Philip McCord Morse | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1903-08-06)August 6, 1903 Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | September 5, 1985(1985-09-05) (aged 82) Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education | Case School of Engineering (BS) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Known for | Morse potential Rosen–Morse potential |
| Awards | ASA Gold Medal(1973) Frederick W. Lanchester Prize(1968) Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship(1947) Medal for Merit(1946) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Cambridge University MIT |
| Thesis | A Theory of the Electric Discharge through Gases (1929) |
| Doctoral advisor | Karl Taylor Compton |
| Doctoral students | Charles Draper Ronald A. Howard John Little Leonard Schiff |
Philip McCord Morse (August 6, 1903 – 5 September 1985), was an American physicist, administrator and pioneer ofoperations research (OR) inWorld War II.[1] He is considered to be the father of operations research in the U.S.
Morse graduated from theCase School of Applied Science in 1926 with a B.S. in physics.[2] He earned his Ph.D. in physics fromPrinceton University in 1929.[3] In 1930, he was granted an International Fellowship, which he used to do postgraduate study and research at theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich underArnold Sommerfeld during the winter of 1930 to the spring of 1931.
From the spring through the summer of 1931, he was atCambridge University. Upon return to the United States, he joined the faculty ofMIT.[4][5]
In 1949 he was named the first research director of theWeapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), an organization founded to conduct studies for theJoint Chiefs of Staff, where he served a year and a half before returning to MIT in the summer of 1950. In 1956 he launchedMIT’s operations research center, directing it until 1968, and awarding the first Ph.D. in operations research in the U.S. toJohn Little.
He was a member of aNational Research Council committee dedicated to bringing OR into civilian life, and was a prime mover behind the creation of theOperations Research Society of America (ORSA) in 1952. He served as president of theAmerican Physical Society, president of theAcoustical Society of America (ASA), and board chair of theAmerican Institute of Physics.
In 1946, he was a recipient of theMedal for Merit from theU.S. President for his work during the war. In 1973 the ASA awarded him theGold Medal, its highest award, for his work onvibration.
Philip Morse made many contributions to the development of operations research (OR). Early in 1942 he organized theAnti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG), later ORG, for theU.S. Navy, after the US had entered World War II and was faced with the problem ofNazi GermanU-boat attacks ontransatlantic shipping. "That Morse’s group was an important factor in winning the war is fairly obvious to everyone who knows anything about the inside of the war," wrote historian John Burchard.[6]
Philip Morse co-authoredMethods of Operations Research, the first OR textbook in the U.S., withGeorge E. Kimball based on the Navy work. His further writings include the influential booksQueues, Inventories, and Maintenance andLibrary Effectiveness. He received ORSA's Lanchester Prize in 1968 for the latter book.
Philip Morse gave the opening address at the 1957 organizing meeting of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). In 1959 he chaired the firstNATO advisory panel on OR.
Philip Morse had a distinguished career inphysics. Amongst his contributions to physics are the textbooksQuantum Mechanics (withEdward Condon),Methods of Theoretical Physics (withHerman Feshbach),Vibration and Sound,Theoretical Acoustics, andThermal Physics. Morse is also one of the founding editors ofAnnals of Physics.[7] In 1929 he proposed theMorse potential function for diatomic molecules which was often used to interpret vibrational spectra, though the standard is now the more modernMorse/Long-range potential.
His administrative talents were applied in roles as co-founder of the MIT Acoustics Laboratory, first director of theBrookhaven National Laboratory, founder and first director of the MIT Computation Center, and board member of theRAND Corporation and theInstitute for Defense Analyses.
He chaired the advisory committee that supervised preparation ofHandbook of Mathematical Functions, with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables, commonly known asAbramowitz and Stegun.
Phil published four paper on electron discharges in gases, now known as plasma physics. Compton decided to accept one of Phil's papers as his dissertation (Morse 1928): "A theory of the electric discharge through gases." He received his Ph.D. in 1929.
