Melba Newell Phillips

[1] For information on her groundbreaking physics work, see footnote 5; For information on her work as a teacher, see footnote 10.

[2] 1910 United States Federal Census, Clay Township, Pike County, Indiana, Enumeration District 0026, Roll T624_374, Page 7a, Line 21, April 30, 1910, AncestryLibrary.com; 1920 United States Federal Census, Clay Township, Pike County, Indiana, Enumeration District 0029, Roll T625_460, Page 3b, Line 96, January 9, 1920, AncestryLibrary.com; “Public School Report: High School Department Monthly, Term and Annual Report of Melba Phillips, Age: 12, School: Union High,” September 22, 1919, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics ; Melba Phillips Interview by Katherine Sopka, December 5, 1977, transcript, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

The 1910 census reported that three-year-old Melba Phillips was living with her parents Virgil and Elida (or Lydia) Phillips on their farm in Clay Township, Pike County, Indiana. The 1920 census shows her still at the farm while report cards show that she attended Union High School also in Clay, Township, Pike County. About her early life, Melba Phillips remembered:

Yes, I was born in southern Indiana, and most of my family was born in southern Indiana, In fact, I have ancestors who were there from the time of George Rogers Clark, So I was born there; I was brought up there; my father was born there; my mother was born there, Three of my grandparents were—one in Kentucky. I should add here that I came from a family of farmers and schoolteachers. My father was a schoolteacher and a farmer. Two of my uncles and aunts, one grandmother, were teachers. So that ran in the family. I started school in a one—room schoolhouse, and my first teacher was my father. . .  I went on and went to a very small high school and graduated when I was barely sixteen because I knew how to read before I went to school and skipped a grade or two.

She noted that as early as high school, “I was going to become a physicist.”

[3] Oakland City College, Oakland City, Indiana, Statement of Work Done During the Term Beginning April 23, 1923 by Melba Phillips, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics; Oakland City College, Oakland City, Indiana, Statement of Work Done During the Term Beginning December 31, 1923 by Melba Phillips, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics; Oakland City College, Oakland City, Indiana, Statement of Work Done During the Term Beginning June 16, 1924 by Melba Phillips, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics;  Oakland City College, Oakland City, Indiana, Statement of Work Done During the Term Beginning September 22, 1925 by Melba Phillips, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics; Oakland City College, Oakland City, Indiana, Statement of Work Done During the Term Beginning March 23, 1926 by Melba Phillips, Folder 6: Report Cards, Box 2, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics; Mirror, 1926, Oakland City College Yearbook, Oakland City University Library, copies available in IHB marker file; Melba Phillips, “Studying Physics in the Thirties – A Personal Recollection,” April 24, 1978, Folder 2: Correspondence, 1948-1999, Box 1, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics; Phillips Interview by Sopka; About Oakland City University: History and Facts, Oakland City University, https://www.oak.edu/about/history-and-facts

Phillips began attending Oakland City in 1923 and graduated in 1926 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and English.

Phillips recalled in later interviews that she was frustrated by the physics courses at Oakland City College, which had only one science professor at the time. She did, however, receive a solid math background and encountered two important mentors, William “Pop” Jordan who she described as “truly a great math professor” and Ella Wheatley who served as Dean of Women. She excelled academically and participated in numerous collegiate activities, including serving as editor of her yearbook, the Mirror. The text below a photograph of Phillips in the 1926 yearbook read: “Melba is a ‘Mirror’ editor, which goes to prove that a women can hold down the job.”

The marker is located on campus where Wheatley Hall, named for Phillips’ mentor, once stood. During her time at Oakland, Phillips lived in that building. The marker is also across from the current Oakland City University administration building. The school changed from “college” to “university” in 1995.

[4] J. Robert Oppenheimer to Ernest Lawrence, January 3, 1932, letter, reprinted in Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner, eds., Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 147-8; Elmer E. Hall to Melba Phillips, March 16, 1932, letter, Folder 1: Special Letters, 1932-1990, Box 1: Professional Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, accessed https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/89/mode/2up; J. R. Oppenheimer to May L. Cheney [Appointment Secretary, University of California, Berkeley], letter of recommendation, April 10, 1933, Folder 1: Special Letters, 1932-1990, Box 1: Professional Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/94/mode/2up ; Melba Phillips Interview by Katherine Sopka, December 5, 1977, transcript, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, accessed https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4821; Melba Phillips, Curriculum Vitae, circa 1990, 3 pages, Folder 1: Special Letters, 1932-1990, Box 1: Professional Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, accessed https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/24/mode/2up/search/Berkeley.

