BostonGlobe: Last of the outspoken scientists (Physicist Philip Morrison)

[Dudley_DUright]

SOME DEATHS mark the end of an era, as with the passing of kings, presidents, and certain beloved pop stars, but seldom do they signal the end of a particular species, the last of their kind.

With the passing of Philip Morrison last Friday, however, so close on the heels of Hans Bethe and Robert Bacher, science has lost the last of the brilliant atomic pioneers who developed the first nuclear bomb, felt the blast of the terrifying test explosion at Trinity, and bore witness to the moral upheaval and unprecedented threat posed by the fiery display of force on that gray New Mexico morning on July 16, 1945.

Forged in the heat of that indelible explosion and the horrifying destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month later, Morrison, like many of his Los Alamos colleagues, became a leading advocate of international arms control and a vigorous critic of the political and military leaders he had faithfully served.

He belonged to a generation of outspoken citizen scientists who came of age before the nuclear transformation of warfare, the repressive politics of the Cold War, and the reliance of university research laboratories on military funding. The chastening example of Los Alamos's controversial director, J. Robert Oppenheimer -- who was investigated by the FBI for more than a decade before his opposition to the hydrogen bomb led to a humiliating hearing and his security clearance being revoked -- has stood for five decades as a lesson to scientists to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Today it would be regarded as foolhardy for any ambitious young physicist to be an outspoken critic of US nuclear policy. Not surprisingly, few dissenting voices are heard.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/28/last_of_the_outspoken_scientists?mode=PF

[phantom power]

1. It worries me that people will forget the danger.

I'm about the last generation that will remember living in fear under the cold war, who saw "The Day After" and didn't sleep that night.

The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all but gone.

If Iraq proved anything, it's that people forget history very quickly.