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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
by 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 agoIt absolutely did, for decades. I would argue that, until the movie, more people knew the name Fermi.
- lolinder 3y agoGoogle 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=%...
- bigger_cheese 3y agoOther way around for me "Fermion" "Fermi-Dirac Statistics" "Fermi Energy Level" etc. There are a lot of things in physics named after Fermi not aware of anything named after Oppenheimer.
- tedsanders 3y agoBorn-Oppenheimer approximation.
- regularfry 3y ago"Fermi estimation" has leaked out of physics into other areas too.
- hinkley 3y agoI lived just close enough to Fermilab that my exposure to both names was fairly even. Probably not true of most people though
- antod 3y agoSurely not. Oppenhiemer "creating" the Atomic Bomb is pretty widespread general knowledge. Nobody outside physics geeks has heard of Fermi. My context is from being outside of the US though.
- krapp 3y agoOppenheimer has an Epic Rap Battle of History, Fermi doesn't. Case closed.
- jjulius 3y ago>Nobody outside physics geeks has heard of Fermi. Plenty of folks who aren't physics geeks have heard of the Fermi Paradox. Source: Am not a physics geek.
- belowen 3y agoIt clearly depends on where do you live. In Italy, Fermi is mostly known, instead of Oppenheimer, as one of the creator of the atomic bomb. It feels like another Marconi/Bell case. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Panisperna_boys https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Panisperna_boys
- lifeonlars 3y agoI think this is actually evidence of what the poster above is referring to - the long-term effects of Oppenheimer being unfairly discredited. Fermi has streets, schools and subway stations named after him all over Italy. Oppenheimer doesn't (at least not to anywhere near the same extent), even in the US, because during the period when this might most likely have happened, towards the end of his life and shortly after his death, he was still widely regarded as being a traitor.
- None4U 3y agoAnyone who has ever pondered the existence of extraterrestrial life has heard of Fermi's paradox, while only history buffs interested in WWII or Japan or the Second Red Scare or alternatively science geeks interested in nuclear explosives have ever heard of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoThe movie as in this new one? Are you serious?
- rob74 3y agoHow can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy? Russians, Sting, 1985 -- so I would say Oppenheimer being the "inventor" of the atomic bomb was (literally) pop culture
- musiciangames 3y ago“In the Soviet Union, a scientist is blinded by the resumption of nuclear testing, and he is reminded that Dr. Robert Oppenheimer’s optimism fell at the first hurdle.” ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’, Billy Bragg 1988
- emmelaich 3y agoFor me it was absolutely Fermi. And Feynman and Teller. But Oppenheimer definitely up there. Oh also Leo fucking Szilard! From wikipedia ... > He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea in 1936, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.
- Beldin 3y ago(Off topic) I thought Teller was the quiet one? ;-)
- JohnBooty 3y agoGenerally speaking, I don't believe anybody's name was permanently tarnished by the red scare, because it turned out to be such an utter farce of a witch hunt. But, at the time, it of course did derail careers and destroy lives.
- thordenmark 3y ago[flagged]
- nelox 3y agoI'm glad communists are in the good books now
- civilitty 3y agoMarvel and Lucas Films need to justify their acquisition cost.
- OO000oo 3y agoThe red scare ruined countless families' lives. It was an absolute atrocity and continues to undermine the interests of working Americans to this day.
- nerpderp82 3y agoIt is the reason union busting is "ok" and get such a bad rap.
- duped 3y agoJoseph McCarthy's name is thoroughly tarnished.
- cwillu 3y agoPolitical Officer: “And the seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a voice cried out from heaven, saying: "It is done." A man with your responsibilities reading about the end of the world. And what's this? "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."” Captain Ramius: “It is an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.” Political Officer: “An American?” Captain Ramius: “Mmm. He invented the atomic bomb. And was later accused of being a communist.” --The Hunt for Red October (1990 movie, not sure its in the book)
- askin4it 3y agoBattling narratives.... Public interest in his politics was relevant. He probably was a fellow traveler so what?
- themitigating 3y agoThank god we are done with accusing people of being communists
- thumbuddy 3y ago[flagged]
- eru 3y agoIt's more common these days (on the Internet) to accuse everyone you disagree with as being fascists. However, even during the red scare, communism/socialism was (and still is) fashionable with the elites. Compare https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-sultan https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-su... and see how McCarthyism might have been a reaction.
- themitigating 3y agoDoesn't matter if it was true or not.
- Dig1t 3y agofascist, racist, bigot, all pejoratives you can attach to someone to shut them up or tear them down.
- hiddencost 3y agoClaiming words with detailed and well documented meanings don't have meanings is specifically a key component of fascism.
- hulitu 3y agoThey don't claim that the words don't have a meaning. They just changed the meaning so that now they are "offending". And offence is a crime for which you can go to jail. So calling someone a nazi can land you in jail.
- tus666 3y ago> Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. How would that tarnish his name today?
- jjulius 3y agoPublic perception doesn't change at the snap of a finger. I'm sure there are plenty of people alive today who grew up thinking "Oppenheimer bad" and would possibly perpetuate that perception down the generational line.
- lostlogin 3y agoIf you ‘show dead’ here, you’ll find how right you are.
- tivert 3y ago> Public perception doesn't change at the snap of a finger. I'm sure there are plenty of people alive today who grew up thinking "Oppenheimer bad" and would possibly perpetuate that perception down the generational line. I had a vague understanding that he had a bad reputation, but always assumed it came from more of an "anti-nuclear activist" angle (because he was responsible for making nuclear weapons real).
- atoav 3y agoThe knowledge of hindsight can be a curse. Don't forget that Oppenheimer is to a certain extent seen as the guy who is responsible of giving humanity the tools to kill itself a thousand times over. The fact that we didn't is good luck, but it could have gone different during many points in the cold war and then you and I wouldn't be able to discuss about this on here. But if you knew about Oppenheimer and still were alive you would probably not think highly of the man. So it doesn't have to do with anti-nuclear (as in: against civil nuclear use) — Oppenheimer was just the prototypical smart guy that failed to predict the consequences of his own actions and by that nearly ended humanity. This makes him an ethically ambivalent figure, and that ambivalence has become a defining trait of the public image of Oppenheimer.
- PixyMisa 3y ago[flagged]
- jasmer 3y ago[dead]
- marsven_422 3y ago[dead]
- XeO3 3y agoFrom Feynman`s biography, on trying to separate the isotopes of uranium: > It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men (Oppenheimer, Compton, Tolman, Smyth, Urey, and Rabi) could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best - summing it all up - without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.
- jareklupinski 3y agothe power of many ego-less minds functioning as one is fascinating
- throw1234651234 3y agoI think this has a lot to do in interest in the topic. It's a lot easier to be engaged when changing the fate of the world than when sitting through another "who is doing what part of the data migration" meeting. Just something to keep in mind.
- rurban 3y agoWe are not talking about the red scare farce (which really was political opposition to his "candor" policies and H-bomb program/genocidal opposition), but we they/are talking why he didn't win the Nobel, even when he did brilliant and ground breaking work. He was considered the most brilliant theoreticist behind Dirac, Schroedinger, Bohr, Pauli and Heisenberg in Goettingen and early Berkeley years. But then he didn't push out that many papers as before, so he didn't win the Nobel as all his other colleagues, below him. He should have won it for the black hole paper at least, but that was too advanced and too theoretical for those folks then. Instead he was an extremely good teacher, manager and later politician, which was more important than advancing physics. E.g. Bethe and many of his students surpassed him in physics, and he was happy with delegation. This article mentions most of it, the book goes far deeper.
- sBqQu3U0wH 3y ago>And thank whatever higher power is out there he did. This. I am so glad Americans killed ~200k mostly Japanese civilians when Japan was already militarily crippled and Germany capitulated three months prior.
- amoss 3y agoSarcasm is cheap, even when a point is indisputable. But when a point is heavily under dispute it comes across as a lack of understanding. While Japan was losing the war they were far from crippled, and had shown that they were willing to continue fighting despite the "partial" destruction of many cities by that point. If you have not watched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War then it provides an interesting point of view to counter the simplistic "the war was already over we only did it to scare the russians" viewpoint.
- hef19898 3y agoJapan was crippled, on every front. By then, it was just a question of when they surrender and not if. By the way, the USSR declaring war on Japan played an equally large role in Japans surrender to the Western Allies as the atomic bombs did. It is funny so, how many people still fail to see the targeted and indiscriminate bombing of civilians done during WW2 by the allies as the war crime it was. Heck, even the RAF bomber command addmitted that in internal memos.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- saiya-jin 3y agoIt takes heaps of irrefutable facts and very strong moral national character (for the lack of better words) to admit fucking up big time, apologizing for it and making yourself a better version thanx to such experience. I'd claim in modern history, on large enough scale only Germany went properly through this, and is still source of a lot of guilt in their population. Allied fire bombings of whole cities, turks doing Armenian genocide, Japanese atrocities in China, russians with whatever they did anywhere in past 50 years etc... I see rather ignorance and lies and desperate attempts to look the other way rather than anything else.