26 ms·

Hollywood movie aside, just how good a physicist was Oppenheimer?

166 points by andrewl 3y ago

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_a9 3y ago
Veritasium posted a good video about Oppenheimer the other day if you have 32 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Freeman Dyson's expansive 1997 interview for "Web of Stories" has his opinions. Starts off around Episode 78 and several subsequent fragments. Dyson describes a very dogmatic man that resisted what the young people at the time were doing, who didn't even believe in his own (Oppenheimer's) landmark results in black holes, and who needed the limelight (Episode 83). Dyson even says Oppenheimer may have been better off for having had his clearance revoked (Episode 96). Despite all that, he was ready to leave the IAS if Oppenheimer had been fired as its Director (Episode 97). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN&index=78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...
- dralley 3y ago
  >who didn't even believe in his own (Oppenheimer's) landmark results in black holes Einstein was famously skeptical and dogmatic about a lot of his own "landmark results", i.e. "God doesn't play dice with the universe", and Feynman was a massive attention ...attractor. He's hardly in bad company if those are the worst criticisms.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
    There's a lot more in that interview. Oppenheimer would not listen to Dyson's QED seminar until Bethe intervened. Dyson's Feynman stories are also very interesting. Gell-Mann settled scores with Feynman and several others on his own Web of Stories session.
    - dralley 3y ago
      The problem is that a lot of these guys, frankly, had quite large egos, and it's not terribly surprising that there would be some butting of heads and factionalism / cliques. I'm not saying he's wrong - but within 30 seconds of the start of your clip Dyson also criticizes Niels Bohr, Max Born, Schrodinger, and Heisenburg in the same breath as Oppenheimer. Parsing out exactly how much to take seriously, and how much is just the outcome of rivalry between a bunch of brilliant people with very strong beliefs, strong personalities, strong egos and the "eccentricity" that often comes with brilliance, being forced to live with each other for years - is a bit difficult. I've seen Gell-Mann's interview too, and I don't find what he said about Feynman very surprising, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if others had similar but different complaints about him.
      - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
        If this cat may look at that king, I have ambivalent feelings about Dyson. But, taken as a whole, I think he is aware of what his own hubris and what it cost him to think the way he did at the time. He is wistful about not talking with Weyl, Einstein, or other Institute Faculty - "A great opportunity lost." Dyson does speak very fondly of many. Feynman, Bethe, Peierls, Besicovich, Morette, Margulis, Max, Singer, and a raft of others. Gell-Mann just seemed angry from start to finish all but accusing Schwinger of improper behavior and ripping Feynman for "collecting anecdotes about himself". Web of Stories talked to (among others) Dyson, Bethe, Knuth, Wheeler, and Gell-Mann and the latter is an outlier in his manner.
        dralley 3y ago
        In any case Dyson seems to like Bethe quite a bit, and Bethe seems to have rated Oppenheimer highly as a leader at Los Alamos and suggested that was the general opinion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIlNSgAHv5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIlNSgAHv5c
        OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
        @dralley - Can't reply to your post re: Dyson and Bethe but that is a masterpiece of understatement! From what I can tell, Bethe was esteemed without being envied. A truly rare accomplishment.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    As an aside, this is a very common misinterpretation of Einstein's comments. After its discovery, there was a major disagreement about how to interpret quantum mechanics. Bohr, among others, advocated for a view that quantum mechanics was a fundamentally probabilistic phenomena with no direct causal explanation. Einstein vehemently disagreed with this, and felt that the universe was absolutely causal in nature. And the only reason that an explanation that rejected determinism/causality fit so well was due to a lack of research or knowledge. That's the context where many of his most famous comments come from. He was not skeptical of his own results or views, but of others' interpretations. It's the same for "Spooky action at a distance." Einstein had a deeply held belief that the universe was causal and logical, which he held to his death. Incidentally, the probabilistic explanation, "The Copenhagen Interpretation", ultimately 'won.' It's one of the best examples of why equating science with consensus is such an odd view. The greatest physicist of all time held a fringe view on the very topic that he was 'the father' of. His arguing endlessly in support of his view, contrary to the consensus, only made for better science for all. To say nothing of some of the most amazing debates in history, with Einstein and Bohr having numerous live public debates over many years, constantly aiming to one-up each other.
    - staunton 3y ago
