The quest to produce a Bose–Einstein condensate in the laboratory was stimulated by a paper published in 1976 by two program directors at the National Science Foundation (William Stwalley and Lewis Nosanow). This led to the immediate pursuit of the idea by four independent research groups; these were led by Isaac Silvera (University of Amsterdam), Walter Hardy (University of British Columbia), Thomas Greytak (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and David Lee (Cornell University).