William A. Shurcliff, a physicist on the Manhattan Project who later became a leading opponent of supersonic transport and President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, died June 20 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.
Mr. Shurcliff had a strong social conscience influenced at least in part by his participation in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II–the Manhattan Project developed the nuclear weapons dropped on those two Japanese cities.
He played a major role in the effort to block development of an American supersonic transport, or SST, arguing that the sonic booms created by the aircraft passing over U.S. airspace would have devastating psychological and financial effects.
Flying at the estimated speed of 1,800 m.p.h., the SST would leave in its wake a 50-mile-wide “bang zone” that would startle unsuspecting residents, shatter windows and lead to the collapse of unstable buildings, Mr. Shurcliff said, arguing that a fleet of 150 American SSTs would leave behind $1 million in property damage every day.
In 1967 he organized the Citizens League Against the Sonic Boom. About the same time, climate researchers began arguing that emissions from the SSTs would damage the Earth’s ozone layer.
Swayed by those arguments and others, Congress became convinced that the $3 billion investment necessary to bring the plane to fruition was an unwise investment and the project was killed in 1971.
Mr. Shurcliff was less successful in his efforts against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan’s proposal to use ground- and space-based systems to protect the U.S. against a ballistic missile attack.
Using an approach he had employed in his SST battle, he wrote all the members of the National Academy of Sciences, seeking their opinions about the practicality of the system commonly known as “Star Wars.”
Although most did not think the system could work, their opinions had little influence on the administration. Technological difficulties and the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, led to the downsizing of the project. It never has been implemented.
William Asahel Shurcliff was born March 27, 1909, in Boston. He learned about activism from his mother, Margaret, who founded a civil liberties group that, among other things, protested the execution of Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
He received a doctorate in physics from Harvard University, then joined the American Cyanamid Co. where he helped develop the formula for military camouflage paint.
He spent most of World War II working for the Office of Scientific Research, evaluating proposals and helping to keep Manhattan Project patents from becoming public knowledge. From 1948 to 1960 he worked for Polaroid Co. He collected over 20 patents involving polarized light and other technologies.
