Who was Philip McCord Morse (Case '26)? How did he help win WW2 and bring computing to MIT? Ronald Loui Ronald Loui Ronald Loui Published May 29, 2026 + Follow I've been pushing Morse's name for two years and keep learning more. Yes, the 100th anniversary of a graduate from Case (Case Institute of Tech) in 1926, which was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the university in 1826. You'd think people would make a bigger deal, but typical of an institution that likes to tone down the self-promotion, nobody said much even about the bicentennial. Even with all the accolades for Case and Cleveland raining down in 2026. Morse was even 2nd generation CIT and raised in Cleveland! Morse helped win WW2? Well, a lot of people did, but yes, he led the math for naval operations in the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-boats. Sounds specific. Yes, but people who understand how to win wars always talk logistics. I say heroes are made by generals who make mistakes. But generals who have good logistics don't tend to make as many mistakes. In any case, Navy, so admirals not generals. Research into naval operations became operations research. You might know that now as management science, decision and control, optimization, data-driven decision, data science, and what AI has become with its ubiquitous ML predictors. Not a bad intellectual haul. I was taught at Harvard that it was Dantzig who "won the war." That was old engineering profs engaged in self-congratulation. George Dantzig worked in PM Morse's shadow. "Won the war" is not the right way to say it, but yes, the anti-submarine warfare group is why England and Russia ate and stayed in the fight. Imagine someone in the EU figuring out how to keep enough drones in the sky over Ukraine and enough trucks passing through Poland. That's the contribution. That's not nothing. So he brings computing to MIT? That sounds good too. Yes, and more directly. He advocates for computing being accessible by scientists and engineers across the university as he rises in the campus power structure. He gets the money and politics and machine donations done so Project Whirlwind can be run. This is where Jay Forrester, who credits Morse explicitly, invents RAM. It's where you find delay-signal storage. It's where Corbato, who credits Morse explicitly, has the first multi-user multitasking time-sharing operating system, and invents things like the clock algorithm. This leads to Project MAC, MULTICS, UNIX, then linux. This is why John McCarthy has OS papers before PL before AI. Anyone else could have done it perhaps, but Morse did. It's why we celebrate JCR Licklider and Vannevar Bush. Today these are the vision guys who would be hogging all the press. Back then, they quietly did their work to enable good academic science. In my day, we would have sniffed that this was administration, not scholarship. Ah, but Morse was so much more. He wrote the first book on quantum mechanics. He was well versed in acoustics, getting Leo Bolt started (of BBN, which probably did the acoustics of your favorite auditorium; in fact, BBN fixed Walker-Weeks' Severance Hall just off Case's campus). Morse's legacy includes physicists on youtube talking about his Morse Potential equations, blissfully unaware of his legacy in OR, AI, and CS. If not for Morse, Stanford does not get engineering economics and systems science through Professor Ron Howard. If not for Morse, MIT does not get the Draper Lab. Yes, missile control. You may not like missiles, but you'd like it less if they were uncontrollable. If not for Morse, Lincoln Labs doesn't get LINC out of Wes Clark, which means WashU doesn't get a CS department founded by refugees from MIT. If not for Morse, CWRU doesn't get its first Econ Nobel, Ed Prescott, who did his Master's in OR at Case Biz School. As I said, this is not a bad haul. But he was also a polymath. And a humanist. He later wrote about cities and nations not exploiting their power. From a memoir at the National Academy of Sciences: He was a quick study. Characteristically discerning problems, his response was to find a pragmatic solution. There was much talk but in short order a practical plan was developed and implemented. In spite of his many endeavors, he found time for mountain climbing, for the theater, and for reading. He read on the average of five books a week, mostly in the fields of history, archeology, and biography. He was especially concerned for the human condition, as evidenced by his chairmanship of the American Physical Society's Panel on Public Affairs. Under his leadership, the panel not only sponsored important studies at the intersection of physics and public policy but also devoted considerable effort in behalf of physicists oppressed by totalitarian regimes. In his autobiography he wrote, "A corporation should not have the right to deplete irreplaceable mineral resources or to damage irreversibly our environment. A city should not be allowed to foster segregation and pollution by its tax and zoning laws. A country should not have the right to reduce another country to poverty