Philip M. Morse

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Philip McCord Morse (born August 6, 1903 in Shreveport , Louisiana , † September 5, 1985 in Concord , Massachusetts ) was an American theoretical physicist, science organizer and pioneer of operations research .

life and work

Morse grew up in Lakewood in Ohio and Cleveland (Ohio) and studied at the Case School of Applied Science (Bachelor 1926), a. a. at Dayton C. Miller . As a teenager, he and two friends ran a radio shop that he later used to finance his studies. He wrote his thesis on astrophysics with the topic of star motion, published in the Astrophysical Journal . He then moved to Princeton University under Edward Condon and Karl Taylor Compton , where he received his doctorate in 1929 and was then a lecturer. While still a student, he wrote a quantum mechanics textbook with Condon, for which he received the Jakobus Fellowship . In 1930 he met Enrico Fermi and Paul Ehrenfest at the University of Michigan , who were visiting professors. In 1930/1 he studied with Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich with a Rockefeller scholarship (there were also Linus Pauling and William Lawrence Bragg ) and then in summer 1931 at the University of Cambridge with Nevill F. Mott , HSW Massey and Julius Stratton . Back in the United States, he joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an assistant professor. During the Second World War he was briefly at the MIT Radiation Laboratory " MIT Radiation Laboratory ", but then organized the military research under Compton ( National Research Council , NRC). Meanwhile, he set up acoustics laboratories at Harvard University : under Beranek an electro-acoustic laboratory, one for psycho-acoustics under S.Stevens, which improved communication between military vehicles. In 1942 he invented a device to protect escort destroyers from German acoustic mines, in which a source of noise was dragged behind the ships. In 1946 Morse received the United States Medal of Merit for his work in World War II, and in 1973 the ASA Gold Medal. He also organized the Anti Submarine Operations Research Group "Anti- Submarine Operation Research Group " (ASWORG, later ORG) of the US Navy. He also founded the Acoustic Laboratory and Computation Center at MIT and was the first director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1946 to 1948 . In 1949 he was the first research director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group " Weapons System Evaluation Group " (WSEG) of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, before returning to MIT in 1950. He was also President of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the American Physical Society (APS) in 1950/1 . In 1952 he founded the Operations Research Society of America "American Operations Research Society " (ORSA), in 1956 the Operations Research Center "Operations Research Center " at MIT, of which he was director until 1968. In 1969 he retired.

Morse introduced the Morse potential named after him into quantum mechanics , which has applications in molecules . He also dealt with mathematical physics and theoretical acoustics . He wrote the first US textbook on operations research “Operationsforschung” and, together with Herman Feshbach, a comprehensive two-volume manual on methods of mathematical physics using the classic analytical methods of the Sommerfeld School. He was also a member of the governing committees of RAND Corporation and the Institute for Defense Analyzes . Morse was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1934) and, since 1955, of the National Academy of Sciences .

Prizes and awards

Fonts

  • with George E. Kimball Methods of Operations Research 1945, 3rd edition, New York, Technology Press 1951
  • with Edward Condon Quantum Mechanics , McGraw Hill, 1929, reprinted around 1965
  • with Herman Feshbach Methods of Theoretical Physics , 2 volumes, McGraw Hill 1953
  • Vibration and Sound , McGraw Hill 1936, 2nd edition 1948, 3rd edition, Acoustical Society of America 1986
  • Theoretical Acoustics , McGraw Hill 1968, Princeton University Press 1986
  • with Uno Ingard Linear Acoustic Theory , Handbuch der Physik, Springer 1961 (S. Flügge editor)
  • Thermal Physics , 1964, 2nd edition, Benjamin 1969
  • In at the Beginnings: A Physicist's Life , MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977.
  • Queues, Inventories, and Maintenance: the analysis of operational systems with variable demand and supply , New York, Wiley 1958
  • Library Effectiveness: a systems approach , MIT Press 1968

literature

  • Feshbach, Ingard (Editor): In honor of Philip M. Morse, MIT Press 1969.
  • John DC Little (2002): Philip M. Morse and the Beginnings . Operations Research 50 (1): 146-148. doi : 10.1287 / opre.50.1.146.17799 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frederick W. Lanchester Prize. informs.org ( Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences ), accessed October 31, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Morse, Philip M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morse, Philip McCord (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Shreveport , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 1985
Place of death Concord , Massachusetts