      > "The Copenhagen Interpretation", ultimately 'won.' The debates are ongoing and "Copenhagen" (which really isn't a unified and coherent view anyway) is currently losing (among physicists, it will take long to take over in more established areas such as school education or media).
    - goatlover 3y ago
      Won a popularity contest in the past because Bohr was very influential among his peers. But it always left enough physicists dissatisfied to motivate investigation into alternative interpretations, and Many Worlds is one of the interpretations which seems to be gaining followers.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      It interesting that Feynman describes Dirac in sentiments that aren’t far from what you’ve expressed about Einstein. Death, as often as not, saves us from old modes of thinking. If we ever invent immortality, we are in big trouble. That won’t be the last thing we invent, but it will precede the last thing by no more than twenty years. Thirty at the outside.
duxup 3y ago
> A-bomb architect “was no Einstein,” historian says, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes As a layman I find it hard to parse the difference from “no Einstein” but still doing “Nobel-level” work. The interview didn’t really help explain it.
- luxuryballs 3y ago
  Considering the throng people who have received one I’m not even sure “Nobel-level” is actually about the work.
- mrfox321 3y ago
  Einstein expanded several fields of physics. Special + general relativity Microscopic definition of Brownian motion Photoelectric effect Mass-energy equivalence
  - eru 3y ago
    An interesting bit of trivia is that Einstein explicitly did not get his Nobel for relativity. That was still considered too controversial at the time. Another bit: at the time Einstein worked on Brownian motion the theory of atoms was still not entirely accepted by everyone. His worked helped settle the matter.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      I would say that after a century of continuous successes, the theory of atoms was very well accepted by everyone. The matter of the existence of the atoms has become pretty much settled in 1865, when Johann Josef Loschmidt was the first who determined the size and mass of the atoms, and then his results were well used by others, like Maxwell and Stoney (who determined the electric charge of the atoms). Nevertheless, the improved theory due to Einstein has lead to more precise results about the atom properties.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Actually I consider that by far the most valuable theoretical advance due to Einstein is the concept of stimulated emission, besides spontaneous emission and absorption, which has lead to the development of masers, lasers, atomic clocks and many other related devices, which have become an indispensable part of modern life. This is also one of few of his works, together with the general relativity theory that he published around the same time during WWI, where he introduced new mathematical relationships between physical quantities, instead of just giving new interpretations to relationships already found by others.
tschwimmer 3y ago
It seems like the answer based on this article is "pretty good." The evidence in favor of this is his paper on collapsing stars causing black holes (which the author suggests would have won him a Nobel Prize in other circumstances) and that he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself. That's a pretty good case in my book.
- defrost 3y ago
  Good physicist - yes, no question. Head of the program that implemented a conceptual design, yes, no question. > he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself. Very questionable. It took multiple attempts by the MAUD committee to convince both US DoD and US physicists that an atomic bomb was even possible let alone feasible (ie practical to build (just) and affordable (just)). After ignoring several letters, including one from Einstein, it took a personal visit from the Australian physicist Mark Oliphant to campaign at the DoD and to then walk Oppenheimer through the Frisch–Peierls memorandum (students of Oliphant) and convince Oppenheimer to run the calculations on a compressed spherical ball of uranium isotopes (seperated by a process developed by Oliphant) himself. It's a rarely taught and oft forgotten piece of nuclear history that the impetus and conceptual design for the Manhatten project originated from non US citizens outside of the USofA.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - kirse 3y ago
    It's a rarely taught and oft forgotten piece of nuclear history that the impetus and conceptual design for the Manhatten project originated from non US citizens outside of the USofA. Is it really forgotten? It's pretty well known that Operation Paperclip shoveled loads of foreign scientists into the USA. Hans Bethe, the Teller-Ulam design etc. all created by immigrants. The original a-bomb memorandum was all foreign. Much of the USA's present technical superiority is due to the massive brain drain during WW2, I think most reasonably informed folks understand that the USA is largely a country of immigrants united by ideals under one banner, not a homogeneous people group.
dgllghr 3y ago