In 1927, Phillips began attending Battle Creek College in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1929 she attended a symposium on quantum mechanics given by Edward Condon at the University of Michigan, which influenced her decision to focus on theoretical physics. In 1930, she obtained a master’s degree in physics from Battle Creek.

Phillips came to University of California, Berkeley, in 1930 and received her doctoral degree in physics in 1933. The school had several eminent physicists on the faculty and was on the cutting edge of physics research at the time. She worked most closely with J. Robert Oppenheimer who had come to Berkeley the previous summer to teach theoretical physics. Phillips worked two different theoretical physics problems into her dissertation under his mentorship. The University presented her the Whiting Fellowship in 1932, noting: “The [Physics] Department regards this as the greatest honor it can confer on any one of its graduate students.”  Also in 1932, Oppenheimer mentioned Phillips’ doctorial research in a letter to his colleague Ernest Lawrence, noting she had written about “some new evidence on the degree of dissociation of potassium . . . Her paper is nearly written up.” In 1933, Oppenheimer and other faculty wrote letters of recommending her to a faculty position at Berkeley or “as a valuable member of any university physics department in the country.” However, during the economic hardship of the Great Depression and perhaps because of gender constraints of the period, Phillips did not find a faculty position for several years. She stayed at the University of Berkeley doing some teaching and research. See footnote 5 for information on her work with Oppenheimer during this period.

[5] J. Robert Oppenheimer to Ernest Lawrence, circa early spring 1935, letter, reprinted in Smith and Weiner, 193-4; J. R. Oppenheimer and M. Phillips, “Note on the Transmutation Function for Deuterons,” Physical Review 48 (September 15, 1935), 500-502, accessed EBSCO Host Research Databases, University Library, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis; “Oppenheimer, the ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb,’ Was A Baffling Complex Man,” New York Times, February 20, 1967, 32, accessed timesmachine.nytimes.com; Smith and Weiner, 192; Dwight E. Neuenschwander and Sallie A. Watkins, “In Appreciation: Professional and Personal Coherence: The Life and Work of Melba Newell Phillips,” Physics in Perspective 10 (2008):295-364, accessed INSPIRE, Indiana State Library; Ray Monk, Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), 222.

In the spring of 1935, Oppenheimer wrote to his colleague Ernest Lawrence about the theory he and Phillips were developing to explain unexpected results of Lawrence’s experiments with the cyclotron, a particle accelerator. Lawrence had found that some elements became radioactive when bombarded with deuterons. Oppenheimer and Phillips were able to show that this happened “when the deuteron, which consists of a neutron and a proton, gives up the neutron to the bombarded nucleus,” according to Smith and Weiner. The nucleus that gained the neutron would then be “transmuted into a new radioactive atom.” The Physical Review published their findings September 15, 1935 as “Note on the Transmutation Function for Deuterons” and the reaction soon became known as the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process. The New York Times called it a “basic contribution to quantum theory.” Oppenheimer scholars Smith and Weiner explain that the process “is still recognized as an important contribution to the understanding of nuclear reactions.” Physicists Neuenschwander and Watkins explain that “the celebrated Oppenheimer-Phillips process . . . is of vital importance in deuteron physics” and in turn, “the deuteron . . . plays a crucial role in nuclear physics.” They note that the process has continued practical applications: “for example, it gives a way to embed neutrons into a target nuclei when making isotopes for clinical use.” Oppenheimer biographer Ray Monk explains that the process was “quickly accepted” by the field, “becoming an accepted part of nuclear physics and finding its way into text books.”

[6] “18 Teachers Assigned to Brooklyn College,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 16, 1941, 15, Newspapers.com; “Coeds Are Urged Not to Quit School for Auxliary,” Hammond Times, October 20, 1942, 754m Newspapers.com; “Purdue Coeds Her Outstanding Leaders,” Kokomo Tribune, October 29, 1942, 16, Newpspapers.com; Neuenschwander and Watkins, 317; “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources,” The Nuclear Vault: Resources from the National Security Archive’s Nuclear Documentation Project, The National Security Archive, George Washington University, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb525-The-Atomic-Bomb-and-the-End-of-World-War-II/ ; “Harry S. Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Manhattan Project National Historical Park, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm; “The Manhattan Project,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/manhattan-project; George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America: A Narrative History, Brief Ninth Edition, Volume 2 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), 933-5.

