15. Doon Gibbs

It’s been a banner year for Doon Gibbs, director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of America’s most advanced scientific research facilities. From his team’s contributions to Nobel Prize-winning research to new insights into superconductors as well as taking a never-before-seen look at the “hot soup” of the universe at the very beginning of time, BNL has been making discoveries that defy the limits of human imagination. And to think it all happens a few miles north of Exit 68 on the LIE, thanks to some 3,000 employees and a $700-million annual budget. With Gibbs’ prodding, the National Synchrotron Light Source II is nearing completion, and once it’s up and running, BNL scientists plan to use its extraordinary investigative power to explore the “strange magnetic metal” that produces superconductivity. Meanwhile, thanks to continued federal support—due in no small part to Gibbs’ gentle persuasion—the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC for short) has run its 14th round of experiments, the Interdisciplinary Science Building for energy research is now occupied, and the Northeast Solar Energy Research Center is breaking ground. From subatomic particles swirling at the speed of light to the living dinosaurs taking up space in the House of Representatives, Gibbs has to keep all of them in his purview—and he does it without losing his vision of what truly matters: our quest for knowledge, our duty to humanity, our destiny.