Oppenheimer was a genius, but his superpower was being good at both theoretical and practical physics. He did Nobel-prize level work and also ran the Manhattan Project. I think that’s comparable to getting the gold medal at the Olympics for 2 different sports. General Leslie Groves thought very highly of Oppenheimer, and if you got the stamp of approval from Groves, you were doing something right. Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It probably would have been the Oppenheimer Medal if it weren’t for Senator McCarthy. Oppenheimer beat Heisenberg (also a pretty smart guy) to the bomb and not by a little either. And thank whatever higher power is out there he did. (I am reusing most of my comment from a different story)
- civilitty 3y ago
  > Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It's ironic to me that this is the first time I'm hearing that he was caught up in the red scare. I mean I'm no historian but apparently didn't tarnish his name all that much! :-)
  - Loughla 3y ago
    It absolutely did, for decades. I would argue that, until the movie, more people knew the name Fermi.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Google trends would disagree with you there [0]. Anecdotally, I've only ever heard the name Fermi in the phrase Fermi Paradox. Oppenheimer I know much more about, and I only know there's a movie about him because it's all over HN this month. I'm sure that the red scare did tarnish his name for decades, but it looks to me like those decades had ended by 2004 when Google's trends pick up. [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F09qxy,%2Fm%2F02sdx&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
galkk 3y ago
Obligatory old parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg, they actually touch quite a few of facts from biography.
anta40 3y ago
"Also, in the U.S., the empirical way of approaching physics was predominant" So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models/math equations?
- defrost 3y ago
  Sure, bashing already existing lego bricks together to see how they combine. You didn't quote the immediately following: [whereas European theorists were pursuing new concepts] which explains a great deal. US physicists were focused on power and making bigger "piles" than had been made in Rutherfords Lab. It was European (and Australian and New Zealand) physicists that thought of something new, and worked out the detailas, and developed the means of seperation. These were the things that were vital to the creation of an atomic bomb .. along with a lot of mining and processing and further refining and isotopic seperation.
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models/math equations? The problem with that approach is: It inevitably leads to stagnation. If all I do is build practical stuff from what exists, I will get very big, very efficient, very impressive steam engines. But I will never arrive at an internal combustion engine. Because that requires exploring another path that, in the beginning, and probably for quite some time, will be less efficient compared to my best steam engines.
  - anta40 3y ago
    Yep. That's why in the movie, Bohr (if I'm not mistaken) saw Oppenheimer going to teach quantum physics in US to be... funny.
rustybolt 3y ago
I really don't understand this American attitude where everything someone does always has to be a revelation like never seen before. Oppenheimer was clearly an extremely capable physicist, and to portray him as "no Einstein" is just lazy, dishonest, and plainly ignorant. There was a similar thread were people were talking about Alan Turings running times, and concluding that they are worthless compared to modern-day Olympic athletes. I mean, if that's really the thing you want to point out about Alan Turing, to me that just demonstrates that you have some issues.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jayd16 3y ago
    That national character flaw got us to the moon.
    - dtech 3y ago
      Which is another weird thing. US declared the space race "won" when they got to the moon, despite being behind in all other milestones like sattelite and manned space flight. If SU got to the moon first US would've ignored it too and said Mars was the real target...
      - mjamesaustin 3y ago
        There's a show about that exact scenario! For All Mankind.
        arethuza 3y ago
        I love For All Mankind - largely because it portrays the future I used to think we were going to have when I was a kid in the 1970s.
marsten 3y ago
From the accounts I've read of other scientists in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer had a connector style of personality that made him very well-suited to the role. For this type of job you don't want an Einstein who is prone to thinking deeply on one problem for weeks at a time. Oppenheimer seemed to be the one person who understand broadly what everyone was doing.
nologic01 3y ago
Ranking scientific achievement is a very dodgy pursuit and physics is no exception. There is a path dependence that makes it almost impossible to compare individuals that worked in different eras. This is hinted at by the famous "standing on shoulders of giants" quote of Newton and is further complemented by something I believe Lev Landau has expressed using the phrase "all the brides are taken" (he felt there weren't big enough problems for him to have a chance to measure against the "greats)" There is one and only Universe, the understanding of which by humans is a single historical trajectory. There is no possibility to control for any variable and repeat the experiment. Would the absence of the specific "Newton" individual delay the process of understanding the physical works? by how much? A few years, decades, centuries? Taking