A biography for our times
Why does Robert Oppenheimer’s personality and way of thinking intrigue us today?
Recently, a Substack writer asked: “What are you reading and why?” At the moment, I had just finished, after over a year of streaks of reading and long breaks, Ed Douglas’ “Himalaya. A Human History”, and reached for a volume which I was afraid that boasting about would be totally anticlimactic. My choice, inspired by a vaunted movie is neither original nor revelatory. Nevertheless, the further I read, the more involved I am, and the more thoughts worth sharing emerge. Yes, I have ordered (not on Amazon!) and started reading “American Prometheus. The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (Atlantic Books, new 2023 edition. First published in 2005, after about 25 years of research and writing.)
I haven’t seen the movie and rather do not intend to do so. Most likely, before I have finished the thick tome, the title will be long forgotten in the cinemas. Printed words do not flash nor tremble, yet when a phrase, an observation, a description or opinion resonates, or on the contrary, discords with the reader’s outlook, there is a time to stop, re-read and think over; the precious time of which the action of a movie deprives us.
The book is a story of life, and first chapters present us with a portrait of Robert’s uncommon personality, evincing itself since early school years. Is it the additional psychological layer, upon the chronology of facts, present in this biography, or is it indeed the character itself, that resonates with me more than other physicists and scientists I read about before ever did?1
Social awkwardness, being shy and trying to compensate with the grades at school, developing rare but long lasting friendships; all these meanders of Robert’s youth and adolescence remind me of my own struggles, and makes him, I dare to say, a kindred spirit, despite an infinitely broad chasm in the capacity to understand the post-Newtonian physics.
Robert’s education at Harvard, his first college, comprised a versatile mix of science and arts. Chemistry happened to be his major, perhaps only because he had not an opportunity to learn about the achievements in modern physics. Further studies continued in Europe drew him closer to quantum mechanics, but the path remained steep and winding. The work in a laboratory at Cambridge diverged from Robert’s aptitudes, and only later, in German Göttingen, where he could dive deep into theoretical problems, his talent flourished in full.
I read these chapters covering Oppenheimer’s education and years of the search for a viable walk of life, as a lesson to find a niche where an individual can thrive as a part of a team.
I read these chapters covering Oppenheimer’s education and years of the search for a viable walk of life, as a lesson to find a niche where an individual can thrive as a part of a team. In our times, too. Several years ago, a new fad in project management rolled over my old workplace: the idea of versatile and interchangeable engineers, so that any task could be assigned to anyone. Notably, this idea coincided with the rise of the term “resources” to describe people. Sure, we should be capable enough in the subjects related to our narrow speciality, and ready to stand in for a colleague when needed, but a true “dream-team” comprises individualists, nerds, not excluding weirdos, people with special knacks, masters and virtuosi of their beloved skills.
A true “dream-team” comprises individualists, nerds, not excluding weirdos, people with special knacks, masters and virtuosi of their beloved skills.
In the 1920’s, European universities: Cambridge, Copenhagen, Leiden, Göttingen, became a crucible of young talents in the nascent science of quantum mechanics. I cannot help but thinking about “waves of geniuses”: periods of abundance of trailblazing talents in a field, not necessarily science, lasting a couple of decades, on one continent or region rather than scattered throughout the world.
One paragraph of a non-technological parable: Surges of outstanding creators shaped music in the classical era (roughly 1750-1820) and Romanticism (about 1820-1900). No matter how inventive and original the composers in our times are, the outburst of works in the 18th and 19th century seems not to be ever repeated. The main edifice tonal music has been built, and we all dwell in it. A new land can be discovered only once.
Back to the physics. Discoveries in electromagnetism and their practical applications happened over both sides of the Atlantic, but again, roughly between 1750 to 1900 there was a bloom of prodigious scientists, from Benjamin Franklin to Coulomb, Orsted, Faraday, Ampere, Volta, to James Clark Maxwell, who formulated the equations of the electromagnetic field, and further, to Edison and Tesla, who harnessed the forces described in theory into electric motors which, on principle, serve us until today.
