A Partial Summary of Phil Morrison’s Trip on Earth

by Bert Singer (bertsinger@aol.com)

Somerville, NJ: born November 7, 1915, to Tilly Rosenbloom Morrison and Moses Morrison. Moses owned a clothing shop.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: age two moved to the neighborhood of the Rosenbloom family.

At about four years old contracted Polio and became what he described as a voracious learner.

New York City: his first major memory was of being pushed around the American Museum of Natural History in a stroller by his farther seeing the great blue whale and giant octopus hanging from the ceilings.

Pittsburgh: started building radios at a very early age in conjunction with the beginning of the Radio Age. He attended public school and then went on to study physics at Carnegie Tech, graduating in 1936.

Berkeley, California: graduate degree from UC Berkeley in physics and also organized fellow graduate assistants, facilitating a pay raise.

One weekend, while at Berkeley, he took the ferry to Sausalito and then climbed the hill to the north end of the construction sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. From there he walked out to the end of the unfinished bridge.

San Francisco, California: first teaching job with San Francisco State College which lasted for two years. His earlier political activities had made getting a job difficult.

Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Urbana, physics teacher.

Chicago, Illinois: 1942, University of Chicago where his participation in the Manhattan project began.

Los Alamos, New Mexico: worked on the team that made the detonators for plutonium bombs.

Washington, DC: made frequent trips to the OSS to interpret intelligence coming back from Europe for signs of advancements in nuclear fission.

Alamogordo, New Mexico: 1945, one of the most written about trips of his life was escorting the core of the test bomb detonator to its White Sands site.

Tinian Island, in the Northern Marianas: carried the core of the bomb used in Nagasaki in the airplane seat next to him and installed it in the bomb.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan: was among the first Western scientists to witness the shocking devastation caused by the bombs.

Ithaca, New York: 1946, taught high energy physics at Cornell University.

North America: starting in 1946, traveled to speak about the dangers of nuclear proliferation at hundreds of forums large and small.

Washington, DC: 1948, helped found the Federation of American Scientists.

Washington, DC, 1953, called before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee.

On his first sabbatical, he traveled around the globe in an easterly direction. This trip included his first of many visits to India.

Ithaca, New York: 1946, began his writing career for the popular media, including what would become significant contributions to Scientific American.

Ithaca, New York: 1959, co-wrote a paper suggesting our earth was not unique in the universe and that it would be interesting to use radio telescopes to listen for other intelligent life, rather then wait for them to visit us.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: late 1950’s, traveled to Cambridge to help write a new high school physics text book with the Physical Science Study Committee.

MIT: 1964, joined faculty, retired in 1985, retired in 1995, continued working with students as a Professor Emeritus until he died in 2005.

West and East Africa: 1964-1967, participated at all levels to develop elementary science education. Later this included South Africa.

London, England: culminating in 1968, wrote and stared in a number of television programs about understanding science, which grew into his collaborations with Nova.

Grand Canyon, Arizona: seven days in 1974, rafted down the Colorado River.

Washington, DC: 1976, NASA appointed Phil chairman of a panel investigating the feasibility of a sustained search for interstellar messages .

Venice, California: 1983, co-wrote a book and movie about a trip where the viewer travels from inside an atom to galactic space in 26 Powers of Ten.

Central Square, Cambridge; Greenwich, UK; France; Italy; Midwestern USA; Monticello, Virginia (to name just a few places): mid 1980’s, created and hosted the television series The Ring of Truth.

Grinnell, Iowa; Durham, North Carolina; Carleton, Minnesota; Fort Hare, South Africa (to name a few more places): 1990’s, spent extended time on the campus of a number of smaller colleges teaching science.

Washington, DC: December 2000, last of innumerable trips to Washington. Received the National Science Board’s annual public service award for communicating science and enhancing the public's understanding of it, and for educating, encouraging and influencing a new generation of scientists.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2000-2005 the world traveled to visit Phil.


Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 10, 2005 Think for a moment about where in the world he inspired you to go.