Harvard Chemistry Chairman Under Investigation Is a Giant of His Field
Charles Lieber is charged with lying to U.S. authorities about taking millions of dollars from the Chinese government
The Harvard University professor arrested and charged with lying to U.S. authorities about taking millions of dollars from the Chinese government is considered one of the fathers of a specialized field in nanotechnology.
Charles M. Lieber has led a research lab at Harvard for nearly 30 years and generated in excess of $15 million in grants from government agencies since 2008. He was rated the top chemist of the aughts by one analytics organization that rated academic productivity. Former research assistants in his lab said Wednesday they were shocked by his arrest and even surprised by his alleged association with the Chinese program that allegedly paid him $1.5 million that he didn’t report.
“For a person with his status and reputation the work for him (in China) was not important, and it was not necessary for him to do that for the money,” said Xuan Gao, a Case Western Reserve University professor who worked in Mr. Lieber’s lab from 2005 to 2007. “He is the inventor of a very large research field called nanowires, and because of him there are many, many researchers around the world working on nanoscale materials for various applications.”
Mr. Lieber, 60 years old, is by several accounts driven, demanding and a very caring mentor. He cemented his reputation as a world class scientist about the time he came to Harvard from Columbia University in 1991. The wires he invented are only a few hundred atoms in diameter. Because they are capable of transmitting electricity they have the potential to transform electronics.
Mr. Lieber’s attorney didn’t return a call for comment. Harvard University called the charges “extremely serious” and said he had been placed on indefinite administrative leave.
“That’s why none of this makes sense,” said Brian Timko, who worked in Mr. Lieber’s lab from 2002 to 2009 and is now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University. “Espionage? Fraud? Totally out of character. His whole world was creating research and publishing it.”
Mr. Timko recalled Mr. Lieber as being in his lab office six days a week, often from 8 a.m. to midnight, driving a nondescript car, dressing down and reading scientific literature for pleasure.
His hobbies included growing pumpkins in his backyard, one of which weighed 1,870 pounds, the largest in the state in 2014.
“We have demonstrated the controlled synthesis of nanostructures at levels of complexity significantly beyond any work yet reported,” Mr. Lieber told the Harvard Gazette, the official news outlet for the university, back in 2005. “What we have done is the most challenging synthetic problem in these structures, and one with huge potential payoffs from both the standpoint of fundamental scientific impact and producing novel devices and applications.”
Mr. Lieber was remanded to federal custody on Tuesday pending a detention hearing set for Thursday. He is charged with a single felony count for making false statements to U.S. government agencies. As a first-time offender, he likely faces less than six months in prison but could be prohibited from receiving federal grant money.
Chemists and physicists from around the world flocked to Mr. Lieber’s lab, and he has advised at least two companies. He held his protégés to exceptionally high standards and, despite a shy demeanor, could be blunt when he didn’t believe they were up to snuff, said Yajie Dong, who worked in the lab from 2003 until 2010.
“You could email him at 2 in the morning or 4 in the morning, and he would answer. He was always available, and he expected his research assistants to be as well,” said Mr. Dong, now an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center.
Mr. Dong recalled being among 30 researchers at Mr. Lieber’s lab—typically Ph.D. students whose salaries, million-dollar equipment and lab space are paid from the grants generated by Mr. Lieber.
According to his website, sponsors of Mr. Lieber’s research included the Air Force, Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
In 2017 Mr. Lieber was named a university professor, the highest rank for faculty at Harvard. The National Institutes of Health also gave him an award in recognition of his high-risk, high-reward research program.
His work took him around the world, which is typical for a scientist of his stature, Mr. Dong said.
According to a federal complaint, Mr. Lieber misled the Defense Department and NIH about his participation in China’s Thousand Talents Program. The complaint alleged that Wuhan University of Technology gave him more than $1.5 million to set up a research lab in China.
Mr. Lieber has also served as honorary professor or academic adviser at other Chinese universities, including the prestigious Tsinghua, Peking and Fudan universities, according to his profile on a Chinese Academy of Sciences webpage.
Since 1987, Mr. Lieber has trained more than 60 Chinese scholars, according to his profile on the state-run research institute’s website. In 2009 he won a Chinese Government Friendship Award; the year prior he won the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Einstein Award, according to the institute.