14. Samuel Aronson, Ph.D.

What computers are to Silicon Valley, scientific research is to Long Island. From Brookhaven to Cold Spring Harbor (see No. 18), LI is home to some of the most advanced scientific research in the world. From a business standpoint, Samuel Aronson oversees nearly 3,000 employees and an organization that has raked in seven Nobel prizes and grown so large it has its own police station, fire department and zip code. A physicist, he can also measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Both of these things make him pretty powerful, but it’s what he does daily that has landed him a spot on this list. Aronson first got on board BNL in 1978, and continues to supervise internationally recognized scientific breakthroughs and research that has a direct impact on medicine, science and our everyday lives. The lab is home to the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS). Each year, 2,200 researchers from 400 universities and government laboratories around the world use its bright beams for their experiments. Under Aronson’s direction, the lab is working on
a newer model for 2015.