J. Robert Oppenheimer : a life
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Bibliographic Information
J. Robert Oppenheimer : a life
（Oxford paperbacks）
Oxford University Press, 2007, c2006
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The late Abraham Pais, author of the award winning biography of Albert Einstein, Subtle is the Lord, here offers an illuminating portrait of another of his eminent colleagues, 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 bringing it to a state of prominence. He paints a revealing portrait of Oppenheimer's life in Los Alamos, where in twenty remarkable, feverish months, and under his inspired guidance, the first atomic bomb was designed and
built, a success that made Oppenheimer America's most famous scientist. Pais describes Oppenheimer's long tenure as Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, where the two men worked together closely. He shows not only Oppenheimer's brilliance and leadership, but also how his
displays of intensity and arrogance won him powerful enemies, ones who would ultimately make him one of the principal victims of the Red Scare of the 1950s.
J. Robert Oppenheimer is Abraham Pais's final work, completed after his death by Robert P. Crease, an acclaimed historian of science in his own right. Told with compassion and deep insight, it is the most comprehensive biography of the great physicist available. Anyone seeking an insider's portrait of this enigmatic man will find it indispensable.
Table of Contents
Ida Nicolaisen: Forward
Robert P. Crease: Preface
1: First Encounters
2: Background: Early Years
3: University Studies
4: Postdoctural Studies: Harvard-Caltech-Leiden, Zurich
5: the California Professor as Teacher
6: The California Professor as Researcher: More on QED, Cosmic Rays, Electron-Positron Theory, Nuclear Physics, Shower Theory, Mesons, Astrophysics and Cosmology
7: Oppenheimer's Opinion on His own Teaching and Research in California
8: Personal Life in the 1930s
9: The Shatter of Worlds
10: In Which Oppenheimer Enters the World Stage
11: An Atomic Scientist's Credo
12: The Institute Prior to Oppenheimer's Arrival: the Flexnor Years-The Aydellotte Years
13: In Which Oppenheimer is Elected Director of the Institute and Chairman of the General Advisory Committee
14: Oppenheimer's Early Years as Institute Director
15: Oppenheimer and the World of Physics: 1946-1954 "The Great Charismatic Figure"
16: Further on Oppenheimer the Man
17: Atomic Politics in the Early Postwar Years
18: Of the First Serious Enemies and of the First Russian A-Bomb
19: Of the Superbomb and of Spy Stories
20: The New Super
21: Atomic Politics in the Early 1950s
22: In Which the Excrement Hits the Ventilator
23: In Which the News of Hearings Is Made Public
Robert Crease: Supplemental Material
24: "Open Book": The Hearing in the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
25: No Final Judgement
26: Insider Exile
27: Cloaked Mountain Peak
Notes
Principal Sources Used
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
