JASON Defense Advisory Group
JASON is an independent group of scientists that advises the U.S. government on matters of science and technology. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists — that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni — involved in advising the government. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members.
For administrative purposes, Jason's activities are run through the MITRE Corporation, a non-profit corporation in McLean, Virginia that contracts with the defense department.
Jason typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study. Its sponsors include the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, and the U.S. intelligence community. Most of the resulting Jason reports are classified.
The name "JASON" is sometimes explained as an acronym, standing either for "July-August-September-October-November", the months in which the group would typically meet; or, tongue-in-cheek, for "Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now". But neither explanation is right and in fact, the name is not an acronym at all. It's simply a reference to the Greek myth, Jason. The wife of one of the founders (Mildred Goldberger) thought the name given by the defense department, Project Sunrise, was unimaginative and suggested the group be named for a hero and his search.
Jason studies have included a now-mothballed system for communicating with submarines using extremely long radio waves (Project Seafarer, Project Sanguine); an astronomical technique for overcoming the atmosphere's distortion; the many problems of missile defense; technologies for verifying compliance with treaties banning nuclear tests; and most controversially, during the Vietnam War, a system of computer-linked sensors that became the precursor to the electronic battlefield.
Membership
Jason members all have security clearances and consist of physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. They are selected for their scientific brilliance, and over the years, have included eleven Nobel Prize laureates and several dozen members of the National Academy of Science.
The following is a list of members, past and present, who have been publicly identified as Jasons or whose names appear as authors on Jason studies. Since not all study authors are members of Jason, and since Jason does not give out its membership list, the only way to verify the following list is to ask the individual Jasons.
List of members available at wikipedia here.
Article from: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
JASON_Defense_Advisory_Group#Membership