Morris Fraenkel Scharff

Morris “Moe” Fraenkel Scharff, an American physicist perhaps best known for his work on Project Orion, died in La Jolla, California, on 22 November 2017.

Moe was born in New Orleans on 11 January 1929. He graduated from Tulane University in 1948 with a BS in mathematics. After leaving Tulane, Moe attended the University of Chicago, graduating in 1953 with a PhD in physics. While at Chicago, Moe studied under Nobel laureates Maria Goeppert Mayer and Enrico Fermi. Mayer was also Moe’s doctoral dissertation advisor, with whom he continued to associate professionally over the next decade.

Upon finishing his graduate studies, Moe married Janice “Jan” Schultz, and the couple moved to the San Francisco area, where their two children were born. Moe took a position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked under the direction of Edward Teller and Herb York.

In 1960 the family moved to La Jolla, where Moe began work at General Atomic and headed a group within Project Orion. The project, started by a small group of scientists in 1957 and supported by the US government, envisioned a 4000-ton nuclear-propelled spaceship capable of missions to Mars and Saturn, carrying payloads of 1000 tons and cruising at 20 km/s. Moe was the project’s expert on ablation and anti-ablation. Ablation is the technology developed to use a pusher plate to direct the energy of exploding nuclear bombs for propelling a rocket ship through space. Project Orion sought to utilize the power of nuclear bombs to explore our galaxy, rather than employing them for destructive purposes. Moe’s work during this period is referenced in George Dyson’s book Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship.

Following his work on Project Orion, Moe formed a company called S-Cubed (Systems, Science and Software), a leading firm in its field for multiple decades, and was its first CEO. Moe later became a vice president at Science Applications International Corporation, where he led and participated in a vast range of applied science initiatives for over 25 years, ranging from alternative energy development (solar, nuclear, geothermal, wind, hydro, etc.) to national security protection to modeling the human genome.

Although Moe’s career was in the realm of physics, his interests were broad and varied. They ran the gamut and included romantic poetry, chamber music, New Oreleans jazz, modern art, Hindu and Greek mythologies, theater, travel, yoga, birds, and gardening.

Moe is predeceased by his wife, Jan, who died in 2015. He is survived by daughter Gillian, son Eric, and grandson Kiril.