David Morrison was born in Danville IL on June 26, 1940. He attended elementary and high school in Danville and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1962 with high distinction in physics. He studied astronomy at Harvard University and received his Ph.D in 1969, with Carl Sagan as his thesis advisor.
Astronomical career
Morrison was Professor of Astronomy at Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii-Manoa from 1969 until 1988. He also directed the 3-meter NASA Infrared Telescope Facility of Mauna Kea Observatory and served for two years as University Vice Chancellor for Research. His research accomplishments include demonstration of the uniform high surface temperature of Venus, the discovery that Neptune has a large internal heat source while its “twin” planet Uranus does not, determination of the surface composition of Pluto, first ground-based measurements of the heat flow from Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, discovery of the fundamental division of the asteroids into dark and light classes, and the first quantitative estimate of the cosmic impact hazard. Morrison was also co-chair of the first NASAAstrobiology Roadmap workshop and report. He served as a science investigator on Mariner, Voyager and Galileo space science missions. He was on the faculty of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii-Manoa from 1969 until 1988, when he joined the senior management staff of NASAAmes Research Center in Mountain View, CA. While on the faculty of the University of Hawaii, Morrison spent two sabbaticals at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona in Tucson, and two assignments in space science management at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. David Morrison has held a variety of senior science management positions at NASA Headquarters in Washington and at Ames Research Center in California. In Washington he was the first Program Scientist for the Galileo mission to Jupiter, where he was responsible for defining the mission objectives and recommending the instruments and science investigations that were selected for this mission. He also served as Deputy Associate Administrator for what is now called the NASA Science Mission Directorate. At NASA Ames, he has been Chief of the Space Science Division, Director Space, and most recently the founding Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute. His responsibilities included the major NASA missions Lunar Pathfinder, Kepler and SOFIA.
Professional activities
Morrison is author of leading college undergraduate texts in astronomy and planetary science. He is a popular public writer and lecturer, promoting a scientific and fact-based perspective about such topics as Emmanuel Velikovsky’s pseudocosmology, the evolution-creationist conflict, climate change denialism, and the 2012 doomsday hoax. As a science communicator, he frequently debunks myths of mystery planets. In interviews in 2011 and 2017, Morrison explained that he receives five emails a day about the Nibiru cataclysm, an apocalyptic hoax, which he initially expected to be a short-lived phenomenon but which "keeps popping up" and is the subject of an estimated two million websites. He launched a YouTube video about the 2012 hoax telling the public that they have nothing to worry about. The video was briefly featured in the opening credits of the movie World War Z', based on the novel World War Z.
Morrison is married to Janet Lee Morrison, retired medical information specialist, and lives near San Jose, CA. Morrison has visited and photographed in some 60 countries on all the continents, ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic, all across North America, Europe, and North Africa, and extensively in South and South-East Asia.
