>PHILIP MORRISON, 1915-2005
>
>Philip Morrison, the physicist, Manhattan Project veteran, arms
>control activist and science educator, died over the weekend.
>
>Like few others, Morrison's life embodied the travails of the nuclear
>age and pointed beyond it. He personally assembled the first atomic
>bomb and was among the first Americans to visit Hiroshima and
>Nagasaki. He went on to become a leading critic of nuclear weapons
>policy.
>
>Having been a member of the Communist Party from 1936 to 1942, he was
>also an object of suspicion and hostility that made his professional
>life at Cornell University precarious throughout the 1950s. In 1953,
>he was summoned to testify before the Senate Internal Security
>Subcommittee, where he took the "diminished Fifth," i.e., he spoke
>willingly about his own beliefs and opinions, not taking the Fifth
>Amendment, but he declined to discuss the views of others. Life
>Magazine published his picture in an article on America's fifty
>leading "Dupes and Fellow Travelers." (cf. Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory
>Tower, p. 151; Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety,
>p. 274).
>
>As one of the original atomic scientists, Morrison helped establish
>the Federation of American Scientists in 1945 and was its chairman
>from 1973 to 1976. Shortly before his death, he had agreed to
>prepare an FAS obituary for his friend and colleague Hans Bethe, but
>sadly did not complete it.
>
>Aside from his own considerable scientific achievements, Morrison was
>perhaps best known to the public as a science educator. His prolific
>writings for Scientific American and other outlets helped teach
>generations of readers to observe and to think.
>
>See "Philip Morrison, 89, Builder of First Atom Bomb, Dies" by Dennis
>Overbye, New York Times, April 26:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/science/26morrison.html
>
>Morrison described the bombing of Hiroshima and anticipated the
>effects of a future nuclear strike in a 1946 article entitled "If the
>Bomb Gets Out of Hand" from the FAS bestseller of the time "One World
>or None." It may be found here:
>
> http://www.fas.org/oneworld/morrison.pdf
>
>