Solomon J. Buchsbaum

Who is Solomon J. Buchsbaum?

Solomon J. Buchsbaum was an American physicist and technologist, best known as chair of the White House Science Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and as a senior executive at Bell Laboratories.

Born in Stryj, Poland, Buchsbaum's parents died in the Holocaust. He and one sister escaped capture by the Nazis and made their way to Warsaw, where he was protected in a Catholic orphanage. There he recited Mass and became an altar boy. After the war, as a teenager, Buchsbaum made his way to Canada where a learned English and found a job in a hat factory. With no previous formal training, he won a scholarship to McGill University in physics and mathematics, there earning a bachelor's degree in 1952, and a master's degree a year later. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1957.

Buchsbaum's career at Bell began as a researcher on gaseous and solid plasmas in 1958. Rising through the ranks, he became vice president in charge of technology systems in 1979. He published 50 articles and was awarded 8 patents. Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias called him the "vice president in charge of everything else," meaning everything that was not directly phone company business.