Thomas King Simpson

Thomas King Simpson died on August 13, 2020 at Saratoga Hospital, surrounded by his three children for a final “wonderful conversation.” Born in Brooklyn in 1924, he was 96. His professional accomplishments were many, but it is as a constant informal teacher that he will be remembered by those with whom he conversed as he strode the planet, rode the rails, or braced himself on the deck of steamships rolling on the high seas—imparting a love of learning, confidence in humanity and an excitement for new discoveries that burned until his last breath. He left a legacy of unfinished projects and investigations for future generations to pursue.He had lived for the past three decades at the Embury Apartments in Saratoga Springs, NY, after retiring as a tutor from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md. and Santa Fe, NM, and helping to start the Key School in Annapolis in 1958, in counter position to the system of segregated public education, Jim Crow in its origins and practice.His post-elementary education was at Glens Falls High School (class of 41), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Virginia Polytechnic, St. John’s College (BA), Wesleyan University (MA) and Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a PhD in the history of science and technology with a thesis on James Clerk Maxwell, recently published as “Maxwell’s Mathematical Rhetoric: Rethinking the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.” His last unfinished essay was entitled “Why War? On Reclaiming Our Human Nature,” a summation of his conclusions from studying the history of science, beginning with Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander.In addition to the ‘Great Books’ program at St. John’s College, he taught physics at the American University in Cairo, where he lived as a newlywed with the artist Marcia Conover and baby Patrick, who was born during the popular overthrow of King Farouk. Patrick was the first of the couple’s three children: Eric followed, then Katrina. Marcia (Skip Simpson) died in 2018—though divorced, they remained loving friends until the end.He created seminar programs wherever he went, whether for science museum professionals in collaboration with Wendy Pollack, for friends and family at Silver Bay on Lake George and in Maine, or at the Judson Middle School in San Antonio, Texas.He developed a basic patent for a system to accurately image four dimensions and other non-Euclidian spaces, collaborating with architect Peter D. Paul among others, which is explained in his small e-book “Lewis Carroll Meets the Imaginary Number” illustrated by Anne Farrell, and in essays he contributed to “The Great Ideas Today” annual, edited by his friend John Van Doren. He helped develop several museum exhibitions, including one on shipbuilding for the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and one on shirt-making for the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls, NY. His own ship-building effort was the pine freighter, the Sea Dog, three feet long, that he built with his young children to sail the Chesapeake Bay.He was a master of the ‘opening question,’ customarily used to launch seminar discussions at St. John’s. He asked himself the question “where does the money go?” from the exploitation of the gas fields of northern New Mexico as a test case to understand economics. His investigations led him to discover massive price-fixing in the natural gas industry, leading to a $32-million settlement on behalf of NM gas customers who had been overcharged (Brewer vs. Southern Union). It was around that time, in 1983, that he participated in a tour of revolutionary Nicaragua organized by the Militant newspaper, while the bullets of the US- sponsored ‘Contra War’ were still flying, and he listened carefully as working people there explained the extreme circumstances that had led them to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship—and what they were learning as they began to remake their world, and themselves. He put together a slideshow with tapes of those conversations. It was a happy coincidence that he died on Fidel Castro’s birthday, a hero, only two years his junior, whose example he admired.Several generations of his family were able to gather in person and ‘virtually’ shortly after his death with stalwart co-conspirator Pat Arno and the beloved caregivers and friends with whom he shared his last years and some of his colleagues and friends from around the country. We honored his life at the historic Saratoga Friends meeting house in Stillwater, NY, where he was a member.He cherished old roots and loved new green shoots. His father, Merrill Simpson, his mother Hazel, his aunt Mary King and their forbears had fascinating stories for future generations, and he worked hard to tell them. It was with equal interest that he listened to the purposes of his progeny, encouraging three generations in our work and adventures. Grandchildren Lydia von Briesen, Rahimah von Briesen, Rose Simpson, Adam Herling, Julia von Briesen, Hans Johnathan von Briesen and six great-grandchildren are keeping up with his long legs in their own ways. He lived so long and so productively, he is sorely missed, but his DNA lives on in the natural world. Messages for the family can be sent to spectet@gmail.com. Some of his writings are accessible at the website ThomasKSimpson.com.We will give him the last words, written as a Christmas greeting in 2018. “As I settle-in to a more encompassing approach to my beloved Action Principle,” he wrote, “I begin to see it more clearly as the vector of evolution on all scales. ‘Least action’ wasted, in all transactions, means most action saved, to be incorporated in the form of life. i.e., more solar ‘action’ (solar energy x time) transformed into longer, richer, more intelligent and loving life-forms. We humans are maybe half-way there, with as yet a couple of billion years to go, if we don’t drop the ball completely at this present very precarious stage!“We will not, of course, emerge as ‘humans’, but as some successor-species unimaginable today. And of course, we will not evolve alone—but in company of an evolved biosphere, which we will have an increasing role in shaping. Merry Christmas! Tom” http://www.lastingmemories.com/thomas-king-simpson