When President Donald Trump gave Elon Musk the National Medal of Science on Thursday, October 8, it put a business leader into a group that has mostly been made up of researchers. AP notes that past winners of the medal have mainly been academics and research scientists rather than business leaders. We covered the ceremony in Trump Awards Elon Musk the National Medal of Science. This piece adds the context around it.
What the medal is
The medal dates to 1959, according to AP, carried by PBS NewsHour. Al Jazeera says it is given each year for major contributions and was first awarded in 1963 to aerospace pioneer Theodore von Karman. Al Jazeera also reports that the National Science Foundation collects nominations and that a committee appointed by the president makes the final choice.
Who was honored
Six tech leaders were honored. Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin and AMD’s Lisa Su received the National Medal of Science. Dell founder Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Newsweek reported that five of the six were born outside the United States. AP lists Musk’s birthplace as South Africa, Brin’s as Russia, Huang’s and Su’s as Taiwan and Nadella’s as India. Dell, who was born in Texas, is the only one born in the U.S.
What else happened that day
Before the ceremony, Vice President JD Vance announced that Microsoft was being suspended from a program that lets companies seek green cards for skilled H-1B workers, AP reports. AP says Vance said Microsoft cut 6,000 U.S. workers last year but obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. Microsoft said most of its filings were to extend or change the status of workers it already employs.
Our take: the medal is usually a research honor, and this year’s group was mostly business leaders, so the context matters as much as the headline. The visa news the same day is a separate story, and the reports we read do not tie the Microsoft action to Musk. None of them quote Musk speaking at the ceremony either, so we do not know what he made of it. What to watch is whether future awards go back to working scientists.
