The Spring 2014 issue of Spectrum explains how basic research led MIT faculty, including Professor Sallie “Penny” Chisholm, to profound unanticipated consequences. In 1988 Chisholm “revolutionized our understanding of life in the world’s oceans…when she and colleagues discovered Prochlorococcus,” the most abundant photosynthetic organism in the ocean. She credits federal funding for the breakthrough, but the percentage of this funding on campus has dropped by more than half since 1960. Read the Spectrum article: https://spectrum.mit.edu/articles/the-brilliance-of-basic-research/