into account that ideas and possibilities tend to "float" in the environment of a particular era but also the presence of non-linear loops such as: influential scientists that get recognized early on can stall further development during their own lifetime! Making the best of a risky task would require that we only compare apples with apples, individuals of a particular era and operating in the same information environment. So in this instance, ranking Oppenheimer against individuals of his generation only. Having said all that, imho there is really nobody like Einstein. Ever since the 18th century most physics is in a sense "programmatic". There is a defined mental framework that people apply repeatedly to an ever growing range of accessible or relevant domains. Einstein's journey created an entire new paradigm (the fabric on which physics plays out is itself physics) and one we still have not fully understood. The most exciting possibility is that somebody might be able to piece together that growing observational hints from cosmology and the various puzzles of black holes to take that paradigm to the next stage.
epolanski 3y ago
Not sure why so many people are offended by the fact that the interviewed person says he was no Einstein. There's also quite much context added as to why his contributions were in some ways not comparable to the likes of these other scientists. I mean, if you have a great developer who's even better as a manager because he has both the ability to manage and understand technical problems, is it an offense to say that "he wasn't John Carmack?".
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occamschainsaw 3y ago
In my field, we invoke the name of Oppenheimer (the Born-Oppenheimer approximation[0,1]) in many of our formulations, every paper we write or talk we give. He did this work when he was a 23 year old grad student. He seems to have led a complex life. Either ways, I don't see the point of this article. While building on the shoulder of giants, he managed to lead the Manhattan project to fruition under the most existential of deadlines. We could even argue that this opening of Pandora's box has had the most consequential direct impact on modern society. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born–Oppenheimer_approximation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born–Oppenheimer_approximation [1] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k15386r/f475.item https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k15386r/f475.item - page 457
southernplaces7 3y ago
For all his obviously high intelligence and more than anything, organizational ability in partly directing the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer sort of pales in comparison to the true genius and all-around polymath who worked on the same project, and so many, many others. John Von-Neuman. Even among many other extremely brilliant minds he was recognized for being exceptional. Some of the quotes from other scientists in the Wikipedia link below really hammer home his particularly, peculiarly unique brilliance. I've never seen Oppenheimer described this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
danans 3y ago
Oppenheimer will forever be associated with both delivering the the nuclear weapon and with his own reflection on what he had done, whether triumph or regret. His legacy is equally sociological as it is scientific or technological. To pick him apart and view him only through the lens of his physics research is very myopic, equivalent to picking apart whether Bill Gates was a great programmer.
jbullock35 3y ago
If memory serves, Jeremy Bernstein had a beautiful essay that spoke to this question: "The Merely Very Good." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available online in any good format. But it's been collected in at least two volumes, including *The Best American Essays 1998."
SomethingNew2 3y ago
I think the author makes a fair point that Oppenheimer was not a revolutionary physicist like Einstein or Feynman, but rather a synthesizer and organizer who brought together diverse ideas and people to achieve a common goal. I wonder how much of his success was due to his charisma and leadership skills, and how much was due to his scientific vision and intuition. I also wonder how he dealt with the ethical dilemmas and moral consequences of his work on the atomic bomb. Did he ever regret his involvement or try to prevent further nuclear proliferation? How did he cope with the political pressure and scrutiny that he faced after the war?
1970-01-01 3y ago
Since the movie's release, a deluge of edits are occurring on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenheimer&action=history&offset=&limit=250 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenhe...
leephillips 3y ago
For a very different take on Oppenheimer, from someone who knew him, see this book: Freund, Peter (2007) A Passion For Discovery, World Scientific Publishing Company. Available from: http://www.amazon.com/Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund/dp/9812772146 http://www.amazon.com/Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund/dp/...
simple10 3y ago
Fascinating. The article implies Oppenheimer was chosen partially because Groves could control him due to Oppenheimer's loose association with the Communist party.
sizzle 3y ago
Why is no one talking about Leo Szilard?
bilqis 3y ago
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html

