Posted on 04/27/2005 1:21:31 AM PDT by LibWhacker
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Philip Morrison, one of the inventors of the atomic bomb and an early leader in the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, has died. He was 89.
Morrison, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died in his sleep at his home Friday, the university announced Monday.
"Phil was a great physicist," said Marc Kastner, chairman of the physics department at MIT. "He was spectacular at explaining physics to the public, too."
Morrison was the host of "The Ring of Truth," a six-part series aired by PBS, and a book review editor for the magazine Scientific American.
Morrison was a group leader during the Manhattan Project, which launched the age of nuclear weapons, and was present for the detonation of the first atomic bomb on July 14, 1945 in New Mexico.
"We knew we had done something remarkable and terrifying," he later said of that day.
Morrison also helped assemble the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and was part of a scientific team sent to assess bomb damage after Japan's surrender ended World War II.
The damage that he saw from conventional and atomic bombs convinced him of the need for arms control.
Morrison's views on disarmament led to accusations that he was a communist sympathizer, and he was called to testify before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1953.
During the 1950s, Morrison began to concentrate on theoretical astrophysics. In 1959 he and Guiseppe Cocconi proposed a "discriminating search" for radio signals emanating from extraterrestrial beings.
Morrison was born in Somerville, N.J., on Nov. 7, 1915. He was stricken with polio, a development that led him to start tinkering with machinery. He was building radios by age 5.
He is survived by a stepson, Bert Singer, of Cambridge.
I wish I were an editor at the AP. I'd hire you! :-)
IMHO this was one of the most fascinating and engaging science shows ever shown on television. Morrison obviously enjoyed having an opportunity to perform fun experiments like weighing a period or burning up a large diamond. For some reason I was just thinking about this show a couple of days ago though I had no idea Morrison had just died.
It was a very good series. Remember in one piece he had Julia Child (his neighbor) participate to show physics in the kitchen. Hope they rerun the series in honor of him.
Far more informative that the pablum Alan Alda does which is totally PC.
I never saw the series you cite, but I really enjoyed "Connections". I forget the name of the guy that hosted it, but I must admit much of my thinking is shaped by what I perceive as (a) connection(s).
James Burke. There's a companion book to the series that is quite worth the read. It is coffee table book science, and he makes qutie a few leaps of faith to make the connections, but if you take it as having lots of interesting facts and ignore his "connections" it's worth reading.
I read a science fiction novel quite a few years ago (sorry, can't recall the name) where the main characters are soldiers stranded on a world that is stuck somwhere in the Middle Ages. At one point the leader of the band wishes he had one book...'Connections'.
I see the sense of it, but Connections is a lightweight book for that. I would prefer some of those special forces manuals on how to turn horse poop into an explosive ;)
Or was that pigs...?
The title of this article is misleading, and the text doesn't help much. But that's exactly what I would expect from AP and Yahoo.
The Manhattan Project was a team effort involving over 100,000 people from the military, industry, and academia. Morrison was involved with the testing, which was certainly important, but it was the rest of the project which gave him something to test.
For those interested in further reading, two sites come to mind:
http://www.atomicheritage.org/
http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/index.htm
First thing I look for upon not seeing the missing words in an article, where did this come from? With almost 100% accuracy, invariably, it is an AP article.
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