In Kona, Hawai‘i, in July 2013, I met Richard J. Hughes, then a Laboratory Fellow in the Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hughes had founded and co-led the Laboratory’s Quantum Communications team and served as Scientific Director of its Quantum Institute.
Few institutions represent science at the frontier of consequence as powerfully as Los Alamos. Established in 1943 as Project Y of the Manhattan Project, the Laboratory was built to turn problems at the edge of the possible into national capability.
Hughes had also chaired the Technology Experts Panel that produced A Quantum Information Science and Technology Roadmap, serving as its document coordinator. That roadmap had strongly influenced the direction of my graduate work.
When I introduced myself at the conference, I told him how much his leadership had meant to me.
“To the contrary,” he replied. “It’s an honor for me to meet you—you inspired me.”
I was taken aback. “How could that be? I was only a graduate student at the time.”
Hughes referred to the collection of technology-assessment reports I had prepared through my work with the Advanced Research and Development Activity’s QuIST program. Working from Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, I traveled to leading national laboratories, universities, and corporate research institutes across East Asia and Europe to assess the emerging quantum-information landscape. The resulting reports were circulated among scientists and program leaders across the United States.
Hughes told me that those assessments had helped demonstrate the value of a structured national appraisal of the field. They informed, he said, his approach to organizing the expert-led roadmap effort.
That exchange changed my understanding of scientific influence. Work can travel much farther through institutions than its author is ever permitted to see.
Our conversation led Hughes to invite me to visit Los Alamos.
“How long should I schedule?” I asked. “Two days, two weeks, two months?”
He winked. “You know, Los Alamos is a black hole. With all the exciting projects we have going on here, you might disappear altogether—and never leave.”
— Read the contemporaneous account I wrote after returning from Kona.
