Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080067
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Robert E. Marshak stood at Ground Zero during some the mid-20th century's most profound events.
He served as an influential member of the scientific dream team that developed the atom bomb - then spent the rest of his life workinzg to keep this frightful genie in the bottle.
He narrowly avoided the tar of a McCarthy-era blacklist, stigmatized for promoting a global scientific community.
He led one of America's leading urban universities - the City College of New York - during turbulent times of student unrest.
This son of immigrants, an affable, brilliant workaholic who counted world-renowned scientists as intimate friends, Marshak spent his last academic years serenely teaching physics at Virginia Tech.
His untimely death in 1992 did not end his influence. He left behind a significant body of work, including research, papers, speeches, articles, correspondence and photographs.
This legacy now rests in the hands of the Special Collections department at Virginia Tech's Newman Library - all 22 boxes of it.
"We're thrilled," said Liz Ackermann, one of the library's archivists. "It's a fascinating period of history."
On Saturday, The Friends of the University Libraries will honor the Marshak family - who recently donated the papers to Tech - in a ceremony that will recognize Robert Marshak and his many accomplishments.
Marshak's life was a uniquely American story. Born in 1916, he grew up in the Bronx's Jewish ghetto, the sanctuary where his parents fled to escape religious persecution in Russia.
Both his mother and father barely eked out a living by working as sweat-shop laborers or selling produce in street carts. Nonetheless, their son was an intellectual prodigy who entered college at 15 and earned his doctorate in physics at 22.
Marshak taught at the University of Rochester until World War II, when his scientific know-how was drafted. He became part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, one of many world-class minds charged with developing the ultimate doomsday weapon.
Like many of his peers, Marshak had pangs of conscience as he stood in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 to witness the atomic bomb's first test explosion, a feeling only intensified by its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The experience began Marshak's life-long advocacy to limit nuclear proliferation, and gave him an appreciation of the value of exchanging ideas with elite scientists. After the war, he founded an annual gathering of international physicists, the Rochester Conference, which continues to this day.
Marshak's work to keep professional lines of communication open with scientists who lived behind the Iron Curtain made him suspect during the era of communist paranoia personified by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. "He felt that scientific cooperation was an important first step in the quest of global peace," said his son, Stephen.
In 1955 Marshak was called before an Atomic Energy Commission examining board ("I do not like to have my loyalty questioned," he testified, according to a transcript included with his papers) and cleared of any political taint.
His trip the next year to the Soviet Union with a delegation of American scientists was a first after the death of Stalin, and the first of many international sojourns Marshak took as an ambassador for science.
Marshak's research earned several Nobel Prize nominations and a host of prestigious commendations and fellowships. His professional stature also influenced him to become involved in academic administration.
Accepting the presidency of the City College of New York in 1970, Marshak led the university forward but suffered a minor stroke during a confrontation with a student group.
Blacksburg, where he and his wife, Ruth, moved in 1979, was considerably more peaceful. As a University Distinguished Professor, Marshak was free to teach physics and to pursue his wider personal agenda, debating the Reagan Administration's Star Wars defense program, establishing an exchange agreement with Chinese scientists and advocating fair treatment of Soviet dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov.
Marshak retired at 75 yet worked five more years on a book, "Conceptual Foundations of Modern Particle Physics."
"When he dropped the manuscript in the mailbox, he turned to my mother and said, in a joking voice, 'It's done. Now I can die,'" his son wrote.
And he did, the very next day. In Cancun, Mexico, for a holiday family vacation celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary, Marshak lost his balance in the surf ("the final manifestation of his stroke," according to his son) and drowned.
Lives of achievement are never extinguished, however, and future scholars with an interest in sharing Marshak's front-row view of this century will find the Newman Library collection a treasure. It joins the archives on the American Civil War and railroad history as jewels of the collection, said Margaret Shuler, head of The Friends of the University Libraries.
Marshak's son and daughter will attend Saturday's ceremony, scheduled to begin at Tech's Donaldson Brown Hotel and Conference Center at 10 a.m. The event is open to the public, but reservations are required. They can be obtained by calling 231-3427.
by CNB