Highly recommend the film “Fat Man and Little Boy”. A little melodramatic but an interesting view of Oppenheimer played by Dwight Shultz (Murdock from The A-Team.)
If you can find it, the radio play “Atomic Bombers” is excellent.
The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
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Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#22The biography that this is based on, "American Prometheus", is fantastic. A fast, smart read. Oppenheimer obviously also appears in Richard Rhodes' utterly superb "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", though he only becomes a main character in the sequel, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", which is also great. Oppenheimer was a highly skilled physicist, but Rhodes attributes his ability to lead the Manhattan Pro…
Kai Bird is an incredibly good biographer. He just released one of Aldrich Ames, noted CIA / KGB double agent.
I'll check it out, thanks!
Edit: You mean "The Good Spy" from 2015, about Robert Ames?
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#23The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Rhodes is often mentioned as a great science book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_... Recently saw it on Steven Weinberg’s list: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/03/steven-weinber...
I remember the section describing the sudden realization Leo Szilard had that kicked off the idea of atomic fission. I had never heard that story.
And was it Rhodes book where he described the physicists curiously disappearing from the universities in the early 40's? And when the offer finally came to another physicist to relocate, upon checking out books on New Mexico, would discover that all the scientists that had already disappeared had recently checked out the sam books as well.
Edit: Wow, found the Wikipedia article on Szilard. Man that guy was amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard#Developing_the_ide...
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#24And there is also Doctor Atomic: https://youtu.be/fDTFyinS3zA
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#25A great summary of Kai Bird's book, which is highly recommended!
A really interesting thing to note about Oppenheimer, as the author points out, was a somewhat "haphazard" approach both to studying physics, and in his actual scientific work. Meaning, picking the problems he found the most interesting, rather than some grand, overarching idea.
It's always fascinating in reading books of this sort to see just how closely knit the physics community was, since Oppenheimer studied with Born and Thomson, met Bohr as a student, and later worked with a lot of the truly great ones. Even in the macabre poisoning episode, the tutor he left the apple for was Patrick Blackett, a future Nobel laureate.
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#26I remember this being on PBS as a kid during the cold war. Terrified me. https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac
You may put that memory at ease, he was just acting.
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#27This is a prime example of the winners writing history ( or more aptly those currently in power writing history ). Can you imagine a historian writing a book titled "The Eccentric Father of the Death Camp"?
The guy helped build a weapon which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a matter of seconds. Oh shucks, what an eccentric and quirky guy he was. Objectively, he is one of history's greatest villains and arguably the one of the greatest war criminals, but luckily, he was on the winning side.
If Oppenheimer was japanese and he helped build bombs for the japanese and the japanese dropped nukes on say Baltimore and San Fran during the war, he would have been tried and executed after ww2 by the victorious US. I doubt "The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb" is the titled we'd use if he was japanese.
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wonder if the same applies to business. Maybe Jobs, Gates or Bezos didn't make such an outsized contribution but maybe they were able to concentrate on themselves what other people would have done too. Maybe just a little later or differently. Makes me wonder about Einstein. Were other people working on relativity too?
Absolutely yes on the Einstein question. Check out Bohr, Lorentz and Poincare to start.
And Hilbert actually beat him to the final equation.
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#29This is a prime example of the winners writing history ( or more aptly those currently in power writing history ). Can you imagine a historian writing a book titled "The Eccentric Father of the Death Camp"? The guy helped build a weapon which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a matter of seconds. Oh shucks, what an eccentric and quirky guy he was. Objectively, he is one of history'…
That is an interesting viewpoint, how do the Japanese view Oppenheimer?
Re: The Eccentric Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (2019)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
That great discoveries are so often made independently by multiple people when their time has come suggests that if the theory is right, Great Men are a dime a dozen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
I often wonder if the same applies to business. Maybe Jobs, Gates or Bezos didn't make such an outsized contribution but maybe they were able to concentrate on themselves what other people would have done too. Maybe just a little later or differently. Makes me wonder about Einstein. Were other people working on relativity too?
Gates and Bezos absolutely dispensable. Both just very aggressive opportunists. Gates actually suffocated innovation, not fostered it.
The only one of the three you name where you could make a case for them making a real difference would be Jobs (and I say that even though I am a non-fan).