YOUNG, Morris N(athan) 1909-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born July 29, 1909, in Lawrence, MA; died from a ruptured aneurysm November 13, 2002, in Norwich, CT. Ophthalmologist, magician, and author. Young had a lifelong interest in magic acts and was a world-class collector of posters, books, and other items relating to magicians, as well as a collector of books on mnemonics and of sheet music and music copyrights. He studied chemistry in college, earning a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1930 and a master's degree from Harvard University in 1931. During the Great Depression he was unable to find a job as a chemist, so he continued on with his education to get a medical degree from Columbia University in 1935. Interested in magic since he was a young boy and having met the great escape artist Harry Houdini, Young was fascinated by how eyes worked and how they could be fooled; he became an ophthalmologist, working as a resident in the field at the Harlem Eye and Ear Hospital during the late 1930s. When World War II began, Young, who was already in the U.S. Army Reserve, became part of the Medical Corps and saw action in Europe and North Africa, where he performed facial reconstructive surgery on the wounded. After the war, he returned to private practice and worked at University Hospital in New York City; beginning in 1958 he was also an attending ophthalmologist and professor of ophthalmology at French & Polyclinic Medical School and Health Center in New York City. In 1970 he joined the staff of Beekman Downtown Hospital as chief ophthalmologist, and he was a consultant to Beth Israel Hospital from 1972 until 1993. Young's fascination with all things magical led him to amass an enormous collection of books on the subject, which he gathered together with his friend John J. McManus. Together, they found books dating back to the sixteenth century on such subjects as spiritualism, witchcraft, hypnotism, fortune telling, and more. The collection grew to some twenty thousand items, which Young and McManus donated to the Library of Congress in 1955. Young also collected books on mnemonics, donating his findings to the University of San Marino in Italy in 1990, and he loved to collect old sheet music, and even purchased copyrights to many songs dating back to the nineteenth century. Naturally, while researching and collecting all these works, Young became an expert on these subjects, and he wrote down his knowledge in several books, including Presto Prestige (1929), Hobby Magic (1950), Houdini's Fabulous Magic (1961), written with Walter B. Gibson, How to Develop an Exceptional Memory (1962), also written with Gibson, Original Magicol and Indices (1998), and Radio Music Live: 1920-1950: A Pictorial Gamut (1999). He was also the editor of MAGICOL magazine from 1949 to 1952.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Writers Directory, 17th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, November 24, 2002, p. A27.

Seattle Times, November 24, 2002, p. A25.