166 points by andrewl 3y ago

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_a9 3y ago

Veritasium posted a good video about Oppenheimer the other day if you have 32 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

Freeman Dyson's expansive 1997 interview for "Web of Stories" has his opinions. Starts off around Episode 78 and several subsequent fragments. Dyson describes a very dogmatic man that resisted what the young people at the time were doing, who didn't even believe in his own (Oppenheimer's) landmark results in black holes, and who needed the limelight (Episode 83). Dyson even says Oppenheimer may have been better off for having had his clearance revoked (Episode 96). Despite all that, he was ready to leave the IAS if Oppenheimer had been fired as its Director (Episode 97). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN&index=78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...

dralley 3y ago
>who didn't even believe in his own (Oppenheimer's) landmark results in black holes Einstein was famously skeptical and dogmatic about a lot of his own "landmark results", i.e. "God doesn't play dice with the universe", and Feynman was a massive attention ...attractor. He's hardly in bad company if those are the worst criticisms.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
  There's a lot more in that interview. Oppenheimer would not listen to Dyson's QED seminar until Bethe intervened. Dyson's Feynman stories are also very interesting. Gell-Mann settled scores with Feynman and several others on his own Web of Stories session.
  - dralley 3y ago
    The problem is that a lot of these guys, frankly, had quite large egos, and it's not terribly surprising that there would be some butting of heads and factionalism / cliques. I'm not saying he's wrong - but within 30 seconds of the start of your clip Dyson also criticizes Niels Bohr, Max Born, Schrodinger, and Heisenburg in the same breath as Oppenheimer. Parsing out exactly how much to take seriously, and how much is just the outcome of rivalry between a bunch of brilliant people with very strong beliefs, strong personalities, strong egos and the "eccentricity" that often comes with brilliance, being forced to live with each other for years - is a bit difficult. I've seen Gell-Mann's interview too, and I don't find what he said about Feynman very surprising, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if others had similar but different complaints about him.
    - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
      If this cat may look at that king, I have ambivalent feelings about Dyson. But, taken as a whole, I think he is aware of what his own hubris and what it cost him to think the way he did at the time. He is wistful about not talking with Weyl, Einstein, or other Institute Faculty - "A great opportunity lost." Dyson does speak very fondly of many. Feynman, Bethe, Peierls, Besicovich, Morette, Margulis, Max, Singer, and a raft of others. Gell-Mann just seemed angry from start to finish all but accusing Schwinger of improper behavior and ripping Feynman for "collecting anecdotes about himself". Web of Stories talked to (among others) Dyson, Bethe, Knuth, Wheeler, and Gell-Mann and the latter is an outlier in his manner.
      - dralley 3y ago
        In any case Dyson seems to like Bethe quite a bit, and Bethe seems to have rated Oppenheimer highly as a leader at Los Alamos and suggested that was the general opinion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIlNSgAHv5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIlNSgAHv5c
      - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
        @dralley - Can't reply to your post re: Dyson and Bethe but that is a masterpiece of understatement! From what I can tell, Bethe was esteemed without being envied. A truly rare accomplishment.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  As an aside, this is a very common misinterpretation of Einstein's comments. After its discovery, there was a major disagreement about how to interpret quantum mechanics. Bohr, among others, advocated for a view that quantum mechanics was a fundamentally probabilistic phenomena with no direct causal explanation. Einstein vehemently disagreed with this, and felt that the universe was absolutely causal in nature. And the only reason that an explanation that rejected determinism/causality fit so well was due to a lack of research or knowledge. That's the context where many of his most famous comments come from. He was not skeptical of his own results or views, but of others' interpretations. It's the same for "Spooky action at a distance." Einstein had a deeply held belief that the universe was causal and logical, which he held to his death. Incidentally, the probabilistic explanation, "The Copenhagen Interpretation", ultimately 'won.' It's one of the best examples of why equating science with consensus is such an odd view. The greatest physicist of all time held a fringe view on the very topic that he was 'the father' of. His arguing endlessly in support of his view, contrary to the consensus, only made for better science for all. To say nothing of some of the most amazing debates in history, with Einstein and Bohr having numerous live public debates over many years, constantly aiming to one-up each other.
  - staunton 3y ago
    > "The Copenhagen Interpretation", ultimately 'won.' The debates are ongoing and "Copenhagen" (which really isn't a unified and coherent view anyway) is currently losing (among physicists, it will take long to take over in more established areas such as school education or media).
  - goatlover 3y ago
    Won a popularity contest in the past because Bohr was very influential among his peers. But it always left enough physicists dissatisfied to motivate investigation into alternative interpretations, and Many Worlds is one of the interpretations which seems to be gaining followers.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    It interesting that Feynman describes Dirac in sentiments that aren’t far from what you’ve expressed about Einstein. Death, as often as not, saves us from old modes of thinking. If we ever invent immortality, we are in big trouble. That won’t be the last thing we invent, but it will precede the last thing by no more than twenty years. Thirty at the outside.

