The National Cold Fusion Institute at the University of Utah passed a milestone this week with the selection of a director, Dr. Fritz G. Will.
A leading scientist at General Electric Corp.'s New York development center, Dr. Will brings to his challenging new responsibilities an impressive background in research administration together with scientific and research experience.Now it's important that the institute pass still another milestone - the one at which the federal government finally joins the state of Utah in providing funds to help support this potentially revolutionary research.
Washington's continued reluctance to do so is becoming increasingly hard to understand or justify. That's because more and more scientists are abandoning their initial skepticism and coming to conclude that there is something to cold fusion after all.
It's a conclusion reached last October by a prestigious panel of 49 chemists and physicists at the National Science Foundation. Only a few days ago, scientists at a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory in Tennessee announced confirmation of the Utah cold fusion experiments.
But the major breakthrough in funding evidently won't come until the DOE's Energy Research Advisory Board gets over the idea that cold fusion is an illusion and recommends federal financial help.
Without such help, America runs the risk of letting Japan and possibly other rivals get ahead of the United States in what could be a world-changing field of energy research and development.
Meanwhile, as Utahns welcome Dr. Will to his challenging assignment at the National Cold Fusion Institute, they can promise him one thing: Life on the new job will be anything but dull.