A Focus on a Beautiful Mind: Sidney Dancoff

Sidney Dancoff was a Pittsburgh Squirrel Hill Russian immigrant. He died in 1951 at 38 years old having already earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley under Robert Oppenheimer. He was a part of the research done for the Manhattan Project during WW II. He helped design the bomb and worked with Henry Quastler, a pioneer in radiology. One of his contributions to the world, Dancoff's Law: "The greatest growth occurs when the greatest number of mistakes are made consistent with survival." Or, in other words, risk-taking can have great rewards so long as it doesn't kill you. Ironically, in Dancoff's own life, this will be fatally reinforced as he died of cancer, lymphoma, which is believed to be caused from his work with the Manhattan Project, a theory supported by correspondence between Dancoff and Oppenheimer.
His main achievements in physics, he lead a life that had no promise of a very bright future as a child until his physics teacher convinced his grandfather to let him go to Carnegie Tech on private scholarships. With a B.S. in physics in 1934 he went on to receive a masters from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936. Then, at Berkeley, in their Radiation Laboratory, he helped develop the experimental program where cyclotrons were invented, built and tested. Cyclotrons are a type of particle accelerator.
Teaching physics at the University of Illinois, he as well as other physicists, produced the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction for the Manhattan Project. He co-developed the Dancoff Factor now used in reactor calculations.


For pictures from WW II: Zincov, a center of thriving Jews before WW II was cleaned out in close to three years has been memorialized by the publishings of Alan Shulman at alanzolashulman.com


Lowry, Patricia. (April 10, 2011) He wrote the law on risk-taking. Sunday Magazine, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p1,4.
Contact: plowery@post-gazette.com

Response to Walking with Water, an article in the PGH Post-Gazette

On Sunday, April 10, 2011 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an article in the Region section written by Ann Rodgers about an event held by the Spiritan Campus Ministry at Duquesne and Amizade, a Pittsburgh-based global service learning organization. The activity: Participants in the Water Walk make a 6.4-mile trek to simulate trips made by women in third world countries in order to provide water for their families. The walk was intended to raise money to support Amizade's efforts to build rainwater gathering systems in other countries.
Duquesne student, Emily Cowan shared about her experience volunteering in Tanzania. The response that children gave her when she opened a bottle of drinking water caused her to realize how important something that she takes for granted is for their daily lives. The next day she brought bottles for all the students but this time they saved them, causing her to realize even more how significant and valuable water was to them as they reserved the water for their families back home.
My response: Activities such as this help raise awareness that improved living is not always complicated or costly. The science and monetary resources involved in improving these families' lives is minimal but the improvement to their lives is phenomenal. Water to these communities can not only be far away though, it can also be very dirty and contaminated. Thus reinforcing: Activism is not a luxury; it is essential to our understanding the cost of responsible actions.