duxup 3y ago

> A-bomb architect “was no Einstein,” historian says, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes As a layman I find it hard to parse the difference from “no Einstein” but still doing “Nobel-level” work. The interview didn’t really help explain it.

luxuryballs 3y ago
Considering the throng people who have received one I’m not even sure “Nobel-level” is actually about the work.
mrfox321 3y ago
Einstein expanded several fields of physics. Special + general relativity Microscopic definition of Brownian motion Photoelectric effect Mass-energy equivalence
- eru 3y ago
  An interesting bit of trivia is that Einstein explicitly did not get his Nobel for relativity. That was still considered too controversial at the time. Another bit: at the time Einstein worked on Brownian motion the theory of atoms was still not entirely accepted by everyone. His worked helped settle the matter.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    I would say that after a century of continuous successes, the theory of atoms was very well accepted by everyone. The matter of the existence of the atoms has become pretty much settled in 1865, when Johann Josef Loschmidt was the first who determined the size and mass of the atoms, and then his results were well used by others, like Maxwell and Stoney (who determined the electric charge of the atoms). Nevertheless, the improved theory due to Einstein has lead to more precise results about the atom properties.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Actually I consider that by far the most valuable theoretical advance due to Einstein is the concept of stimulated emission, besides spontaneous emission and absorption, which has lead to the development of masers, lasers, atomic clocks and many other related devices, which have become an indispensable part of modern life. This is also one of few of his works, together with the general relativity theory that he published around the same time during WWI, where he introduced new mathematical relationships between physical quantities, instead of just giving new interpretations to relationships already found by others.

tschwimmer 3y ago

It seems like the answer based on this article is "pretty good." The evidence in favor of this is his paper on collapsing stars causing black holes (which the author suggests would have won him a Nobel Prize in other circumstances) and that he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself. That's a pretty good case in my book.

defrost 3y ago
Good physicist - yes, no question. Head of the program that implemented a conceptual design, yes, no question. > he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself. Very questionable. It took multiple attempts by the MAUD committee to convince both US DoD and US physicists that an atomic bomb was even possible let alone feasible (ie practical to build (just) and affordable (just)). After ignoring several letters, including one from Einstein, it took a personal visit from the Australian physicist Mark Oliphant to campaign at the DoD and to then walk Oppenheimer through the Frisch–Peierls memorandum (students of Oliphant) and convince Oppenheimer to run the calculations on a compressed spherical ball of uranium isotopes (seperated by a process developed by Oliphant) himself. It's a rarely taught and oft forgotten piece of nuclear history that the impetus and conceptual design for the Manhatten project originated from non US citizens outside of the USofA.
- deleted 3y ago
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- kirse 3y ago
  It's a rarely taught and oft forgotten piece of nuclear history that the impetus and conceptual design for the Manhatten project originated from non US citizens outside of the USofA. Is it really forgotten? It's pretty well known that Operation Paperclip shoveled loads of foreign scientists into the USA. Hans Bethe, the Teller-Ulam design etc. all created by immigrants. The original a-bomb memorandum was all foreign. Much of the USA's present technical superiority is due to the massive brain drain during WW2, I think most reasonably informed folks understand that the USA is largely a country of immigrants united by ideals under one banner, not a homogeneous people group.