As early as 1938, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard warned President Roosevelt that Germany may have been working on an atomic bomb. Physicists in the United States, led by those at the University of California, Berkeley among others, worked towards viable plutonium production to be used in nuclear reactions – which could be used to create a bomb. By 1942, the U. S. government began looking to the wartime use of the atomic bomb as a method for ending the war. On August 13, 1942, the Manhattan Project was created with its weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Manhattan Project scientists successfully tested the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. With Japan still refusing to surrender, President Truman weighed the continued cost of American lives against the loss of Japanese lives and ordered the bombing of Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city, killing approximately 237,000 directly and indirectly through the effects of radiation and cancer. Three days later, the United States bombed Nagasaki, killing an estimated 80,000 more people by the end of the year.

During the War, Phillips taught physics at Brooklyn College (1938-1952) taking a one year leave in 1941 to teach a graduate course in physics at the University of Minnesota. During this time at Minnesota, Phillips also spoke at other colleges, including at least one seminar in her home state.  In the fall of 1942, the Hammond Times ran a United Press article reporting that Phillips spoke at Purdue University in Lafayette as part of conference on opportunities for women in science and industry. Purdue also invited Phillips to stay on as a visiting professor. In the letter where the head of Purdue’s physics department extended this invitation he also noted Phillips’ concern with discrimination against Jewish students.  According to Neuenschwander and Watkins, this letter is representative of “Melba’s increasing concern with matters of social justice.”  She became much more active as World War II escalated. In 1944, Phillips worked for five months at the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory, a research facility established for the war effort.  Here Phillips worked to develop technology that would scatter radar waves.  Several of her discoveries were later published in academic journals.

[7] Donald Horton, “The American Association of Scientific Workers,” Science 89, Issue 2299 (January 20, 1939), 58-59, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/89/2299/58.3; American Association of Scientific Workers, “Constitution and By-Laws,” Adopted May 1940, Published Papers and Official Documents, Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement, Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Valley Library, Oregon State University, http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/coll/pauling/peace/papers/peace4.009.1-constitution-01.html;  “Peace Rests on Science  Use, Says Professor,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 7, 1944, 4, Newspapers.com; “White-Collar Aid Is Offered by CIO,” New York Times, January 16, 1945, 36, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Curbs on Atom Bomb Urged by Scientists,” New York Times, August 16, 1945, 9, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “American Scientists Unite To Take Part in Politics,” (Burlington, North Carolina) Daily Times-News, January 7, 1946, 1, Newspapers.com; “Makers of Atomic Bomb Form New Nationwide Group Called Federation of American Scientists,” (Danville, Kentucky) Advocate-Messenger, January 7, 1946, 4, Newspapers.com; “Makers of A-Bomb Form Group to Deal in Politics,” Kingsport (Tennessee) Times, January 7, 1946, 8, Newspapers.com; “Atom Scientists of Nation United in New Endeavor,” (Troy, New York) Times Record, January 8, 1946, 10, Newspapers.com; “Federation of American Scientists, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2, Nos. 5 and 6 (September 1, 1946), 25, Google Books; “Calendar: Tonight,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 15, 1946, 7, Newspapers.com; “Says A-Bomb Puts Science Teachers in a Major Role,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 16, 1946, 3, Newspapers.com; “Broadcast for International Day,” (Salem, Oregon) Daily Capital Journal, February 20, 1947, 6, Newspapers.com; “On The Air,” (Connellsville, Pennsylvania) Daily Courier, February 21, 1947, 14, Newspapers.com; Melba Phillips, “Dangers Confronting American Science,” Science 116, No. 3017 (October 24, 1952) 439-443, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1680150; Federation of American Scientists, “Striving for a Safer World Since 1946,” https://fas.org/.

In early November 1944, the war still raged across multiple fronts and Americans again elected FDR president in the continuing crisis. Melba Phillips, a professor in the physics department at Brooklyn College (since 1938), called for students, their parents, and her colleagues to imagine how science could help achieve a lasting peace. She also called for the education of the public in the sciences as a means for improving society, forwarding discoveries, and fostering peace. This would be a theme she would return to regularly. Phillips explained in a lecture series at the college that “the development of science is so largely responsible for modern civilization.” She continued:

The prospect of a lasting peace demands fuller utilization of science in the postwar world than at any time in our previous history . . . World prosperity, full employment, a high standard of living everywhere can be achieved only on this basis. This means . . . the general level of scientific education among the whole population must be raised.

