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Daniel Q. Posin (1909–2003) was an American physicist. He was born in 1909 in Russian Turkestan, close to the Caspian Sea. When he was six years old his family fled the Russian revolution, and in a journey that took three years he made it to Mongolia and finally to the United States, the final leg of the journey on a cattle boat to San Francisco. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and earning a Ph.D. in physics.
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Teaching
Posin worked as a teaching assistant at Berkeley for two years, and then accepted a position teaching physics from 1937-41 in Panama. He returned to the US and taught at Montana State University and the Montana School of Mines until 1944, when he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and performed research on radar and radioactivity. At MIT he also met Albert Einstein. It was Einstein who urged him to teach ordinary people about the peaceful uses of atomic power, and that led to Posin writing the book I Have Been to the Village. Posin gave more than 3,000 lectures about nuclear power and his position on peaceful use won him six nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1946 Posin became chairman of the physics department at North Dakota State College in Fargo. In 1955, Posin, along with Cecil Haver and Baldur Kristjanson (Assistant Professors of Agricultural Economics), and William B. Treumann (Professor of Chemistry), was asked to resign by University President Frederick Hultz in what became known as "The Purge". In 1956, he took a position teaching physics at DePaul University.
Television
In his television career he explained astronomy, physics and space. He won six Emmys for his educational series broadcast by WGN and WTTW, including "Dr. Posin's Universe", "On the Shoulders of Giants" and "Out of This World." He served as an on-air consultant for WGN during the 1960s space race.
Later life
In 1967 Posin began teaching physics again at San Francisco State University where he taught physics and earth sciences until he retired in 1996 at the age of 87. Posin died at the age of 93 at the Woldenberg Village Nursing Home in New Orleans.
Books
His book I Have Been to the Village includes a quote by Einstein, who wrote: "Dr. Dan Q. Posin's book bears eloquent witness to the sincere and self-sacrificing way in which the ablest among the scientists try to fulfill their duty toward the community." Posin authored over 30 books, including Dr. Posin's Giants: Men of Science, Out of This World, Mendeleyev: The Story of a Great Scientist, Exploring and Understanding Our Solar System, What is a star (The What is it series), What is Chemistry, What is Electronic Communication, Science in the Age of Space, Chemistry for the Space Age, Find Out! First Step to the Future, and PHYSICS: Its Marvels and Mysteries.