NASA Names Science Chief

NASA officials have found somebody to run the agency's new Office of the Chief Scientist. And they didn't have to look far: It's John Mather, who's currently at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., heading the Cosmic Background Explorer Mission. Mather's certainly qualified for his new post: He and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory won the Nobel Prize for physics last year for their work in explaining the Big Bang. In his new job, Mather will set mission and research budget priorities for all NASA science programs.