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Janet Gordon – My Inquiry into Ability, Disability, Love, and Physics: The Story of Morton and Bernice Gordon

 Headshot of Linda Gordon

Talk details

Talk abstract

From the speaker:

“A few years ago, I began to write about my parents, Mort and Bernice Gordon, to solve the mystery of their remarkable partnership. My father, a blind physicist, and my mother, his reader, who lived with spina bifida, were bound together by love and necessity decades before recognition of their rights as disabled people. I explored their letters, interviewed Dad’s colleagues, searched for his publications, and listened to audio tapes of their work. As I revisited the scenes we shared, I developed a new understanding of how and what they taught me; my sister, Anne; his students; and their community. 

Mort Gordon was a college student during World War II, when he learned that he was going blind from retinitis pigmentosa. Then Mort made two important decisions: he began studying physics, and he courted and married Bernice Rubinstein. These choices enabled him to contribute to the world of accelerator physics and raise a family. Mort, as a new PhD, faced discrimination because of “decreased vision,” then worked on an innovative cyclotron project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which led him to take a job at Michigan State University and create something new.  Mort and Bernice Gordon ingeniously found ways for the professor to teach his classes, develop the mathematics and computer models essential for MSU’s innovative cyclotrons, and share knowledge with colleagues around the world. Their story lives at the intersection of disability history and physics history. It illuminates the importance of sustained curiosity and the benefits of persistence, mentoring, and collaboration.”

Presenter

Janet Gordon grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1974, with aspirations to make the world better. She received an MA in business administration from George Washington University.  As a federal banking regulator, she developed guidance on the Community Reinvestment Act, which encourages banks to serve low- and moderate-income communities. As Associate Director of Community Affairs at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Janet improved consumer education to better serve people with disabilities. After retiring in 2018, Janet studied writing at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. In All the Ways You Taught Us, A Memoir of Ability, Disability and the Pursuit of Meaning, she chronicles lessons about inquiry, disability, and meaningful living learned from Mort and Bernice Gordon’s remarkable lives.

Morton M. Gordon and Bernice Gordon

Morton M. Gordon (1924-2012), born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, attended Rutgers University, graduated from the University of Chicago, and received a PhD in physics from Washington University in 1950. Mort was instrumental in the design of a new breed of cyclotrons. By the time he arrived at Michigan State University in his thirties, he was almost completely blind from retinitis pigmentosa. Nonetheless, in 1959 he was the second person hired to design the first particle accelerator at MSU’s Cyclotron Laboratory. Mort was the principal theoretical physicist guiding the mathematics and computer models essential to its development. He continued his contributions at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory until 1999. He was a professor of physics for 50 years, and his students went on to help build accelerators all over the world. Mort’s principal collaborator in life, Bernice Gordon (1928-2007), also grew up in Atlantic City and graduated from the New Jersey College for Women in 1950. Bernice was born with spina bifida, which slowly reduced her mobility over the course of her life. In addition to a half century of service as Mort’s dedicated (and unpaid) reader, she was a political organizer, a participant in the Lansing area Jewish community, and a lover of literature who influenced the reading of her family and members of her book clubs. Mort and Bernice Gordon raised two daughters and left legacies for the next generations.