Oppenheimer: Portretul unei enigme

by Jeremy Bernstein, Walter Fotescu (Translator)

Despre Oppenheimer s-a scris enorm, s-a făcut un film care a primit multe Premii Oscar, figura lui a înflăcărat imaginația publicului. și pe drept cuvânt. Fizician teoretician strălucit, cu mari contribuții în perioada imediat următoare apariției mecanicii cuantice, conducător al proiectului de construire a bombei atomice în timpul războiului, audiat apoi, la începutul anilor 1950, de o comisie guvernamentală care, din motive neîntemeiate, i-a retras accesul la documentele secrete din domeniul nuclear, umilindu-l public, și, în fine, director al Institutului pentru Studii Avansate de la Princeton, una dintre cele mai prestigioase instituții academice din lume, Robert Oppenheimer a avut un destin excepțional, deopotrivă tragic, bizar și absurd

Ce deosebește cartea lui Jeremy Bernstein de celelalte biografii dedicate lui Oppenheimer este faptul că autorul, el însuși fizician de renume, l-a cunoscut personal pe „părintele bombei atomice“ și a fost prieten apropiat cu colaboratorii săi, de la care a obținut mărturii inedite. Ferindu-se de speculații hazardate, Bernstein se bazează pe fapte cunoscute direct sau din surse sigure, citează pe larg transcrierile audierii în fața comisiei guvernamentale și alte documente relevante, oferindu-ne o imagine pregnantă a personalității lui Oppenheimer.

Genres: Biography, Science, Nonfiction, History, Plays, Biography Memoir, Theatre

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Titi Coolda · Rating 4 out of 5]

O carte subțirică dar atât de densă cât sâmburele de plutoniu suspendat din interiorul bombei atomice. Portretul insolit al unui geniu al fizicii, desenat din lumini și umbre, din amintiri, transcrieri din proces, anecdote. Stilul lui Bernstein este remarcabil prin acuratețe, prin documentarea de amploare, dar mai ales memoria proaspătă cu care sondează discuții sau fapte petrecute cu peste 60 de ani în urmă. Practic e mai mult o rememorare ale unor momente din viața lui Oppie, prin prisma colegilor, prietenilor și dușmanilor săi decât o biografie clasică.

[Jovi Ene · Rating 3 out of 5]

„Poziția exactă a lui Oppenheimer n-a fost niciodată lămurită, cel puțin de către el. E limpede însă că n-a obiectat viguros- dacă va fi obiectat - la utilizarea militară a bombei. De fapt, el a făcut parte din comitetul care a ales orașele-țintă japoneze.”

N-am văzut (încă) filmul care a câștigat Oscarul anul acesta, așa că deși cunoșteam contextul și câteva informații minimale despre Oppenheimer, nu știam prea multe detalii despre acesta, despre personalitatea lui și contribuția directă la construirea bombei atomice. Câteva lămuriri mi-a adus acest volum semnat de Jeremy Bernstein, care are și atuul că l-a cunoscut personal pe Oppenheimer, a lucrat cu el, i-a fost student. Dincolo de informațiile științifice, acest volum biografic se concentrează pe audierile de securitate de după război, cele în care a fost acuzat că este comunist și chiar că a creat posibilitatea să devină spion al adversarilor SUA, iar în cele din urmă i-a fost retras dreptul de acces la Los Alamos și la orice informație sensibilă privind armele nucleare.
Interesant volum, cu multe detalii despre fizica imaginată de Oppenheimer și despre procesele de după război, dar în același timp îmi doream să aflu mai multe despre personalitatea lui, despre felul în care a trăit războiul și a gândit crearea bombei atomice, despre urmările acestei creații mortale etc.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly straightforward docudrama about the Manhattan Project, the play suffers from two deficiencies: 1st, there are 25 speaking roles, so it is difficult to keep everyone straight, and except for the handful of principals, they tend to be superficial and shallowly drawn. 2ndly, there are 62 scenes, so most of them are very, very short, which means not a lot of dramatic tension can be built up in any of them. That said, I have been assured by a colleague who saw the original RSC production, that it plays extremely well, but on paper it is rather dry.

[Mara Zanardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro non di facile lettura se non si ha una base di fisica, soprattutto la prima parte.
Cercavo un libro su Oppenheimer dopo aver visto il recente film. Bernstein scrive bene, non ci sono dubbi. La prima parte, incentrata sugli studi e su Los Alamos, è un po’ più complicata perché Bernstein non è solo uno scrittore ma un professore di fisica e l’argomento non è tra i più semplici. La seconda metà del libro è incentrata sul processo e sugli ultimi anni di vita di Oppenheimer, dandone un ritratto interessante.
La stima di Bernstein emerge dalle pagine, anche perché l’ha conosciuto personalmente, insieme ad altre eminenze della matematica e della fisica moderna che gravitavano intorno all’Insititute e alle università in quegli anni.

