research at Hanford Laboratory in Richland,
Wash., which today is known as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s 10 national laboratories. His research placed him at the forefront of discovering how to harness nuclear energy. His work focused on ensuring that all the elements involved – the containment vessel, the cladding and the control panels – could withstand the conditions under which the energy was created. What does he have to show for those early experiments? “Lots of scar tissue,” he said with a laugh. “I learned by doing.” In other words, he got intimate with laws of thermodynamics by burning his fingertips. Bement went on to earn his doctorate from the University of Michigan. His almost 60-year career has included stints in research, academia and government. In his most recent post as director of the National Science Foundation, which he has held since 2004, his leadership includes managing a $7 billion budget to support fundamental science research. This summer, Bement will start a new adventure as founding director of the new Global Policy Research Institute at Purdue University. Bement’s drive to learn new things – what he calls his “low-fascination threshold”
– has propelled him from one job to the next. “Each new position offers a new learning curve,” he said. “When you get to the flat side of a learning curve, it’s time to move to a new learning curve.” In terms of career paths, he recommends that young people consider models other than the straight climb up – the traditional “ladder.” He said his career path looks more like a spiral, which may be a less direct route, but allowed him to expand his areas of expertise along the way. As for the research subject that started his upward spiral, Bement is excited that nuclear energy is experiencing a resurgence. He believes it can be an essential part in “greening” our power supply; a consistent source of energy that can facilitate a greater reliance on other alternative energies such as those generated by wind and sun. Ultimately, his long career has taught Bement that a person must try new things, even if they seem ridiculous or scary at first. “You can’t take yourself too seriously,” he said. Case in point: he was asked to guest conduct the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra in Indiana, an endeavor he knew little about. “I thought I would look like a fool.” He did it anyway, and it was a thrill. 21