J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life

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Oxford University Press, Apr 1, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 400 pages
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.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1 First Encounters
1
Early Years
4
CHAPTER 3 University Studies
8
CHAPTER 4 Postdoctoral Studies
14
CHAPTER 5 The California Professor as Teacher
20
CHAPTER 6 The California Professor as Researcher
24
CHAPTER 7 Oppenheimers Opinion of His Own Teaching and Research in California
33
CHEPTER 8 Personal Life in the 1930s
34
CHAPTER 17 Atomic Politics in the Early Postwar Years
144
CHAPTER 18 Of the First Serious Enemies and of the First Russian ABomb
163
CHAPTER 19 Of the Superbomb and of Spy Stories
168
CHAPTER 20 The New Super
183
CHAPTER 21 Atomic Politics in the Early 1950s
193
CHAPTER 22 In Which the Excrement Hits the Ventilator
202
CHAPTER 23 In Which the News of the Hearings Is Made Public
214
Supplemental Material
225

CHAPTER 9 The Shatterer of Worlds
39
CHAPTER 10 In Which Oppenheimer Enters the World Stage
45
CHAPTER 11 An Atomic Scientists Credo
49
CHAPTER 12 The Institute Prior to Oppenheimers Arrival
59
CHAPTER 13 In Which Oppenheimer Is Elected Director of the Institute and Chairman of the General Advisory Committee
77
CHAPTER 14 Oppenheimers Early Years as Institute Director
86
19461954
96
CHAPTER 16 Further on Oppenheimer the Man
123
The Hearing in the Matter of J Robert Oppenheimer
227
CHAPTER 25 No Final Judgment
259
CHAPTER 26 Insider in Exile
272
CHAPTER 27 Cloaked Mountain Peak
300
Notes
311
Principal Sources Used
335
Index
337
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Abraham Pais was Detlev W. Bronk Professor Emeritus at The Rockefeller University in New York City. A leading theoretical physicist, he was also an esteemed science writer, the author of 'Subtle is the Lord...' for which he won the American Book Award, Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World, Niels Bohr's Times, and several other books. Robert P. Crease is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His most recent book is The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science.

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