Think your job is stressful? Try being the person in charge of time for the entire United States. With a single slip-up, you could cause the entire population’s cell phones, internet and major technology to completely go down. But don’t worry, time is in good hands. Specifically those of Judah Levine, who makes sure time keeps on ticking.
In 1969, Levine joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the government agency that handles the measurements and standards used all over the country. One of the most important of those things is time, something that Levine and his colleagues helped to perfect when he first joined. After developing a software and hardware system to accurately keep time, Levine became known as the “time lord.” In 1993, Judah created the Internet Time Service, which coordinates time on all computers, phones, televisions and anything else you can connect online.
Among the other projects he completes at NIST, Levine and his team make sure the atomic clocks are all working correctly and essentially keep time going the way we know it. When he’s not making sure time is going, he’s also a professor of physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
