J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life

Abraham Pais, Robert P. Crease0195166736, 9780195166736, 9781435614147

The late Abraham Pais wrote the definitive biography of Albert Einstein, “Subtle is the Lord” which won an American Book Award. As a distinguished physicist and Einstein’s colleague, Pais combined a sophisticated understanding of physics with first-hand knowledge of this notoriously private individual, offering rare insights into both. It is his unique double perspective that makes his work so valuable. Now, in Shatterer of Worlds, Abraham Pais offers an illuminating portrait of another eminent colleague, J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the most charismatic and enigmatic figures of modern physics. Pais introduces us to a precocious youth who sped through Harvard in three years, made signal contributions to quantum mechanics while in his twenties, and was instrumental in the growth of American physics in the decade before the Second World War, almost single-handedly putting American physics on the map. Pais paints a revealing portrait of Oppenheimer’s life in Los Alamos, where in twenty remarkable, feverish months, under his inspired leadership, the first atomic bomb was designed and built, a success that made Oppenheimer America’s most famous scientist. Pais, who was his next-door neighbor for many years, describes Oppenheimer’s long tenure as Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, but also shows how Oppenheimer’s intensity and arrogance won him powerful enemies, who would ultimately make him one of the principal victims of the Red Scare of the 1950s. Told with compassion and deep insight, Shatterer of Worlds is the most comprehensive biography of the great physicist available. It is Abraham Pais’s final work, completed after his death by Robert P. Crease, an acclaimed historian of science in his own right.

---

Table of contents :
Contents……Page 8
Foreword……Page 14
Preface……Page 18
Introduction……Page 20
CHAPTER 1 First Encounters……Page 28
CHAPTER 2 Background: Early Years……Page 31
CHAPTER 3 University Studies……Page 35
Caltech……Page 41
Leiden……Page 42
Zurich……Page 44
CHAPTER 5 The California Professor as Teacher……Page 47
More on QED……Page 51
Cosmic Rays……Page 53
Electron-Positron Theory……Page 55
Shower Theory……Page 56
Mesons……Page 57
Astrophysics and Cosmology……Page 58
CHAPTER 7 Oppenheimer’s Opinion of His Own Teaching and Research in California……Page 60
CHEPTER 8 Personal Life in the 1930s……Page 61
CHAPTER 9 “The Shatterer of Worlds”……Page 66
CHAPTER 10 In Which Oppenheimer Enters the World Stage……Page 72
CHAPTER 11 An Atomic Scientist’s Credo……Page 76
CHAPTER 12 The Institute Prior to Oppenheimer’s Arrival……Page 86
The Flexner Years……Page 96
The Aydelotte Years……Page 100
CHAPTER 13 In Which Oppenheimer Is Elected Director of the Institute and Chairman of the General Advisory Committee……Page 104
CHAPTER 14 Oppenheimer’s Early Years as Institute Director……Page 113
“The Great Charismatic Figure”……Page 123
Building Up Physics at the Institute……Page 129
F. J. Dyson……Page 130
C.N.Yang……Page 131
T. D. Lee……Page 132
Sin-itiro Tomonaga……Page 133
David Joseph Bohm……Page 134
John von Neumann……Page 135
Oswald Veblen……Page 136
Shelter Island, June 1947……Page 137
Pocono, March/April 1948……Page 141
Solvay, September/October 1948……Page 143
Rochester I, December 1950……Page 144
Rochester II (January) and III (December) 1952……Page 145
IBM, April 1953……Page 146
Japan, September 1953……Page 148
Rochester IV, January 1954……Page 149
Robert Wilson……Page 150
Hans Bethe……Page 152
Edward Teller……Page 153
Enrico Fermi……Page 156
Robert Serber……Page 157
Niels Bohr……Page 158
Bernice Brode……Page 161
Robert Oppenheimer……Page 163
More Personal Recollections……Page 166
August 1, 1946……Page 171
December 1946……Page 172
The Acheson-Lilienthal Plan……Page 173
The Baruch Plan……Page 178
1946 as the Highest Point of Oppenheimer’s Political Contributions……Page 182
Oppenheimer’s Public Expressions on Atomic Policy: 1947–1948……Page 184
In Which the First Clouds Appear……Page 190
The First Soviet A-Bomb……Page 193
Varia: 1947–1949……Page 195
Shall the United States Develop the Super?……Page 198
Emil Klaus Julius Fuchs et al…….Page 204
The Teller-Ulam Invention……Page 210
Oppenheimer’s Views on the Super……Page 214
The Long Range Objectives Panel……Page 215
Project Vista……Page 216
Project Lincoln……Page 217
1952: Oppenheimer Leaves the General Advisory Committee……Page 218
The Doctrine of Massive Retaliation……Page 220
Operation Candor……Page 221
The Opening Salvos of the Attackers……Page 223
June 5, 1953……Page 224
August 20, 1953……Page 225
November 12, 1953……Page 226
November-December 1953……Page 228
The Oppenheimer-Strauss Meeting, December 1953……Page 229
Eisenhower Erects a “Blank Wall”……Page 231
Preparations for the Hearings……Page 235
Oppenheimer and McCarthy……Page 239
How Einstein and I First Heard……Page 241
First Newspaper Comments……Page 243
Supplemental Material……Page 252
CHAPTER 24 “Open Book”: The Hearing in the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer……Page 254
The Hearing: April 12–May 6, 1954……Page 259
Findings, Appeal, Decision: May 17–June 29……Page 277
First Judgments……Page 286
Post-Mortems……Page 291
Cultural Judgments……Page 292
The Sense of Tragedy……Page 295
CHAPTER 26 Insider in Exile……Page 299
Institute Director……Page 300
Science Impresario……Page 305
Speaker and Author……Page 312
St. John……Page 319
Rehabilitation and Retirement……Page 322
CHAPTER 27 Cloaked Mountain Peak……Page 327
Notes……Page 338
Principal Sources Used……Page 362
A……Page 364
B……Page 365
C……Page 366
D……Page 367
F……Page 368
G……Page 369
I……Page 370
L……Page 371
M……Page 372
O……Page 373
P……Page 374
R……Page 375
S……Page 376
T……Page 378
W……Page 379
Z……Page 380