Phillips also advocated for peace as a member and officer of the American Association of Scientific Workers (AASW). The AASW was organized in the late 1930s “to promote and extend the application of science . . . to all problems of human welfare,” to promote better education for the general public, to secure funding for scientific work, “to safeguard the intellectual freedom” of scientists, and to encourage scientists to act “for the public good.” On August 16 1945, just days after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, the New York Times reported that the AASW addressed an open letter to President Truman giving “eight recommendations to help prevent the use of atomic bombs in future warfare and to facilitate the application of atomic energy to peacetime uses.” Phillips was among the “officers of the association who endorsed the statement.”

The horror unleashed by the bomb caused many Americans to fear all atomic research. In response, groups of scientists worked to form organizations either to apply atomic research to peacetime uses, to educate the public on the possibilities offered by atomic energy, or to keep control of atomic resources in the safest hands. By the end of 1945, delegates from several of these organization met in Washington, D.C., to centralize operations and establish a constitution. Many were scientists from Los Alamos and the partner universities who led the Manhattan Project. On January 7, 1946, the Associated Press reported in newspapers across the country that “the men who made the atomic bomb, together with many of their fellow scientists . . . announced the formation of a new, nationwide association called the Federation of American Scientists.” The main goal of the 2,500 members of the FAS was to “influence legislation on scientific matters.” The AP continued:

The constitution of the new organization calls for United States action toward initiating and perpetuating cooperative worldwide control of atomic energy, study of any scientific developments which might hazard world peace, safeguarding of the free spirit of scientific research and the countering of misinformation with facts.

At this meeting Melba Phillips was elected to the legislative council of the FAS. In September 1946 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reported that Phillips had been elected as one of seven members of the Administrative Committee of the FAS and in November 1946, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that Phillips was Secretary of the FAS. As a representative of this organization she gave speeches to student groups, science teacher groups, and over the radio. (The Federation of American Scientists continues today with the ongoing mission to “strive to make the world a safer, more informed place.”)

In 1952, as a representative of the AASW, Melba Phillips wrote a powerful essay for the journal Science titled “Dangers Confronting American Science” on the potential weaponization of scientific discovery. She wrote, “The Cold War is invoked to justify an evident corruption of ethical standards.” She called on her fellow scientists “to guard and uphold the standards by which they live” and to make no compromises on moral values. She wrote of three areas where there could be no compromise: First, all scientific work should be public and freely circulated and criticized.  Second, scientists need freedom from demands of military of government to do their work. Third, support for this work should come from the public without the stipulation of military application.

[8] Theodor Rosebury and Melba Phillips, “Two Aspects of the Loyalty Problem,” Science 110 (July 29, 1949), 123, http://jstor.org/stable/1677234; Benjamin Schultz to Melba Phillips, December 12, 1951, Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/59/mode/2up; Pat McCarran to Melba Phillips, Order to Appear Before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary of the Senate of the United States, September 17, 1952, Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/45/mode/2up; Harry Grundfest for the American Association of Scientific Workers New York Branch to Melba Phillips, October 10, 1952, Folder 2: Professional Correspondence, 1948-1999, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285656#page/24/mode/2up/search/Grundfest; Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Testimony of Miss Melba Phillips, New York, N.Y., Accompanied by Counsel, Cammer & Shapiro, New York, N.Y., October 13, 1952, accessed Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 1952-1953, SISS Hearings on Subversive Influence in the Education Process, Brooklyn College, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/bc/senate_1952/index.html; “The ‘Red Scare’ in Education,” in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman, Eds., American Decades, 1950-1959 (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994): 132-3; “McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2016), 1-25, http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-6; Landon R. Y. Storrs, “McCarthyism and the Red Scare,” Educational Resources, The Miller Center, University of Virginia, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare

In the early 1950s, during the Cold War, some American political leaders encouraged the public to fear a domestic communist threat. This communist paranoia became known as the Second Red Scare or McCarthyism because Senator Joseph McCarthy led investigations into the supposed threat. According to the Miller Center, these leaders claimed, “Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination.” As the Miller Center explains, McCarthy’s accusations and investigations into the lives of a diverse group American citizens “created a climate of fear and suspicion.” Union leadership, such as Phillips’ role in the Federation of American Scientists, was enough to raise their suspicions.

