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Title: In at the Beginnings: A Physicist's Life by Philip McCord Morse ISBN: 0-262-13124-2 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 15 December, 1976 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $52.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: fascinating story of a professional life
Comment: Morse is a fairly well-known mathematical physicist (that is, he was famous enough to be known outside his field), and this is his autobiography. I'm reviewing it from memory, since I read it when it first came out in the 70's, but it made an impression on me. He's literate, and comes across as very straightforward (although perhaps he just maintains this pose for the duration of the book -- I never met him), and he was involved in many fascinating areas.

In addition to his work in physics (among other things, he was the primary or sole author of a some standard graduate level textbooks), he was one of the "inventors" of operations research while working for the Navy during WWII. The story of the atomic bomb research is pretty well documented, and the story of the development of radar can be read in more than one place, but this is the only account I've seen of "the rest" of the vast amount of R&D work that was funded by the War Department during WWII.

Among the interesting anecdotes he relates, he was one of Feynmann's teachers in college, and Feynmann's father came to ask him (Morse) if his son (Richard) should go to grad school in physics. Morse was perceptive enough to assure the father that his son had what it took...

If you are interested in personalized accounts of the history 20th century science, this book is for you. It's similar in scope to Ulam's book about the atom bomb, but much better written, and the author comes across as quite human (which often doesn't happen in autobiographies of scientists).