May 9, 2005

Tales From The Crib

Death of a scientist

Phil Morrison died last week.

He was 89.

My mother called to tell me. It was 8 a.m., and I was rushing to get my daughters ready for school. “I can’t talk now,” I apologized as soon as I heard her voice, so she had to blurt it out in a hurry. I stopped what I was doing and sat down, feeling sad about Phil and suddenly sorry that I was so caught up in the mundane that I didn’t even pause to let my mother speak. Phil Morrison was a preeminent physicist, famous for being the youngest scientist to work on the Manhattan Project. He was also a good friend of the family. His wife, Phylis, was my brother Zach’s godmother, which, in my mind growing up, made Phil my godfather.

Jennifer Margulis

As a young adult, I went to visit the Morrisons in their book-lined apartment in Cambridge. Phylis wore Indian anklettes that tinkled when she walked. Phil, a polio survivor, was confined to a wheelchair even then. He and Phylis were so connected to each other that one would begin speaking where the other left off.

“Leave them,” Phyllis said when I tried to do the dishes. “We always do them in the morning. Any other way is bad for the digestion.” So instead we sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch and looked at books of West African sculpture. Phil squinted at his reading, looking up now and then to share an interesting fact of science with us. Our conversation turned to Apollo 13 and he laughed when I asked him if he had thought at the time that the damaged spacecraft would crash on reentry.

“I knew with absolute certainty it would not,” he said. “I did the calculations. They came into the atmosphere at exactly the right angle. There was nothing whatsoever to worry about.”

In my 20s, I found his confidence fascinating and wished I could understand physics well enough to feel that sure about anything. Phil was used to keeping impressive company and I was rather awed by both his presence of mind and his past. He told me how, when he was a student at Carnegie Tech, he and his friends sneaked up into the rafters to listen to a sold-out no-undergraduates-allowed lecture by Albert Einstein (and how he and Einstein later had lunch together), how he studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer, compared notes with Niels Bohr, and worked with Enrico Fermi.

During the war, Phil conducted some of the fundamental experiments on uranium to create the atom bomb and spent the rest of his life lamenting the killing power of these weapons, and speaking out against war. In part because of that, he formed the Boston Study Group, a group of scientists and professionals committed to averting nuclear war and reducing military spending. They co-authored a book called “The Price of Defense,” which the editor of “The Nation” liked so much he helped turn it into a bestseller by sending a copy with every new gift subscription to his magazine. Phil also hosted a television series called “Ring of Truth” and for years people would stop him in airports and say, “you’re the guy who burned up all those doughnuts,” referring to one episode where he was illustrating the concept of calories.

But my favorite story of Phil’s was about Halloween. He and Phylis reviewed books for “Scientific American” for 30 years and hundreds of review copies would come to their house. On Halloween each year instead of passing out candy, Phil would give all the kids in the neighborhood the book of their choice. Many of the children would come to their house last, so they could take their time deciding which book they wanted. Phil’s eyes sparkled as he remembered the delight on their faces.

Phil was so passionate about knowledge, and about sharing it with others, that his fascination with the world was contagious. Although his achievements were far reaching and his commitment to the bettering of the world and the pursuit of science unwavering, Phil never had any children. Yet he and Phylis left such a strong mark on me that I want to claim a little part of each of them as my own. My daughters were late for school. I hugged them more tightly than usual before saying goodbye.

Jennifer Margulis grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. from U.C. Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from Emory. The mother of three, she is the editor of “Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love” (Seal Press).