Colleges and Universities also got caught up in the hysteria. Many required loyalty oaths of their faculty. “That posed a difficult problem for professors who objected to both the infringements of their academic freedom and their constitutional rights,” according to Bruccoli and Layman. Phillips was resolutely against such oaths and published her views in a 1949 issue of the magazine Science as “Two Aspects of the Loyalty Problem, coauthored by Theodor Rosebury, her colleague at the American Association of Scientific Workers. They wrote that “the integrity of science and science education in this country is seriously jeopardized” by the requirement of such oaths. They noted that labelling people as subversive was too indefinite and that the definitions were “expanding, becoming more comprehensive.” With startling foresight, Phillips and Rosebury continued:

It would be folly to expect that these oaths would not be followed by some sort of investigation, and any attempted guarantee to the contrary would be ridiculous. Oaths of this kind open the possibilities of irresponsible accusations, and of legal procedures based not on acts but on opinions which for one reason or another may not be popular at the moment.

Exactly these sort of “irresponsible accusations” were soon levelled against Phillips and many of her colleagues. On December 12, 1951, Phillips received a letter from Rabbi Benjamin Schultz of the New York Joint Committee against Communism in New York, which had been endorsed by fifty other community leaders. The Committee’s mission was to supply “pertinent information to the Board of Higher Education.” The letter included a list of eleven organizations and events that Phillips supported and that the committee suspected were affiliated with communist organizations.

These suspicious initiatives included her sponsorship of a Win the Peace Conference and a Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace – even a Bill of Rights Conference. The committee also questioned her participation as a speaker at a Congress of American Women and a signer of an open letter on Peaceful Alternatives to the Atlantic Pact (the North Atlantic Treaty). Most incriminating from the viewpoint of the committee, was likely her continued opposition to bills and initiatives intended to oust teachers suspected of Communist Party affiliation. This was a stance many academics took regardless of their political leanings because they saw universities as a place where all ideas should be freely discussed.  Phillips refused to be bullied. Instead of denying or explaining her involvement in any of the listed activities, she simply returned their letter adding another event she had sponsored that they had missed.

In the fall of 1952, Phillips received an order to appear before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary of the Senate of the United States, more commonly called, the McCarran Committee. The committee was named for Nevada Senator Pat McCarran who sponsored the 1950 Internal Security Act, which allowed for investigation of “subversive activities” by a Senate subcommittee. It was the Senate equivalent to the House Un-American Activities Committee. By this point, such committees had tried a variety of individuals from public employees to Hollywood directors starting in the late 1940s. This first wave of defendants had cited the First Amendment and argued for their right to speak and associate as they please as long as they obeyed U.S. law. Despite this constitutional defense, most had had their professional reputations ruined and many were jailed. Thus, by the time Phillips was called to testify, most defendants had changed tactics to citing the Fifth Amendment, that is, the right not to incriminate themselves. This allowed them to stand on the moral ground of not bowing to the committee’s pressure to “name names,” or incriminate colleagues, in order to stay out of prison. In fact, just before her testimony, Phillips received a letter from her colleagues at the  . . . advising her to cite the Fifth. This is the approach she chose. In response to the question: “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Phillips replied:

My response to that question is dictated by my view of professional and personal ethics, first to do my professional job as well as it is humanly possible, and second, to defend and maintain my individual and personal right which I thought was my right so long as I was a law-abiding citizen. I know you conduct these hearings by certain rules which make it necessary for me, in order to stand on my principles, to invoke the Bill of Rights. My ancestors fought for that Bill of Rights and I am very glad to make use of the first, fifth, and sixth amendments.

Her complete testimony is available here courtesy of Brooklyn College.

