American Prometheus is the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and apparently the inspiration for the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie. I picked up having recently read the story of the Atomic Bomb and the Hydrogen Bomb, and I expected to already know most of the highlights. But since those other books didn't cover Oppenheimer in detail, I decided it would be worth it to get a good understanding of how Oppenheimer lead the effort on the atomic bomb.
In some sense, I was disappointed, because the book didn't cover much of his success as an administrator. Part of it is because the authors aren't particularly interested in engineering management (the Manhattan project was effectively a huge engineering project). What it did cover in detail was Oppenheimer's political activities in Berkeley and his dalliance with communism, but of course, that was because American Capitalism in the 1920s and 30s were so bleak:
By 1935, it was not at all unusual for Americans who were concerned with economic justice—including many New Deal liberals—to identify with the Communist movement. Many laborers, as well as writers, journalists and teachers, supported the most radical features of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And even if most intellectuals didn’t actually join the Communist Party, their hearts lay with a populist movement that promised a just world steeped in a culture of egalitarianism...There was a lot of talk and not much action, which frustrated Frank. “We tried to integrate the city swimming pool,” he said. “They just allowed blacks in Wednesday afternoon and evening, and then they drained the pool Thursday morning.” But despite their efforts, the pool remained segregated. (kindle loc 2621-2631)
When I got to the part where Oppenheimer took on faculty roles at both Caltech and Berkeley, I was finally intrigued. Oppenheimer took a very deliberate and targeted approach in his teaching:
Oppenheimer thought that no one could be expected to learn quantum mechanics from books alone; the verbal wrestling inherent in the process of explanation is what opens the door to understanding. He never gave the same lecture twice. “He was very keenly aware,” Weinberg recalled, “of the people in his class.” He could look into the faces of his audience and suddenly decide to change his entire approach because he had sensed what their particular difficulties were with the subject at hand. Once he gave an entire lecture on a problem he knew would pique the interest of just one student. Afterwards, that student rushed up to him and said he wanted permission to tackle the problem. Oppenheimer replied, “Good, that’s why I gave the seminar.” (kindle loc 3354)
He even laid traps for his students:
One day when Weinberg was in Oppenheimer’s office, he began rummaging through papers stacked on the trestle table in the center of the room. Picking out one paper, he began reading the first paragraph, oblivious to Oppie’s irritated look. “This is an excellent proposal,” Weinberg exclaimed, “I’d sure as hell like to work on it.” To his astonishment, Oppenheimer replied curtly, “Put that down; put it back where you found it.” When Weinberg asked what he had done wrong, Oppenheimer said, “That was not for you to find.” A few weeks later, Weinberg heard that another student who was struggling to find a thesis topic had begun work on the proposal he had read that day. “[The student] was a very genial, decent man,” Weinberg recalled. “But, unlike a few of us who enjoyed the kind of challenge that Oppie threw out like sparks, he was often baffled and nonplussed and ill at ease. Nobody had the courage to tell him, ‘Look, you’re out of your depth.’ ” Weinberg now realized that Oppie had planted this thesis problem for this very student. It was a distinctly easy problem, “But it was perfect for him,” Weinberg said, “and it got him his Ph.D. It would have been difficult for him to get it with Oppie if Oppie had treated him the way he treated me or Phil Morrison or Sid Dancoff.” Instead, Weinberg insisted years later, Oppie nurtured this student as a father would have treated a baby learning to walk. “He waited for him to discover that proposal accidentally, on his own terms, to pick it up and to express his interest, to find his way to it. . . . He needed special treatment, and by God, Oppie was going to give it to him. It showed a great deal of love, sympathy and human understanding.” The student in question, Weinberg reported, went on to do distinguished work as an applied physicist. (kindle loc 3364)
I certainly don't remember any of my professors at grad school being so kind-hearted! There's a good explanation right there was to why he was held in such high regard amongst physicists even though he never won the Nobel prize --- his social skills were outstanding. In one story, he listened to a conflict between two groups, and at the end of the listening session summarized the problems as discussed in such a way that the solution was obvious to both groups. That required both technical and social acumen, as well as a willingness to listen. Some of the best engineering managers I've ever worked with have this talent. The book explains:
He rarely gave orders, and instead managed to communicate his desires, as the physicist Eugene Wigner recalled, “very easily and naturally, with just his eyes, his two hands, and a half-lighted pipe.” Bethe remembered that Oppie “never dictated what should be done. He brought out the best in all of us, like a good host with his guests.” Robert Wilson felt similarly: “In his presence, I became more intelligent, more vocal, more intense, more prescient, more poetic myself. Although normally a slow reader, when he handed me a letter I would glance at it and hand it back prepared to discuss the nuances of it minutely.” He also admitted that in retrospect there was a certain amount of “self-delusion” in these feelings. “Once out of his presence the bright things that had been said were difficult to reconstruct or remember. No matter, the tone had been established. I would know how to invent what it was that had to be done.” (kindle loc 4205)
Of course, the movie isn't going to be about being a great engineering manager. Most likely it will cover his political destruction in the hands of Lewis Strauss, leaving him never the same again. Even then, the book didn't stop telling me things I didn't know, such as that he spent many of his last years at St. John, the island in the Caribbean that's part of the US Virgin Islands, owning a boat and sailing it often (he was an able sailor), and that his brother, Frank Oppenheimer, was the founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium, one of the first participatory science museums in the world. (Frank suffered even more for his dalliance with communism than his brother did, derailing a promising career in academic physics and having to become a cattle rancher for a while)
Needless to say, the book's well worth reading. Recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment