Morse, Philip M. (Philip McCord), 1903-1985

Morse died in 1985.

Philip McCord Morse was born August 6, 1903, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His parents, Allen Crafts Morse, a telephone engineer, and Edith McCord Morse, soon moved to Cleveland where he grew up. In 1921 Philip Morse started attending Case Institute, but he took the following year off to work in the Radiolectric Shop that he owned with friends. Upon his return to Case he began studying physics with Professor Dayton C. Miller and received his B.S. degree in 1926. That fall Morse went to Princeton University with the help of a scholarship. There, his gas discharge research with Karl Taylor Compton formed the basis for his thesis, "A Theory of the Electric Discharge through Gases." He spent the summer of 1928 at the University of Michigan as a research associate for an industrial research project on electric gas discharge.

In his final year at Princeton Philip Morse received the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, which is given to the graduate student with the highest standing. During this year he worked with Edward U. Condon to produce the book Quantum Mechanics . In April of 1929 he married Annabelle Hopkins and received his Ph.D. in physics two months later. That summer he worked for Bell Laboratories under the guidance of C. J. Davisson.

Philip Morse was an instructor at Princeton for the 1929 academic year, and the following summer he returned to the University of Michigan, this time as a special lecturer in quantum mechanics. He spent the next year on a Rockefeller Fellowship studying with Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, Germany, and with N. F. Mott and W. S. Massey in Cambridge, England.

At the behest of the new president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Karl T. Compton, Philip Morse joined the physics department as an associate professor in 1931. His research concentrated on acoustics and on astrophysics. His work on the theory of sound absorption resulted in his 1936 book, Vibration and Sound .

Contacts with colleagues at the Harvard Observatory led to the formulation of calculations on the opacities of stellar interiors. Arnold Lowan's WPA work at Columbia on the construction of mathematical tables also interested Morse. He participated in the various mathematical tables projects carried on by the National Bureau of Standards and other federal programs throughout his career. Beginning in 1933, Morse became the graduate registration officer for the physics department, and he continued in this guidance role until 1965 whenever he was at MIT. He was promoted to associate professor in 1934 and professor in 1938.

In response to the growing threat of war, scientists began to change the focus of their research, and Philip Morse was no exception. His association with the Radiation Laboratory housed on the MIT campus started in 1941. There, he identified the similarities of certain ideas used in acoustics to microwaves. At Harvard he served as chairman of a National Research Council project that studied ways to reduce the noise and vibrations made by fighter and bomber planes. During this time he also worked on a National Defense Research Council (NDRC) project for the U.S. Navy, studying methods of countering the new acoustic mines that the Germans were using. In 1942 Morse went to Washington, D.C. to organize and direct a civilian task force to evaluate the United States antisubmarine program. While directly connected with the Navy, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) was funded by the NDRC. The group not only evaluated data, but also visited Navy bases to make direct observations. Before disbanding, the group wrote a report about their efforts, Methods of Operation Research, which was declassified and widely used after 1950. For his war work Philip Morse received the U.S. Medal of Merit.

In 1945 Morse returned to MIT and helped to establish the Acoustics Laboratory with Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek. Morse's return was shortlived, however. The Associated Universities Inc. wanted to start a civilian nuclear research laboratory in connection with the Atomic Energy Commission. In July 1946 he became the scientific director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. At this time he was also an active member in the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (the Einstein committee) which sought to educate the public about atomic power.

By 1948 Brookhaven was a firmly established facility and Philip Morse returned briefly to MIT. His assistance was again sought for public service. He went to Washington to organize an operations research team for the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The result was the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), and he served as deputy director and director of research until 1950. The WSEG's civilian unit became the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in 1956, and he served on their Board of Trustees. A similar group, RAND, was established to advise the Air Force in 1948, and he was on their Board of Trustees until 1962.

Finally, in 1950 Philip Morse returned to MIT for a longer stay, although his public service activities never ceased. His interest in the new discipline of operations research continued at MIT. He was instrumental in promoting wide acceptance of operations research for non-military uses. By 1952 the Institute offered summer courses in operations research and the Operations Research Center became an official interdepartmental facility in 1956. Morse served as director from 1956 until 1969.

Philip Morse initiated another interdisciplinary program at MIT in an effort to introduce students and professors to the uses of computers in research. The Committee on Machine Methods of Computation began in 1952 with him as chairman. This committee supervised research assistantships that were given to graduate students using computers. In 1955 Morse convinced IBM to fund a computer installed in a building that was partially paid for by IBM. Part of the agreement allowed other New England schools to use the facility. This arrangement eventually became the New England Regional Computing Program (NERComp). By 1957, the Computation Center was dedicated at MIT with Philip Morse as director, a position he held until 1967. The Center received funds from NSF and the Rockefeller Foundation to supplement its costs. After several expansions, timesharing was introduced in the 1960s.

Philip Morse remained active outside of MIT as well. He helped to organize the first International Operations Research Conference in 1957. The International Federation of Operations Research Societies originated at this conference. International interest in operations research led to a 1959 NATO conference where the Advisory Panel on Operations Research (APOR) began with Morse as chairman. The panel, in association with the United States Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development, started training programs, organized conferences, and sponsored visiting consultants to NATO countries. Another APOR was started by Morse in 1964 for the Organization for Educational and Cultural Development. This panel emphasized that operations research could be used for many problems that were not military or industrial. Other international operations research projects that Morse was associated with include lecture tours in Japan, India, Israel, and Taiwan sponsored by the Ford Foundation and in Australia sponsored by the Fulbright Foundation, as well as a fact-finding trip to Nigeria and Tunisia that was associated with the International Relations Committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Philip Morse's endeavors helped to prove the myriad applications of operations research. His study of the MIT Libraries was one of the first of its kind. Other studies helped him to develop some of his queuing theories.

Philip Morse became an emeritus professor at MIT in 1969. He died in 1985.