I am dedicating this blog to my dear sister Mary who passed away on Valentine’s Day, this year. In one of our last marathon trans-Atlantic telephone conversations, she implored me to return to my blogging, especially those about my personal experiences. She particularly enjoyed references to Camden Catholic, the high school which we both attended.
And I thought no one was listening !
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In September 1955, after graduating from Camden Catholic High School (NJ), I was fortunate to be accepted for a work-study degree course in physics at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia. The idea had come from a remark by a radical nun, Sister Mary Claver, who simply said . . .’you’re good in math Joseph, why don’t you study physics’? This was the first in a series of shifts in my life, which can only be attributed to serendipity. Physics has been good to me.
At St. Joseph’s, after two tough years catching up with the students from Philadelphia’s best prep schools and passionately following the beloved Hawks basketball team under their new coach Jack Ramsey, I started an apprenticeship at RCA in Camden 
as part of the work-study program – another good break. There I learned about the world of business and science and earned some decent money while continuing to complete my degree at St. Joseph’s, graduating in 1959. By this time I had fallen in love with Pat Miller, a Class of ’57 CCHS grad who I met whilst attending a mixer at Georgian Court College in Lakewood, NJ. (Remember the scene in Mike Nichols’ film Carnal Knowledge when Jack Nicolson and Art Garfunkel walked into a room full of lovelies standing around the punch bowl ? Well, that’s where I found her.) We married in 1960 as John Kennedy began his short-lived presidency and have recently celebrated our 55th !
The generosity of RCA was responsible for the next steps in my education, funding my graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania (M.S. in Physics, 1962) and awarding me the David Sarnoff Fellowship two years later. I chose the University of London for my doctoral studies and this became a crucial move in the development of my family. As Pat and I boarded the TWA jet in Philadelphia in September 1964 with our two young sons, Michael (3 yrs) and Joe (1 yr), we already sensed that something profound was about to happen.
The influence which three years in London in the mid-60s had on us as a family was indeed profound and when we returned in November 1967 with a third son, Mark, and a PhD presented to me by the Queen Mother, we were ‘different’. (See blogpost A Sonnet for Sir Laurence, 21 Jan 2015)
I went back to RCA, but this time at their research lab in Princeton. Then, when Robert Kennedy was killed a few months later and I was shocked by some of my colleagues indifference to the tragedy, I asked to be released to take a faculty position at Clark University in Massachusetts. We headed to what was to become our beloved New England where we stayed for six years while I pined for the exciting life we had enjoyed in London. (A future blogpost , Hide the Daddy, set in our big house in Worcester gives a sense of our happy life in Worcester, MA during those years).
In 1973, as the Watergate scandal unravelled, I somehow managed to convince my wife and the boys (now 12, 10 and 6 years) that our life in London was not yet played out. After selling two cars and giving away the dog, cat and the pet rabbit ‘Flopsy’, we sailed from New York with 22 trunks on board the QE II while our loyal and supportive families wiped away tears amid the confetti and the streamers at dockside in Manhatten’s harbour.
Arriving in Southampton on the QEII 1973
During the next years to the present, we all have found a niche in London, the cosmopolitan capital of the English-speaking world. After seven years teaching physics at the American School in London (ASL), I founded a travel company for ex-pat Americans and ran it for twenty-five years before selling the enterprise in 2007. I have also been able to develop as a writer of popular science with several books published based on the history of physics.
Pat taught at ASL before developing her career as a counsellor and psychotherapist, obtaining the M.A. degree and other credentials in the British system of psychotherapy. She retired from ASL as the lower school counsellor after 25 years but continues her private work with families. Although everyone who has ever sat at her table tries to convince her to open her own restaurant, she has resisted. She concentrates on fantastic family feasts and is a passionate reader of contemporary fiction. Lately, she has developed as a competent watercolourist in a very short time much to the amazement of the rest of the family.
Our boys completed their studies in English schools and were drawn to further training in the arts. Michael has had a challenging career in music as a performer, arranger and composer, and is now a part-time faculty member of the Royal College of Music; Joe is a somewhat disaffected journeyman, political activist and poet living in Northern Ireland; Mark is an accomplished musician and artist but earns his living as a media designer and film maker. All three chose clever, delightful women as partners (a BBC producer, a school counsellor and an NHS psychiatrist) and we are blessed with five interesting grandchildren. But that’s another story . . . ______________________________________________________________________
A few years ago, I visited CCHS for the first time in 50 years to talk about the discovery of the universe from the Babylonians to thee Big Bang. They gave me a good slot and let the whole school get out of class to hear from the old grad. My sister was there and she loved the occasion. I even got coverage in the local press . . .
