In an essay titled “The end of artefacts,” Nobel laureate and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow William D. Phillips details how scientists came to realize the original vision of the metric system, or the International System of Units (SI)—a system of units “for all times, for all people.” With the redefinition of the kilogram in 2019, the new SI was rightly celebrated as a unifying achievement toward the democratization of science, with NIST and its international partners having collectively led the charge.

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