Engineering’s Role in Creating Technology: Working in the Penumbra of Understanding
Engineering is a goal-oriented endeavor, respecting science but not totally dependent on it. The result of engineering and technology sometimes precedes scientific understanding and often stimulates further scientific discovery. At their core, science and engineering are tightly connected but have different goals. Theodore von Kármán, an aeronautical engineer who received the first National Medal of Science in 1962, said “Scientists discover the world that exists; Engineers create the world that never was.” Technology results from these two endeavors. In this presentation I will talk about the mix among engineering, science and technology, and I will address our professional responsibility to assure we are benefiting society by avoiding unintended consequences as new technologies are developed.
Bio: John L. Anderson was president of the National Academy of Engineering during 2019-2025. Before that position, his career spanned 48 years in academia. He has served as president of the Illinois Institute of Technology, provost and executive vice president at Case Western Reserve University, and dean of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University His first faculty appointment was in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 for his contributions to the understanding of colloidal hydrodynamics and membrane transport phenomena. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he received the Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Anderson was a presidential appointment to the National Science Board for the period 2014-2020. He was elected to Academia Sinica (Taiwan) as an Honorary Academician in 2024. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in chemical engineering.