dgllghr 3y ago

Oppenheimer was a genius, but his superpower was being good at both theoretical and practical physics. He did Nobel-prize level work and also ran the Manhattan Project. I think that’s comparable to getting the gold medal at the Olympics for 2 different sports. General Leslie Groves thought very highly of Oppenheimer, and if you got the stamp of approval from Groves, you were doing something right. Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It probably would have been the Oppenheimer Medal if it weren’t for Senator McCarthy. Oppenheimer beat Heisenberg (also a pretty smart guy) to the bomb and not by a little either. And thank whatever higher power is out there he did. (I am reusing most of my comment from a different story)

civilitty 3y ago
> Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It's ironic to me that this is the first time I'm hearing that he was caught up in the red scare. I mean I'm no historian but apparently didn't tarnish his name all that much! :-)
- Loughla 3y ago
  It absolutely did, for decades. I would argue that, until the movie, more people knew the name Fermi.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Google trends would disagree with you there [0]. Anecdotally, I've only ever heard the name Fermi in the phrase Fermi Paradox. Oppenheimer I know much more about, and I only know there's a movie about him because it's all over HN this month. I'm sure that the red scare did tarnish his name for decades, but it looks to me like those decades had ended by 2004 when Google's trends pick up. [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F09qxy,%2Fm%2F02sdx&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

galkk 3y ago

Obligatory old parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg, they actually touch quite a few of facts from biography.

anta40 3y ago

"Also, in the U.S., the empirical way of approaching physics was predominant" So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models/math equations?

defrost 3y ago
Sure, bashing already existing lego bricks together to see how they combine. You didn't quote the immediately following: [whereas European theorists were pursuing new concepts] which explains a great deal. US physicists were focused on power and making bigger "piles" than had been made in Rutherfords Lab. It was European (and Australian and New Zealand) physicists that thought of something new, and worked out the detailas, and developed the means of seperation. These were the things that were vital to the creation of an atomic bomb .. along with a lot of mining and processing and further refining and isotopic seperation.
usrbinbash 3y ago
> So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models/math equations? The problem with that approach is: It inevitably leads to stagnation. If all I do is build practical stuff from what exists, I will get very big, very efficient, very impressive steam engines. But I will never arrive at an internal combustion engine. Because that requires exploring another path that, in the beginning, and probably for quite some time, will be less efficient compared to my best steam engines.
- anta40 3y ago
  Yep. That's why in the movie, Bohr (if I'm not mistaken) saw Oppenheimer going to teach quantum physics in US to be... funny.

rustybolt 3y ago

I really don't understand this American attitude where everything someone does always has to be a revelation like never seen before. Oppenheimer was clearly an extremely capable physicist, and to portray him as "no Einstein" is just lazy, dishonest, and plainly ignorant. There was a similar thread were people were talking about Alan Turings running times, and concluding that they are worthless compared to modern-day Olympic athletes. I mean, if that's really the thing you want to point out about Alan Turing, to me that just demonstrates that you have some issues.

FreshStart 3y ago
[flagged]
- jayd16 3y ago
  That national character flaw got us to the moon.
  - dtech 3y ago
    Which is another weird thing. US declared the space race "won" when they got to the moon, despite being behind in all other milestones like sattelite and manned space flight. If SU got to the moon first US would've ignored it too and said Mars was the real target...
    - mjamesaustin 3y ago
      There's a show about that exact scenario! For All Mankind.
      - arethuza 3y ago
        I love For All Mankind - largely because it portrays the future I used to think we were going to have when I was a kid in the 1970s.

marsten 3y ago

From the accounts I've read of other scientists in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer had a connector style of personality that made him very well-suited to the role. For this type of job you don't want an Einstein who is prone to thinking deeply on one problem for weeks at a time. Oppenheimer seemed to be the one person who understand broadly what everyone was doing.

