Notes and Comments
DOI: 10.1063/1.3067140
To one working in the country’s weapons program, and rather used to having such efforts described as being degrading and immoral, it is a little new to have them called passé. For this novelty we have to thank Professor Morse, seasoned evaluator of the country’s weapons systems. Under the heading: Must We Always Be Gadgeteers? (Physics Today, Nov. 1950) Professor Morse has given a sort of prospectus for work in operational research. He justly argues a great need for work in that field, and explains how a physicist who does not particularly wish to stay very close to physics could be effective there. Unhappily, in the course of this argument he invents a class of characters: physicists “whose overwhelming desire is to make more gadgets”. He then points at his invention with scorn.
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More about the Authors
Carson Mark. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.
R. Smoluchowski. Carnegie Institute of Technology.
