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3 NOVEMBER 1916 * 31 AUGUST 2000
JOHN SIMPSON was an experimental physicist whose broad view of science, education, and the politics of nuclear energy played a significant role in those activities throughout the second half of the twentieth century. He worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and was a founding member and the first chairman of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, formally established 7 August 1945, the day after the atomic (nuclear) bomb burst at Hiroshima. This activity led to his participation in setting up the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the same year, with its familiar doomsday clock on the cover to show the estimated risk of nuclear annihilation during the cold war at any given time. Over the years the articles published in the Bulletin tracked the military and political implications of the bomb, commenting on possible rational courses of action. It was widely read and served as a guiding light through the long years of darkness. Henry Luce was so impressed with the concept of the Bulletin that he provided the Atomic Scientists of Chicago with two full pages in the 25 October 1945 issue of Life magazine to expound a reasoned argument presenting their case.
Simpson joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1945 as an instructor in the physics department and immediately took leave of absence to work as an unofficial adviser to Senator Brian McMahon of Connecticut, an association leading to the McMahon Act of 1946, which placed nuclear energy in civilian hands, rather than leaving it as a military enterprise. The McMahon Act was a fundamental step in the history of governmental administration of nuclear energy.
Simpson was continually aware of the future implications of the activities of the present. His efforts concerning the handling of nuclear energy were a direct consequence of this world view, and the ongoing success of his scientific work reflected it. He was a booster of his students and his colleagues and of the University of Chicago, and he would urge people to think about what they wanted to be doing ten years in the future in order to lay plans for getting there. He brought the present writer and others to Chicago and nurtured them...