Edward Condon - Later Career

Later Career

Condon was professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis from 1956 to 1963 and then at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1963, where he was also a fellow of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, until retiring in 1970.

From 1966 to 1968, Condon directed Bolder's UFO Project, known as the Condon Committee. He was chosen for his eminence and his lack of any stated position on UFOs. He later wrote that he agreed to head the project "on the basis of appeals to duty to do a needed public service" on the part of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Its final report concluded that unidentified flying objects had prosaic explanations. It has been cited as a key factor in the generally low levels of interest in UFOs among mainstream scientists and academics.

Condon was also president of the American Institute of Physics and the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1964. He was president of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (1968–69) and was co-chairman of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (1970). He co-edited the Handbook of Physics with Hugh Odishaw of the University of Arizona. He received the Frederic Ives Medal awarded by the Optical Society in 1968. On his retirement, his colleagues honored him with the publication of a Festschrift.

He married Emilie Honzik. They had a son and a daughter. Condon died on March 26, 1974, in Boulder Colorado Community Hospital. Atomic Structure, which Condon wrote with Halis Odabaşi, appeared several years later in 1980. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) gives an annual award named for Condon. The Condon Award recognizes distinguished achievements in written exposition in science and technology at NIST. The award was initiated in 1974. The crater Condon on the Moon is named in his honor.