Writer shares his love of physics at alma mater
April, 2011 By Carl Peters
CHERRY HILL, N.J. — Science writer Joe McEvoy graduated from Camden Catholic in 1955, when the high school was in Camden, and he had never been to its current location in Cherry Hill. As he faced the students in the auditorium, he said, “This building is 50 years old, but to me it looks new.”
Of course, time is relative, as people like to say since Einstein revolutionized physics a century ago.
McEvoy likes to talk about Einstein and others who have shaped the world of science. He gave the Camden Catholic students a synopsis of the history of cosmology, from the ancient Greeks to the Big Bang — all before second period on April 7. He also spent time in classrooms during the day.
McEvoy describes himself as a “champion of science education.” He left research years ago to devote his time to popularizing science, to describing scientific discoveries and those who made them in an accessible way to a broad audience. He is the author of four books, the first of which, “Introducing Stephen Hawking,” was published in 1991.
A lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Hawking is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist who has made important contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. But Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed and speaks through a voice synthesizer, also has become widely known to the general public through his best-selling book, “A Brief History of Time,” as well as by playing himself in several episodes of “The Simpsons.”
McEvoy spent two weeks in Cambridge, England with the scientist and persuaded him to come to the Royal Albert Hall in London for the publisher’s launch of “Introducing Stephen Hawking.” At one point Hawking tried to back out of the appearance, worrying that no one would show up. The event drew 6,000 people.
McEvoy, who makes his home in England, went on to write “Introducing Quantum Theory” (1996) and “Eclipse” (1999). His most recent book, “A Brief History of the Universe,” was published last year.
Before he ever thought about explaining quantum theory, black holes or the history of the universe, McEvoy was a teenager living in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, helping his fellow students with their math. In his junior year, his friends began talking about going to college. Should he go to college as well? He still remembers asking one of his teachers, Sister Mary Claver, who told him, “Joe, you are very good at math. Why don’t you study physics?”
And that’s what he did, at St. Joseph’s College (now University) in Philadelphia. McEvoy went on to earn a master’s degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate from the University of London.
He returned to St. Joseph’s to speak to science students on April 6, the day before he spoke at Camden Catholic. It was his 74th birthday, and he was doing what he likes to do. McEvoy still sounds like a young man in love when he talks about the surprising work of astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt or Sir Arthur Eddington’s experiment that confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Someone McEvoy admires is Philip Morrison, a distinguished physicist who reached a popular audience through his numerous books and television programs, including “Powers of Ten” (1977) and the 1987 PBS series “The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know.”
For McEvoy, explaining how we know what we know — and separating knowledge from superstition and unfounded ideas — has become his life’s work.
“If anyone tells you the Big Bang is not correct, give them my phone number,” he told his Camden Catholic audience.
Joe McEvoy, a science writer and graduate of Camden Catholic in 1955, when the high school was in Camden, speaks to a class at his alma mater April 7. This was his first visit to the school’s current location in Cherry Hill.
You left out ACS (American Community School), you asked me about the University of London after i went there to discuss my theory, which is now a book, and have 2 more on the way. I am an Architect by profession and worked on Broadgate and Canary Wharf in London with SOM. My brother was on the soccer team that beat ASL after you went there as a professor; he also flew the first 777 and is an airline pilot.
Also, any time there is a Force, there is acceleration somewhere seen or not; remembering the experiment you asked the class pressing hand on wall if there was a force without acceleration.
I remember the final note you sent to my parents about my interest in Physics and theories.
Also, i remember you talked about Hawkins, and of course you went on to write books about him; however, not too excited about such. In the movie, the phrase where there is life there is hope was written by Cicero; nothing to do with Hawkins.
D^5=MC^2 from Trans Dimensional Unified Field Theory; the first book was an adventure; however the next 2 will be more conclusive. its a hobby involving metaphysics, but i have had fun with it. One of the premise is that numbers represent functional properties of all physics, and the key to discovering what the code to interpret the connection between numbers and properties is becomes evident. Akin to Pythagoras. The designations we have in physics are merely hieroglyphs for understanding. So when you look at the equation above you will say, what about the units, well there is only 1 unit, and we can interpret the result in the manner above as a relation for convenience in the hieroglyphs we know. Einstein did mention equivalence but this applies to all things being transmutable almost like alchemy, but i am not an alchemist. Now Eisenstein said mass and energy are related by “something”, that is time and velocity, 1/phi and phi respectively. Now that energy equation can be rewritten infinite number of ways, and the one above is opposite to schwarzchild radius, and the constant sets the scale, calculate D for the sun, and D^2, and you get to neptune and the heliophase. Basically stages in the ether.
About Einstein, i think he got E=mc^2 from a paper written by Olinto de preto in Italian 2 years before Einstein wrote his paper, who writes about the connection between math and energy with more passion. De preto died and the paper was there to read. Einstein was a better mathematician and took the idea and worked it in via mathematical proof. My opinion.
Loved reading this, and enjoyed the great pictures of the family