Moses A. Greenfield -- professor emeritus of radiological sciences, founder of the medical physics Ph.D. program at UCLA and winner of the prestigious William D. Coolidge Award -- is not one to retire quietly.

Fittingly, for the last several years he's chaired a committee that conducts a biennial survey of emeriti activity throughout the UC system: the UC Emeriti Biobibliographic Survey, sponsored by the Council of UC Emeriti Associations (CUCEA). The third installment of the survey, covering 1999-2001, will be released next month.

The results of Greenfield's survey -- obtained by mailing questionnaires to all UC emeriti -- reveal an astounding amount of activity. For example, the upcoming survey will show that over the past two years, several emeriti funded their own research and supported others through extramural grants. They wrote 271 books and 1,990 articles, and created and/or performed 200 works of music, dance or theater and four works in film or video. Many continued teaching, with 211 reporting appointments at their home campuses and 109 teaching elsewhere.

"The main purpose of these surveys is to inform the chancellors and the deans of the fact that, at the UC, emeriti are still active," Greenfield said. "They can still do research, they can still teach. And they don't cost very much because they're paid by pension funds."

Greenfield himself has never left UCLA, even though he officially retired in 1982. After receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from New York University, the New York native worked for the U.S. Navy as a civilian scientist from 1940 to 1946. Later, he joined the staff at North American Aviation, where he helped design a nuclear-powered vehicle that could explore space.

"We were not sure what the effects of radiation would be on human beings, so we thought we'd better get a radiologist to help us," Greenfield recalled. He and his colleagues invited Andrew Dowdy, the chair of the radiology department at the newly established UCLA medical school, to help them for three months.

"After that, Dowdy said, 'Mo, if you would be willing to give up these neutrons, I'll give you a bunch of photons,' " Greenfield recalled, smiling.

Greenfield accepted Dowdy's invitation to come to UCLA as an associate professor in 1948. He helped design the clinics and laboratories that the fledgling radiology department would use and watched as the first medical structures were completed in 1955. He founded and became the director of the Medical Physics Graduate Program from 1960 to 1996, during which time he helped to establish the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the American College of Medical Physics and CUCEA.

Lately, Greenfield has been busy with the production of the biobibliographic surveys with the help of Charles Berst, professor emeritus of English. And in his spare time, he enjoys a 40-year-old hobby: meeting monthly with five friends to talk about evolution and related topics.

"The research that's going on worldwide on evolution has continued, so we have fresh material all the time," Greenfield said.