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> Sure, Oppenheimer was a great physicist. But was he as good as, e.g. Teller, Fermi, Feynman, Szilard, Von Neumann, etc? No, he was not. In the documentary Th

> Sure, Oppenheimer was a great physicist. But was he as good as, e.g. Teller, Fermi, Feynman, Szilard, Von Neumann, etc? No, he was not. In the documentary The Day After Trinity there’s an interview with physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe who worked on the Manhattan project and later won a Nobel prize. Oppenheimer’s cognitive abilities are briefly discussed, and Bethe says something like “It quickly became obvious that he was intellectually superior to us.” It’s also noteworthy that Oppenheimer learnt Sanskrit, just so that he could read Bhagavad Gita in the original language. So I think he could hold his own, even against those other geniuses.

freddie_mercury 4y ago
Your (almost) quote helped me find the thing I was trying to remember in my sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34115186&goto=item%3Fid%3D34113825%2334115186 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34115186&goto=item%3Fi... With your quote helping, the reference from the book is: Robert Oppenheimer oversaw all this activity with self-evident competence and an outward composure that almost everyone came to depend upon. “Oppenheimer was probably the best lab director I have ever seen,” Teller repeats, “because of the great mobility of his mind, because of his successful effort to know about practically everything important invented in the laboratory, and also because of his unusual psychological insight into other people which, in the company of physicists, was very much the exception.” “He knew and understood everything that went on in the laboratory,” Bethe concurs, “whether it was chemistry or theoretical physics or machine shop. He could keep it all in his head and coordinate it. It was clear also at Los Alamos that he was intellectually superior to us.” The Theoretical Division leader elaborates: He understood immediately when he heard anything, and fitted it into the general scheme of things and drew the right conclusions. There was just nobody else in that laboratory who came even close to him. In his knowledge. There was human warmth as well. Everybody certainly had the impression that Oppenheimer cared what each particular person was doing. In talking to someone he made it clear that that person’s work was important for the success of the whole project. I don’t remember any occasion at Los Alamos in which he was nasty to any person, whereas before and after the war he was often that way. At Los Alamos he didn’t make anybody feel inferior, not anybody.

freddie_mercury 4y ago

Your (almost) quote helped me find the thing I was trying to remember in my sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34115186&goto=item%3Fid%3D34113825%2334115186 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34115186&goto=item%3Fi... With your quote helping, the reference from the book is: Robert Oppenheimer oversaw all this activity with self-evident competence and an outward composure that almost everyone came to depend upon. “Oppenheimer was probably the best lab director I have ever seen,” Teller repeats, “because of the great mobility of his mind, because of his successful effort to know about practically everything important invented in the laboratory, and also because of his unusual psychological insight into other people which, in the company of physicists, was very much the exception.” “He knew and understood everything that went on in the laboratory,” Bethe concurs, “whether it was chemistry or theoretical physics or machine shop. He could keep it all in his head and coordinate it. It was clear also at Los Alamos that he was intellectually superior to us.” The Theoretical Division leader elaborates: He understood immediately when he heard anything, and fitted it into the general scheme of things and drew the right conclusions. There was just nobody else in that laboratory who came even close to him. In his knowledge. There was human warmth as well. Everybody certainly had the impression that Oppenheimer cared what each particular person was doing. In talking to someone he made it clear that that person’s work was important for the success of the whole project. I don’t remember any occasion at Los Alamos in which he was nasty to any person, whereas before and after the war he was often that way. At Los Alamos he didn’t make anybody feel inferior, not anybody.