A news article in Nature reports that “…after a string of staff departures, physicists claim that the once iconic Bell Laboratories has finally pulled out of basic science.”
This is sad.
In rebuttle, “…officials at Alcatel-Lucent, Bell's parent company, say that reports of the lab's death are greatly exaggerated. Fundamental science remains, but it has moved away from physics, says Gee Rittenhouse, vice-president of research at Bell Labs. ‘We've shifted the fundamental research over to include mathematics, computer science, networking and wireless,’ he says.”