Philip Morrison

For other persons named Philip Morrison, see Phil Morrison (disambiguation).

Philip Morrison
Born	(1915-11-07)November 7, 1915 Somerville, New Jersey
Died	April 22, 2005(2005-04-22) (aged 89) Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Carnegie Tech Berkeley
Known for	SETI, science education American Physical Society National Academy of Sciences American Astronomical Society International Astronomical Union American Academy of Arts and Sciences American Philosophical Society American Association of Physics Teachers
Spouse	Phylis
Awards	Babson Prize of the Gravity Foundation Westinghouse Science Writing Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers Priestley Medallion of Dickinson College Presidential Award of the New York Academy of Sciences (1980) Public Service Medal of the Minnesota Museum of Science Andrew Gemant Award of the American Institute of Physics Wheeler Prize (with Phylis Morrison) of the Boston Museum of Science
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	San Francisco State University Illinois Manhattan Project Cornell MIT
Doctoral advisor	J. Robert Oppenheimer

Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Early life and education

Philip Morrison was born in Somerville, New Jersey, November 7, 1915, the only son of Moses Morrison and Tillie Rosenbloom.

{{sfn|Sartori|

grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from its public schools.  He earned his B.S. in 1936 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and in 1940 he earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Manhattan Project

In 1942 he joined the Manhattan Project as group leader and physicist at the laboratories of the University of Chicago and Los Alamos. He was also an eyewitness to the Trinity test, and helped to transport its plutonium core to the test site. In 1999, writer Jeremy Stone alleged that Morrison had been the Soviet spy Perseus (spy), a charge that Morrison strongly and credibly rebutted.

Nuclear nonproliferation

After surveying the destruction left by the use of the atom bomb in Hiroshima, Morrison became a champion of nuclear nonproliferation. He helped found the Federation of American Scientists, wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and helped to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. He was also a vocal critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Academic work

Morrison joined the physics faculty at Cornell University in 1946 and would move on to MIT in 1964. In 1959, Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi published a paper proposing the potential of microwaves in the search for interstellar communications, a component of the modern SETI program.

Media work

Morrison was also known for his numerous books and television programs. He was supposedly involved with a 1964 BBC-1 television program called 'The Fabric of the Atom'. He also provided the narration and script for Powers of Ten (1977). With his wife, Phylis, they turned the same material into a coffee table book in 1982. In 1987, PBS aired his six part miniseries, The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know, which he also hosted. In addition, he was a reviewer of books on science for Scientific American starting in 1965. He also appeared in the science documentary film Target...Earth? (1980).

Professional societies

Morrison was a fellow of the American Physical Society and chairman of the Federation of American Scientists from 1973 to 1976. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the International Astronomical Union, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Awards

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific gave him the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 1992.

Lectures

• In 1968 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on Gulliver's Laws: The Physics of Large and Small.
• Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Selected works

• Morrison, Philip, Tsipis]] and Jerome Wiesner (February 1994). "The Future of American Defense". Scientific American. 270 (2): 20–27. Bibcode:1994SciAm.270...20P. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0194-20.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

references

• Sartori, Leo; Tsipis, Losta (2009). Philip Morrison 1915–2005 (PDF). Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved February 8, 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)