nologic01 3y ago

Ranking scientific achievement is a very dodgy pursuit and physics is no exception. There is a path dependence that makes it almost impossible to compare individuals that worked in different eras. This is hinted at by the famous "standing on shoulders of giants" quote of Newton and is further complemented by something I believe Lev Landau has expressed using the phrase "all the brides are taken" (he felt there weren't big enough problems for him to have a chance to measure against the "greats)" There is one and only Universe, the understanding of which by humans is a single historical trajectory. There is no possibility to control for any variable and repeat the experiment. Would the absence of the specific "Newton" individual delay the process of understanding the physical works? by how much? A few years, decades, centuries? Taking into account that ideas and possibilities tend to "float" in the environment of a particular era but also the presence of non-linear loops such as: influential scientists that get recognized early on can stall further development during their own lifetime! Making the best of a risky task would require that we only compare apples with apples, individuals of a particular era and operating in the same information environment. So in this instance, ranking Oppenheimer against individuals of his generation only. Having said all that, imho there is really nobody like Einstein. Ever since the 18th century most physics is in a sense "programmatic". There is a defined mental framework that people apply repeatedly to an ever growing range of accessible or relevant domains. Einstein's journey created an entire new paradigm (the fabric on which physics plays out is itself physics) and one we still have not fully understood. The most exciting possibility is that somebody might be able to piece together that growing observational hints from cosmology and the various puzzles of black holes to take that paradigm to the next stage.

epolanski 3y ago

Not sure why so many people are offended by the fact that the interviewed person says he was no Einstein. There's also quite much context added as to why his contributions were in some ways not comparable to the likes of these other scientists. I mean, if you have a great developer who's even better as a manager because he has both the ability to manage and understand technical problems, is it an offense to say that "he wasn't John Carmack?".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

occamschainsaw 3y ago

In my field, we invoke the name of Oppenheimer (the Born-Oppenheimer approximation[0,1]) in many of our formulations, every paper we write or talk we give. He did this work when he was a 23 year old grad student. He seems to have led a complex life. Either ways, I don't see the point of this article. While building on the shoulder of giants, he managed to lead the Manhattan project to fruition under the most existential of deadlines. We could even argue that this opening of Pandora's box has had the most consequential direct impact on modern society. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born–Oppenheimer_approximation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born–Oppenheimer_approximation [1] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k15386r/f475.item https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k15386r/f475.item - page 457

southernplaces7 3y ago

For all his obviously high intelligence and more than anything, organizational ability in partly directing the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer sort of pales in comparison to the true genius and all-around polymath who worked on the same project, and so many, many others. John Von-Neuman. Even among many other extremely brilliant minds he was recognized for being exceptional. Some of the quotes from other scientists in the Wikipedia link below really hammer home his particularly, peculiarly unique brilliance. I've never seen Oppenheimer described this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

danans 3y ago

Oppenheimer will forever be associated with both delivering the the nuclear weapon and with his own reflection on what he had done, whether triumph or regret. His legacy is equally sociological as it is scientific or technological. To pick him apart and view him only through the lens of his physics research is very myopic, equivalent to picking apart whether Bill Gates was a great programmer.

jbullock35 3y ago

If memory serves, Jeremy Bernstein had a beautiful essay that spoke to this question: "The Merely Very Good." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available online in any good format. But it's been collected in at least two volumes, including *The Best American Essays 1998."

SomethingNew2 3y ago

I think the author makes a fair point that Oppenheimer was not a revolutionary physicist like Einstein or Feynman, but rather a synthesizer and organizer who brought together diverse ideas and people to achieve a common goal. I wonder how much of his success was due to his charisma and leadership skills, and how much was due to his scientific vision and intuition. I also wonder how he dealt with the ethical dilemmas and moral consequences of his work on the atomic bomb. Did he ever regret his involvement or try to prevent further nuclear proliferation? How did he cope with the political pressure and scrutiny that he faced after the war?

1970-01-01 3y ago

Since the movie's release, a deluge of edits are occurring on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenheimer&action=history&offset=&limit=250 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenhe...

leephillips 3y ago

For a very different take on Oppenheimer, from someone who knew him, see this book: Freund, Peter (2007) A Passion For Discovery, World Scientific Publishing Company. Available from: http://www.amazon.com/Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund/dp/9812772146 http://www.amazon.com/Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund/dp/...

simple10 3y ago

Fascinating. The article implies Oppenheimer was chosen partially because Groves could control him due to Oppenheimer's loose association with the Communist party.

sizzle 3y ago

Why is no one talking about Leo Szilard?

bilqis 3y ago

http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html