Constituents of Rush Holt, the popular congressman representing central New Jersey, like to flaunt bumper stickers that declare: “My congressman IS a rocket scientist.” As it happens, Representative Holt is the only physicist in Congress (he’s also the only Quaker). Since his election as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1998, Holt’s advocated for math and science education, children’s health, and biomedical research as well as human rights and women’s freedom of choice. A past teacher, Congressional Science Fellow, arms control expert at the State Department, and inventor (he holds a patent to a solar energy device), Holt served for nearly a decade as assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Even better, from a bragging rights’ standpoint, Holt is a five-time winner of the game show “Jeopardy!” In 2011 he beat Watson, IBM’s super computer, in a simulated round of the game.
To spend time with this smart, modest, and thoroughly likable man is to wish Congress were made up entirely of Holt-like thinkers. Here, he talks about the ways in which non-scientists can—must, in fact—learn to examine, assess, and verify any judgments we make or opinions we form.
