We scientists are the only people who are not bored, the only adventurers of modern times, the real explorers—the fortunate ones. —1960 Nobel Laureate Willard F. Libby
Not everybody else was bored in 1960, and there were some adventurers—bearing spears in the Congo or banging shoes at the U.N.—who could hardly be called scientific. But the world of 1960 will readily agree with Chemist Willard Libby that U.S. scientists and their colleagues in other free lands are indeed the true 20th century adventurers, the explorers of the unknown, the real intellectuals of the day, the leaders of mankind's greatest inquiry into the mysteries of matter, of the earth, the universe, and of life itself. Their work shapes the life of every human presently inhabiting the planet, and will influence the destiny of generations to come. Statesmen and savants, builders and even priests are their servants; at a time when science is at the apogee of its power for good or evil, they are the Men of the Year 1960.
TIME has chosen 15 U.S. scientists as Men of the Year—15 because that number embodies about the right inclusiveness and exclusiveness, U.S. because the heart of scientific inquiry now beats strongest in this country. They are representative of all science—with its dependence on the past, its strivings and frustrations in the present, and its plans, hopes and, perhaps, fantasies for the future.
The Men. The 15 men include two or three whose greatest work is probably behind them. Chemist Linus Pauling published his milestone theories about the nature of the chemical bond in the '30s, waited until 1954 to receive his Nobel Prize. But Pauling's accurate insights remain a basis for the work of 1960—3 scientists in many fields. Physicist I. I. Rabi received his Nobel Prize in 1944 for his work on the atomic nucleus, in recent years has been most active as an articulate adviser to the Federal Government, explaining science to the Solons as something that requires, and is worthy of, a basic "optimism of the possible." The most remarkable feat performed by Physicist Edward Teller came when, with a burst of brilliance, he flashed forth with an idea that made the hydrogen bomb not only possible but practical for the U.S.; the details of that idea remain top-secret to this day.
But the 15 Men of the Year also include the prodigious striplings of science. One is Biologist Joshua Lederberg, 35, a Nobelman in 1958 for his demonstration that viruses can change the heredity of bacteria, who is now deep in the study of a new science that he calls "exobiology" —an attempt to obtain and compare life on other planets with that on earth. Another is Physicist Donald Glaser, one of the U.S.'s two Nobel prizewinners in science for 1960 (Chemist Libby is the other). Glaser's award came for his development of the bubble chamber, a quantum jump in the study of atomic particles. But at age 34, Glaser is about to start his scientific life anew, switching to microbiology, which has an irresistible lure for his insatiable curiosity.