[9] Charles Grutzner, “Ex-Red Describes City Teacher Blocs,” New York Times, October 14, 1952, 1, ProQuest Historical New York Times; “Three Teachers Linked with Reds,” (Greencastle) Daily Banner, October 29, 1952, 2, Hoosier State Chronicles; Hans Freistadt to Melba Phillips, October 29, 1952, Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/29/mode/2up; “Teachers Discharged on Loyalty Suspicion,” Kokomo Tribune, November 18, 1952, 9, Newspapers.com; “Teachers Discharged on Loyalty Suspicion,” Kokomo Tribune, November 18, 1952, 9, Newspapers.com; “Three More Teachers Dismissed,” Dixon (Illinois) Evening Telegraph, November 18, 1952, 1, Newspapers.com; “More Teachers Fired: Three New York Teachers Refused to Answer as to Red Affiliations,” Decatur Daily Review, November 18, 1952, 19, Newspapers.com; Melba Phillips, “Dangers Confronting American Science,” Science 116, No. 3017 (October 24, 1952) 439-443, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1680150; Herbert A. Philbrick, “Red Underground: ‘Public Trial’ for McCarthy,” Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpareil, December 14, 1953, 3, accessed Newspapers.com; “Melish to Testify as Leftists ‘Try’ Mac,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 15, 1953, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.Court fights; “Leftists ‘Convict’ A Senator: Mock Trial Brands McCarthy A ‘Facist,’” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 7, 1954, 1; “Court Upholds Ousters: Appeals Body Rule 4 to 3, in Case of 14 Teachers, New York Times, April 23, 1954, 17, accessed ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Ouster of 14 Upheld: New York Supreme Court Ruling Affects Teachers,” Kansas City Times, April 23, 1954, 5, Newspapers.com; “Mum on Red Ties: High Court Upholds Firing of 14 Teachers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 23, 1954, 8, Newspapers.com; Luther A. Huston, “13 Ex-Teachers Here Lose Red Case Plea in High Court,” New York Times, February 8, 1955, 1, ProQuest Historical Newspapers;

Melba Phillips Interview by Katherine Sopka, December 5, 1977, transcript, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. Other letters of support from colleagues, such as the one from Hans Freistadt cited above, are available in the same box of the cited collection.

Despite the carefully considered ethical testimony of Phillips and many of her colleagues, the public generally interpreted citation of the Fifth Amendment as evidence of guilt. Colleges and Universities bowed to public pressure and fired faculty who refused to sign loyalty oaths or were called to testify in response to communist allegations, regardless of their defense. (See footnotes 7 and 8 for more information on academic institutions during communism, including Phillips’ denouncement of loyalty oaths). Two hundred students marched outside of the courthouse where Phillips testified and letters of support poured in from colleagues. However, newspapers across the country included her name and allegations against her under headlines like “Three Teachers Linked with Reds.” Citing a New York Charter which allowed the termination of any public employee who invoked the Fifth Amendment, both Brooklyn College and Columbia University dismissed Phillips from her faculty appointments.

Phillips protested both the allegations and McCarthyism itself. In her article “Dangers Confronting American Science” (detailed in footnote 8), which was published the same month in which she testified, Phillips denounced the “corruption of ethical standards” by those persecuting “the freedom of the scientist” and freedom of thought itself. In 1953, she helped organize public protests in New York including a mock trial of McCarthy himself.

She continued the fight in the courts as well, albeit unsuccessfully. In April 1953, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision to fire Phillips, and by this time, thirteen other teachers. Finally, on February 7, 1955, the front page of the New York Times reported that the teachers had lost their appeal to the United States Supreme Court. While Phillips lost her university employment, she maintained the moral high ground, and managed to persevere professionally as well. She published two major textbooks after her dismissal and again found a faculty appointment by 1957. See footnote 10 for more on her post-McCarran success and later apology from Brooklyn College.

[10] Wolfgang K. Panofsky and Melba Phillips, Classical Electricity and Magnetism (Cambridge, Massachusettes: Addison-Wesley, 1955; Robert H. Whitmer, “Review: Classical Electricity and Magnetism by Wolfgang K. Panofsky and Melba Phillips,” Science 122, No. 3183 (December 30, 1955): 1275, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1750803; Harriet Zuckerman and Jonathan R, Cole to Melba Phillips, March 17, 1981, Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/23/mode/2up; Melba Phillips to Harriet Zuckerman, April 24, 1981, Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/22/mode/2up; Melba Phillips, Curriculum Vitae, 1990, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/25/mode/2up; Spencer R. Weart and Melba Phillips, eds., History of Physics: Readings from Physics Today, Number Two (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1985), accessed https://archive.org/details/B-001-018-092; “Melba Newell Phillips Medal,” American Association of Physics Teachers, accessed https://www.aapt.org/Programs/awards/phillips.cfm; “Resolution: Approved Unanimously by the Faculty of Brooklyn College,” February 4, 1987, signed Robert L. Hess, President, Presented to Professor Melba Phillips, April 9, 1987, accessed Folder 1: Special Correspondence, 1932-1990, Box 1: Correspondence, Melba Phillips Papers, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:285524#page/40/mode/2up; Phillips interviewed by Sopka; Neuenschwander and Watkins, 342; “Melba Phillips, Physicist, 1907-2004,” November 16, 2004, University of Chicago News Office, accessed http://www.news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041116.phillips.shtml;