and starvation just to increase temporarily its own citizen's standard of living—or merely their dream of omnipotence." Morse in 1977 saw the future need for international planning, a development which is today apparent in scientific, economic, and environmental arenas. What's really amazing is that Morse is not alone in this generation of great mathematical scientists. Here are some of the academic descendants of the founders of operations research. Kinda makes today's obsession with citation counting seem a bit shallow. Bridgman-Slater and Hill-Fowler (Hill won the Nobel in ... Medicine!) are terrific legacies too. PM MORSE -- CWRU-Princeton-MIT WW2 highest civilian decoration Operations Research in US MORSE Potential for vibrational energy Acoustics wih RICHARD BOLT BBN (Bolt-Beranek-Newman): ARPANET, natural language processing Battle of Atlantic MORSE'S MIT COMP CENTER: CTSS -- Project MAC -- LCS -- CSAIL -- MIT AI J MCCARTHY: Lisp, Algol stack, Logical AI/Stanford AI, Time-Sharing, Turing Award F CORBATO: OS/MULTICS, password, email, text editing, clock algorithm, file hierarchy, kernel, ACLs, Turing Award Whirlwind Project (MORSE and JAY FORRESTER) RAM (random access memory) magnetic core and patent SAGE air defense MITRE: CVE/CWE LINCOLN LAB K OLSEN: DEC, VAX/PDP W CLARK: LINC (first PC, UX) PHD Students C DRAPER -- Stanford-MIT: control theory, Draper Lab, NAE Draper Prize YT Li -- MIT: Beijing-Taipei diplomat, automatic control/decision R SEAMANS -- Harvard-MIT: Sec USAF RA HOWARD -- MIT-Stanford: Markov decision, influence diagram, decision analysis/ethics, probabilistic AI, EES E HORVITZ -- SUNY-B-Stanford: anytime decision, AAAI President, MSFT CSO, also G DANTZIG co-supervised JD LITTLE -- MIT-CWRU: marketing science, Little's Law, INFORMS Little Award L SCHIFF -- OSU-MIT-UCB-CALTECH-PENN-STANFORD: teacher, Schiff Hall at Stanford P BRIDGMAN -- Harvard: operationalism in philosophy of science, teacher of JR OPPENHEIMER, Nobel Prize EC KEMBLE -- CWRU-Harvard-CarnegieTech: radiation, acoustic detection of submarines, aircraft engines, ALSOS Nazi nuclear energy investigation JC SLATER -- Rochester-Harvard-MIT: microwave transmission, head of MIT Physics, nominated for Nobel Prize M CHODOROW -- SUNY-B-MIT: Chodorow potential, head of Stanford physics D SAXON -- MIT-UCLA-UCB: President of UCB, board chair of MIT, objector to anti-communist loyalty oath, Woods-Saxon potential W SHOCKLEY -- CALTECH: Bell Labs semiconductors, MORSE's ASWORG depth charges, WW2 highest civilian award, Nobel Prize N ROSEN -- MIT-Michigan-Princeton: Einstein-Rosen, Rosen-MORSE potential, EPR paradox, general relativity, wormhole F CORBATO -- UCLA-CALTECH-MIT: MULTICS, inspired UNIX, Turing Award D MERRIFIELD -- CALTECH-UND-MIT-CHAMINADE: ordained priest, President of Loyola F BIRCH -- Harvard-MIT: Manhattan Project, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, proximity fuze, Birch's law, geologist GB DANTZIG -- Maryland-Michigan-UCB-Stanford: simplex, JS NEYMAN problem solver, OR-and-CS founding Stanford faculty 7 doctoral students listed J BRONOWSKI -- Cambridge-Hull: Ascent of Man, bombing strategy, Auschwitz and Hiroshima/Nagasaki documentation UK OPERATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDERS AP ROWE -- UCL-Adelaide: development of RADAR, Battle of Britain, OBE, WW2 highest civilian decoration RA WATSON-WATT -- Dundee-StAndrews: invention of RADAR, Knighthood, WW2 highest civilian decoration P BLACKETT -- Magdalene-Cambridge-ICL: nuclear physics with E RUTHERFORD, JR OPPENHEIMER, Battle of Britain, Battle of Atlantic, activist, Lord, Nobel Prize AV HILL -- Cambridge-Manchester-UCL: RADAR, Hill Equation, JM KEYNES brother-in-law, OBE, Nobel Prize TP FENG -- Fudan-Chicago-UCL: Feng effect, founder of Chinese neuroscience RH FOWLER -- Winchester-Cambridge-Princeton-Madison: 0th law of thermodynamics, son-in-law of Nobel Prizewinner, father of Nobel Prizewinner S CHANDRASEKHAR -- Madras-Cambridge-Chicago: structure of stars, Nobel Prize P DIRAC -- Bristol-Cambridge: quantum mechanics, Dirac equation, brother-in-law of Nobel Prizewinner, 2nd to Einstein in physics, Nobel Prize N MOTT -- Manchester-Cambridge-Bristol: semiconductors, Nobel Prize JE LENNARD-JONES -- Bristol-Cambridge: computational chemistry, OBE B SWIRLES -- Girton-Cambridge-Manchester-Bristol-ICL: Cambridge Swirles Court, wife of Objective Bayesian, co-advised by another Nobel Prizewinner W MCCREA -- Cambridge-Edinburgh: Kermack-McCrea Identity, WW2 Admiralty Operational Research, astronomy H MASSEY -- Melbourne-Cambridge-Belfast-UCL: Manhattan Project, Nazi mine detection, particle physics, physics computing DS KOTHARI -- Cambridge-Delhi: Indian MoD, defence education HJ BHABHA -- Cambridge-Bengaluru: Indian Atomic Energy, nominated for Nobel Prize M PRYCE -- Cambridge-Princeton: worked with J VON NEUMANN and W PAULI, Pryce's Theorem EA MILNE -- Cambridge-Manchester-Oxford: Milne Model of expanding universe, sound localisation for anti-aircraft gunnery F DYSON -- Cambridge-Cornell-Princeton: quantum electrodynamics, bomber effectiveness, random matrices