The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises For Physicists

by J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer's three lectures, all delivered at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, are: 1) Space and Time; 2) Atom and Field; and 3) War and the Nations.

Genres: Nonfiction

65 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 in the Trinity test in New Mexico; Oppenheimer remarked later that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

After the war he became a chief adviser to the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission and used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and an arms race with the Soviet Union. After provoking the ire of many politicians with his outspoken opinions during the Second Red Scare, he had his security clearance revoked in a much-publicized hearing in 1954. Though stripped of his direct political influence he continued to lecture, write and work in physics. A decade later President John F. Kennedy awarded (and Lyndon B. Johnson presented) him with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation.

Oppenheimer's notable achievements in physics include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays. As a teacher and promoter of science, he is remembered as a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics that gained world prominence in the 1930s. After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Reviews

[Chris Boughter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A transcript of lectures from the father of the atomic bomb, with a philosophical look into the future of physics

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could quote the entire last third of these essays at you I would. Oppenheimer's foresight that open communication between scientists and politicians and across nations being the only way to foster trust and avoid war feels relevant this year more than ever in the wake of EPA censorship and travel bans to our muslim colleagues. That society has taken less than a century to regress and forget is horrifying and depressing but there is hope in this work.

It is the transcript of three lectures given by Robert Oppenheimer in McMaster University, Ontario in 1965 at the height of the cold war. The lectures are entitled: 'Space and Time', 'Atom and Field', and 'War and Nation'. The Physics covered is an overview of 'crisis-points' in the field, how they were coped with and ultimately mastered, and what is remembered in the aftermath. If you've had Physics through secondary school/high school there isn't much technical information here that you won't have already come across: Galilean and Einsteinian relativity, atoms, waves, Planck, Heisenberg. Which is why this isn't a higher rated collection for me - I only really got anything out of 20% of the book.
No, what this collection is worth reading for is the commentary.

In the prelude to the first lecture Oppenheimer talks about the nature of scientific enquiry and that means to an end are rarely the reason for a discovery:

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.

But that of course discovery is not independent of technological and economical progress:

I believe that the availability of instruments, the availability of ideas or concepts - not alway but often mathematical - are more likely to determine where great changes occur in our pciture of the world than are the requirements of man.

He talks about broadening horizons and how those are necessary to be a good scientist and a good human:

The experience of seeing how our thought and our words and our ideas have been confined by the limitation of our experience is one which is salutary and is in a certain sense good for a man's morals as well as good for his pleasure. It seems to us [scientists] that this is an opening up of the human spirit , avoiding its provincialism and narrowness.

He also really captured, for me at least, the draw of empirical science:

[A] great love of adventure, so that you look for new things and changed circumstances, look far into the sky, look close into matter, do all sorts of things that take you away from the familiar human experience. That lies on the one hand, and on the other is a great adherence to to such order and clarity as has already been attained.

And in the end what it comes down to for Oppenheimer, as the Director General of Los Alamos National Lab during WW2 and the Manhatten project: whilst necessary, let there never again be a situation where the tools for discovery be adapted for the trade of war.

Finally, I think we believe that when we see an opportunity , we have the duty to work for the growth of that international community of knowledge and understanding with our colleagues in other lands , with our colleagues in competing, antagonistic, possibly hostile lands, with our colleagues and with others with whom we have any community f interest, any community of professional, of human, of political concern. [...] We think of this as our contribution to the making of a world which is varied and cherishes variety, which is free and cherishes freedom, and which is freely changing to adapt to the inevitable needs of change in the twentieth century and all centuries to come, but a world which, with all its variety, freedom, and change, is without nation states armed for war and above all, a world without war.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this book in a used bookstore. It's a collection of three lectures from 1963 on relativity, quantum mechanics, and the atom bomb. It's a very quick read at just 65 pages, but the subject matter is elegantly presented.

[silentium · Rating 4 out of 5]

dalej nie wierzę w to że posiadam tą książkę

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

En lægsmand indføring i relativitetsteori og kvantemekanik og dets forhistorie samt et mainfest for verdensfreden.

[Connor S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts with a section describing precisely the problems of modern scientific movements ("the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them"). Progress is accidental - and nonlinear - anything else is assuming too much.

The middle technical explanation of atomic theory is thorough and enjoyable - although does not go into the specifics of the mathematics when not necessary.

By the end it seems clear that politics is inseparable from the atom bomb. Can society survive its own volatility?

[Nick Black]

Amazon used 2009-03-30.