In 1957, Phillips became the associate director of the Academic Year Institute of Washington University in St. Louis, a teacher-training school. At the institute she developed programs instructing high school teachers about how to teach elementary science and physics. She remained at Washington until 1962 when she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. Among her accomplishments there, she worked to make science accessible to non-science majors. She also made laboratory work an important part of the student experience. She explained that “we worked very hard in our laboratory in Chicago . . . unless the students get ‘hands on,’ it seems they don’t fully understand the material.” In 1966, she became president of the American Association of Physics Teachers, of which she had been a member since 1943. This respected organization was founded in 1930 as “a professional membership association of scientists dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching.” Phillips became not only AAPT’s first female president, but one of its most memorable and effective leaders. Manhattan Project scientist Francis Bonner described Phillips as “a major figure in science education” who “stimulated many students who went on from there to very stellar careers.”

In 1981, two Columbia University professors wrote to Phillips as representatives of the National Science Foundation. They explained that they were studying “careers of men and women scientists who have made significant contributions to their fields” and requested her curriculum vitae. She responded and enclosed her CV which shows her extensive accomplishments. They are too numerous to list in full but include her degrees, teaching positions, awards, board and committee positions, and publications. Her CV, which she updated until 1990, is available here.

After her dismissal from Brooklyn College, Phillips became the Associate Director of the Academic Year Institute at Washington University in St. Louis (1957-62). She joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1962 and taught there until she retired in 1972. Even after retiring, she taught as a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1972-75.

Among her notable achievements, she was named a fellow of the New York Academy of Science and the American Physical Society. She served on the board and then as president of the American Association of Physics Teachers in the 1960s. She served on the Commission of College Physics in the 1960s, the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics in the 1960s and 70s, and the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the 1970s and 80s. She earned the Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers (1973) and the Karl Taylor Compton Medal from the American Institute of Physics (1982). The AAPT named an award for her in 1982 and made her the first recipient of the Melba Newell Phillips Award, still given today.

With co-author Wolfgang K. Panofsky, Phillips wrote the definitive textbook Classical Electricity and Magnetism in 1955, which is still used today. In 1957, she coauthored another popular textbook, Principles of Physical Science with F.T. Bonner. She contributed to the Journal of Applied Physics, Physics Review, and Physics Today. She coedited the History of Physics in 1985. In 1987 Brooklyn College issued Phillips a formal apology and in 1996 named a scholarship after her.

[11] Indiana State Department of Health, Certificate of Death, “Melba N. Phillips,” November 8, 2004, Roll 17, Indiana Archives and Records Administration, accessed Ancestry.com; “Melba Phillips, Physicist, 1907-2004,” November 16, 2004, University of Chicago News Office, accessed http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041116.phillips.shtml; “Melba Phillips, 97, Physicist Who Worked with Oppenheimer, Dies,” New York Times, November 18, 2004, accessed https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/education/melba-phillips-97-physicist-who-worked-with-oppenheimer-dies.html; Joel Lebowitz, Wolfgang Panofsky, and Stuart Rice, “Melba Newell Phillips,” Physics Today 58, Number 7 (2005): 80-81, accessed https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2012480; Dwight E. Neuenschwander and Sallie A. Watkins, “In Appreciation: Professional and Personal Coherence: The Life and Work of Melba Newell Phillips,” Physics in Perspective 10 (2008): 295-364, accessed INSPIRE, Indiana State Library; Audra J. Wolfe, “Physics from the Farm,” Belt Magazine (June 2015), accessed http://beltmag.com/physics-from-the-farm/

Citing letters from chemist and peace activist Lining Pauling to Phillips, Neuenschwander and Watkins report on Phillips’ final years. By 2001, Phillips’ niece Ellen Vinson, brought her aunt back to Indiana and to Pike County. According to Wolfe’s interview with Vinson, Phillips had kept “her part of the family farm” and “returned there to live the last few years of her life.” She died November 8, 2004, at a nursing home in Pike County at the age of 97. The New York Times called her “a leader among her peers.” Students and colleagues eulogized Phillips in Physics in Perspective and Physics Today, among other professional journals.