Dr. Massey is not your typical theoretical physicist seen in pop culture — isolated, scribbling on blackboards, surrounded by chalk dust. He prefers working with people and is highly respected in his field. He constantly moves from one project to another and often steps in to lead organizations in need, like the financially troubled Giant Magellan.
His involvement in the telescope project began after his term as president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During a board meeting at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Robert Zimmer, then president of the University of Chicago, invited him to join the Giant Magellan’s board. A year later, Dr. Massey was elected as the chair.
Among all his achievements, Dr. Massey holds one close to his heart. In 1995, he became the president of Morehouse College, his alma mater and a historically Black men’s college in Atlanta where Dr. King’s funeral took place. He credits Morehouse for shaping him into who he is today.
Torn Between Worlds
Growing up in Hattiesburg, Miss., during the era of segregation, Dr. Massey experienced discrimination firsthand. The racial divide dictated where Black individuals could sit, walk, and shop. Winning a scholarship to Morehouse at 16 was his ticket out of Mississippi, but he faced prejudice from his peers due to his hometown. Determined to prove himself, he chose physics as his major.
Despite being the only physics student in his year across four colleges, Dr. Massey found solace in his passion for the subject. He thrived in the world of equations and found a sense of meditation in his studies. His journey led him to a Ph.D. program at Washington University in St. Louis, where he delved into the behavior of liquid helium at extreme temperatures near absolute zero.
After completing his doctorate in 1966, Dr. Massey conducted research at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, exploring the unusual characteristics of sound waves in superfluid helium. His work attracted attention from researchers at Urbana-Champaign and Anthony Leggett, a renowned theorist whose work on helium earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics.