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Philip Morrison—a profile

AUG 01, 1982
Valued for his scientific contributions to the Manhattan Project, to theoretical physics and to astrophysics, he has also contributed to the public understanding of science and has been one of the most thoughtful advocates of arms control.
Anne Eisenberg

When Philip Morrison, Institute Professor at MIT, came to the Polytechnic Institute of New York recently to give the Sigma Xi lecture, a diverse group attended. The group included physicists, chemists, engineers; people who admired Morrison for his sustained fight against red‐baiting in the 1950s (in 1953 a national newsletter called him “the man with one of the most incriminating pro‐Communist records in the entire academic world”); and people in the humanities who had enjoyed his book reviews, films, articles and textbooks. The diversity of the audience reflected the diversity of Morrison’s career.

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References

  1. 1. A. K. Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America, 1945–47, U. of Chicago P., Chicago (1965).

  2. 2. F. Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, Harper & Row, New York (1979).

  3. 3. D. Lang, From Hiroshima to the Moon: Chronicles of Life in the Atomic Age, Simon & Schuster, New York (1959).

  4. 4. P. Morrison, Scientific American 213, September 1965, page 257.

  5. 5. “Counterattack: Facts to Combat Communism,” 6 March 1953, American Business Consultants, Inc., 55 West 42 Street, New York.

  6. 6. C. R. Darwin, Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882, Norton, New York (1969).

More about the authors

Anne Eisenberg, Polytechnic Institute of New York, Brooklyn.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 35, Number 8

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