My intention is not to give a historical outline of discoveries and inventions, it is more a wonder about many individual brilliant minds, who happened to live almost contemporaneously, and collectively had contributed to the scientific and technological progress.
Two questions have budded in my mind while reading first chapters covering the academic years of Robert Oppenheimer:
Do the “waves of geniuses” repeat in history? Do we witness such a wave now?
Why does the life of Robert Oppenheimer intrigue us today?
It’s been less than 35 years since Timothy Berners-Lee defined and proposed communication protocols which enabled building the World Wide Web, the invention which we call colloquially, but not quite correctly, “the internet”.2 Since then, the world has changed dramatically, no less than the quantum mechanics has changed the world of physics. Will the next generations remember the inventors in the digital world of the 20th century in a similar way we try to remember the explorers of quantum physics? I believe so for the pioneers: Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Jony Ive; Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Maybe Sergey Brin and Larry Page, if, in a generation or two, Google does not go down in history as the greatest thief of the records of our lives. And here the list of inventors, the giants of mind whom we admire, or at least explore, begins to fade away. One reason is that any technological achievement today, think of wind turbines, or of the James Webb Space telescope, or of nuclear fusion, is a fruit of teamwork, and the teams are populous, where many scientists contribute with inventions in narrow, dedicated fields. The second is that in some inexplicable way all the reports have migrated from inventions to investments; we rather learn about the amount of money invested instead of the brain work behind an invention. When I want to learn about people in science today, I refer to John Templeton Foundation. If you, my dear Reader, have a good source of who-is-who in contemporary science, please share it in a comment.
The second, and final question in this essay: Why just Robert Oppenheimer, why does he intrigue us so much today?
I would like to point out a factor related to the game-changing, immensely powerful, and hard-to-control invention of our times: the artificial intelligence.
Nobody is able to track, and nobody knows, how exactly do Large Language Models learn, because the process is not algorithmic; we can only see the results. I believe that trying to peer into Robert Oppenheimer’s mind, gives us a sort of a stabilising point. Even if we cannot follow his thinking, we admire it, because it was humane.
I believe that trying to peer into Robert Oppenheimer’s mind, gives us a sort of a stabilising point. Even if we cannot follow his thinking, we admire it, because it was humane.
Oppenheimer was one of the last scientists, who like his peers, could do their calculations “on the back of an envelope”, and who despite “an awful arithmetic” concluded with profound understanding of physical phenomena.3 Oppenheimer’s ingenious predictions in physics remained inscrutable to many, but still, they did not exceed the possibilities of a human mind.
The detonation of the Trinity bomb proved that the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project had underestimated its power, but they were not totally out of control over the invention. Now we face a force not as brutal, but more unpredictable. I would like to put the idea clearly in my own words, but instead I am giving the credit to Charlie Wazel from The Atlantic, who summarised it perfectly in his article a couple of months ago:4
We are brave in our inventions to the limits of the human brain capacities, therefore we need a safety anchor so that the power unleashed does not spin out of control. The insight into minds like Oppenheimer’s may help us, I believe, find a guidance.
We need a safety anchor so that the power unleashed does not spin out of control. The insight into minds like Oppenheimer’s may help us, I believe, find a guidance.
If you have any thoughts on the above, please leave a comment. Your remarks may improve my future writing.
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Thanks for reading; until next time!
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Biographies of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein
“Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein” by Abraham Pais, Roger Penrose, Polish translation by Piotr Amsterdamski: “Pan Bóg jest wyrafinowany…”, Warszawa 2001
“Niels Bohr's Times In Physics, Philosophy and Polity” by Abraham Pais, Polish translation by Piotr Amsterdamski: “Czas Nielsa Bohra”, Warszawa, year of publication unknown.
“The internet” is the physical infrastructure of connected severs, while “The Web” is a service that allows to present and exchange information in a human-friendly way. A steam-and-electricity era simile: a network of railways and stations (the internet), versus services of trains that carry passengers (the web).
“American Prometheus. The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, chapter six “Oppie”, page 88 (Atlantic Books 2023)
“What Have Humans Just Unleashed?” by Charlie Wazel, The Atlantic 16 March 2023
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/03/open-ai-gpt4-chatbot-technology-power/673421/