[Nick Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuing to feed my Oppenheimer obsession. Amazon, 2008-05-01.

This was pretty outstanding, especially for such a short read. Lots of new personal data and a few great pictures I hadn't seen. Relies almost entirely on direct accounts, but is fully aware of previous biographies (and often notes their errors, amusingly).

[Polly]

For an objective nonfiction book, Jeremy really seems to enjoy telling us about himself and his opinions.

[Mohammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

In May 1945 nobody was sure just how devastating the bomb would be. There was general agreement that the simpler type of bomb would work, but the more complicated plutonium implosion device would need testing. Oppenheimer named this test Trinity, partly because of the Christian concept of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but mainly because of the Hindu three-in-one godhead of Vishnu, Brahma, and Siva, the power of life, the creator, and the destroyer.

Oppenheimer described the reaction of the team allowed to watch the first Atomic Bomb trial at Los Alamos Desert,New Mexico.by Saying:
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x39eRJ...

[Krystal 🦢 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the book club pick for October. I wanted to like this book. The information was so interesting, that I might actually seek out a different Oppenheimer biography. But this book was a slog. I only pushed through to the end because I made my 16 yr old read it for summer reading, thinking he’d enjoy the science. He kept telling me he wasn’t getting anything out of the book, and I thought he was just being teenagery. Haha! Then I picked it up myself and discovered he was right. So as punishment I made myself finish it too. 😆 The writing style was problematic. The narrative was all over the place and difficult to follow and piece together. There was a lot of name dropping. It felt like it was written to an audience who were already “in the know” about Oppenheimer and his hearing, and I was not one of those readers. I stopped about 1/3 of the way in and went and read Bomb by Steve Sheinkin for context about what was going on, before coming back to finish this. That was helpful background, and I’m glad I read Bomb, but it didn’t make the writing in Oppenheimer any easier to swallow.

Anyone have a better Oppenheimer book to recommend?

[Bob Lundquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist/manager that oversaw the building of the atomic bomb, was an odd duck. Brilliant, but odd. At least in public, which he was most of his life, he spoke elliptically. One had to figure out what he said afterwards. During his security hearing in 1954, he answered questions circuitously until he came to his point. At another time, he admitted he was an idiot when dealing with security issues. Also, because he was a public figure and mingled with many famous people, there are a lot of anecdotes about him out there.

This book is a compendium of such stories collected from well-known sources and the author’s own experiences. He does not seem to have known Oppenheimer very well and he goes through Oppenheimer’s life chronology but in a disjointed way. Anecdotes and explanations of technical issues are unexpectedly interspersed within the narrative. The reader must be prepared for some whiplash reading this book. There are a few tidbits here and there of new or different stories about the subject but there is some question if it is worth it.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you watched the film but find the idea of reading the mammoth biography 'American Prometheus' too daunting, this is the better book to read about J. Robert Oppenheimer. The author trained as a physicist and had a spectacular career as a science journalist and biographer, writing for the New Yorker (always a deal-sealer for me); indeed he writes “this is the New Yorker profile I never wrote.” Here you get the scope of Oppy’s life, from his privilege beginnings through his stellar California teaching career, through the trials and tribulations of the Atomic Bomb project and its aftermath, through his time running the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. More than the film, Oppy’s biographers tease out his tragic flaws and inconstant behavior, his ethical waffling about war. There are memorable stories, quotes, quips, and details about Oppy and the people around him. Bernstein even solves the mystery of how Balanchine was tasked to select the music for Oppenheim’s funeral in 1967.

[Richard Kravitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a great book, a fast read for me. Lots of familiar names and events. I have read a lot about Los Alamos, visited there once and taught about the creation of the bomb as a HS Chemistry teacher. I haven't seen the new movie yet, just "Fat Man and Little Boy".

For me, Bernstein's book touched on things I did not know about Oppenheimer and he mentions so many scientists that I was familiar with and some I looked up which was also interesting.

I didn't know much about Oppenheimer after he left Lost Alamos and the chapters on the "Trial" and the Institute for Advanced Study were especially enlightening.

And the fact that the author, Bernstein, is an actual physicist who worked with and under Oppenheimer lent much to he authenticity of the book.

[Celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author wrote for the New Yorker and it is like a good New Yorker piece. The author was acquainted with and liked Oppenheimer.

I bought this book because it was on sale for Kindle. I saw the movie and was looking for the reason that Strauss seems to have disliked Oppenheimer so much. This book did not deal with this question.

[Richard Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read

This book is meticulously researched and brings Oppenheimer and his times to life. I read this shortly after seeing Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer". Bernstein's book adds terrific context to the movie. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in J.R. Oppenheimer or the start of the nuclear age and the red scare days of the 1950s.

[Stanley Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating information. Book is written more as a personal diary. The anecdotal material is extremely interesting. The digressions into explaining scientific material/jargon is not balanced. Sometimes it's written for novices and other times for physicists. I would recommend the book as complimentary to the movie.

[Steve Bera · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not get interested in this book. The author said he wrote it over 40 years from a collection of news clippings and notes. The author is accomplished, and there is a story to be told here, but the book seems chopped up, and jumps around in time a lot. Three other books exist about Oppenheimer, and you should consider those first.

[Jeremy Smark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look on Oppenheimer’s life with much more detail than the Oppenheimer movie by Christopher Nolan but filled with the most random information about every single character ever mentioned in the book.

[Chris Ziesler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to Oppenheimer's life, but not really a full scale biography by any measure.

[Grant Keegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book in a long time that I have read entirely in one sitting. Oppenheimer's story is so interesting, makes me very hyped to see the movie this Friday.

[Don Paske · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good outline of Oppenheimer. It explained a lot about the movie, which was extremely hard to follow, I thought.

[Kim Freitas · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dry

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nightmare of a book to get hold of! Seriously! Took over 3 weeks to be delivered and then got pushed further with unspecified delays. Tried to get it elsewhere but it was all a week wait. My university library had no copies left and neither did any library in a 10 mile radius! Thankfully, it finally arrived.

In general, the text was a decent read. Fascinating enough to read on and I actually got through the script in one sitting. There were several parts that were difficult to imagined staged but the overall feeling towards the text was a good one. I'd like to understand how they relay the story to stage as each scene was only a page or two. Plus the split between acts was bizarre with the first half being much longer, but these things of course did not really affect my reading experience.

The text however seemed to be less associated with Oppenheimer's scientific discovery, and more about his love-life at the time. Morton-Smith seems to focus on his affairs with Jean and Kitty, using similar phrasing throughout of not being each others 'only one'. Jean tells Oppie he is not her only man, and when kitty confronts Oppie she explains that she knows that she is not his only woman. Either way this distracted from the point of the play and story-line, meaning that the audience is more fixated on the relationships of the characters than the impact they have.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oppenheimer as one of the architects of the A-bomb seemed to be one of those extremely intelligent physicists/mathematicians who were a bit naive about other aspects of the world. This book describes his early years and time at Los Alamos ending with his 'trial' during the McCarthy era when he lost his security clearance due to past associations with people who were members of the Communist party. We forget easily why there was this paranoia about communism after the war. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, it seems as if it never represented a credible threat. That was certainly not true. It makes it hard for those looking back to understand the context in which the excesses of McCarthyism were made possible.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I look into the life of one of the men behind the splitting of the atom.

The more biographies I read of prominent men in science around this era, the more of a 'small world' feeling I get. It's really interesting to read about the personal lives of these names that we have heard since childhood and how they not only interacted with each other, but with family and friends.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb. Really interesting biography. I don't know a lot about physics but this book explained a number of concepts fairly clearly. If I fully understood the physics details, I'd probably give the book a higher rating. Oppenheimer was a brilliant and fascinating man; good book.

[Jack Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oppenheimer made a brave stand by advocating that the US not develop Hydrogen Weapons.
The Hiroshima bomb = 15000 ton of TNT
"Ivy mike" Which evaporated Eugelab Island on the Eniwetok Atoll had a blast power of 10.5 million tons of TNT.
The insanity hasn't stopped there..

[Renato Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's more a profile than a biography, but a very good one.

Jeremy Bernstein writes a lot about himself, his experience and his interactions with Oppenheimer and other physicists, and it's ok.

I did not see the movie yet.

[Tashagoodreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent account of Oppenheimer (and other physicists) by someone who knew him.

[Stephanie Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was dryer then the description made it out to be but still interesting

[Lesya]

Incredible biography! I learned so much and really enjoyed the writing style.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author worked with him and did have acquaintance with many other scientists who knew and worked with him. This is a decent starting point for learning more about Oppenheimer.