Joseph Samachson

Joseph "Joe" Samachson (October 13, 1906 – June 1980) was an American scientist and author, primarily of science fiction and comic books.

Joseph Samachson was born October 13, 1906 in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Russian Jewish parents, Anna (Roshansky) and David Louis Samachson, a businessman. A graduate of Rutgers University, he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale at the age of 23. He was an assistant professor at the College of Medicine, University of Illinois. He also headed a laboratory in metabolic research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Hines, Illinois, a research unit dealing with diseases that affect the skeleton. Comics historian Jerry Bails wrote that Samachson worked as a research chemist for the American Molasses Company until 1938, leaving to become a "freelance technical writer".

Samachson taught himself Russian.

As a writer, Samachson translated a number of scientific papers, and in addition to his scientific work, earned a well-deserved reputation as an author, writing books for young people such as Mel Oliver and Space Rover on Mars, which was also published in a Dutch translation.

He wrote a number of science fiction works (under the pseudonym William Morrison), including two novels published in Startling Stories, the 1937 pulp title Murder of a Professor and short stories for a number of magazines, including Money from Heaven (1942). He also penned a couple of Captain Future pulp novels c.1941–1942 (under the house name "Brett Sterling"), and had work appear in the science fiction magazine Galaxy. His young adult novel Mel Oliver and Space Rover on Mars was published by Gnome Press in 1954.

He is believed to have begun working for DC Comics in late 1942, working on comics scripts for characters notably including Batman. He also wrote scripts for comics and characters including Sandman, Green Arrow, Airwave and Robotman, as well as "a string of 17 science-fiction stories in 1955 and 1956".

...
Wikipedia