Oct 11 2006
American Prometheus
When Dorrie and I first started dating, she knew I had a hankering for mathemetics and science. So, when she ran across a book about Richard Feynman while perusing the new non-fiction section at Tattered Cover, she pointed it out to me and recommended him as a subject to read about. She was right. Over the next year or so I devoured every writing about Feynman that I could find, including the definitive biography, Genius.
Over that year of reading about Feynman, I developed an interest in the science, the people and the politics of the Manhatten Project and the two or three decades prior to that time. That was when I learned about J. Robert Oppenheimer.
I finished today the first of the many Oppenheimer books I purchased recently, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I have to say that I enjoyed this biography just as much as the Feynman biography. The authors did a marvelous job of portraying the genius and the quirks of Oppenheimer, the gargantuan effort involved in building the first atomic bomb and the hysteria of the McCarthy era.
I went into this book knowing only that Oppenheimer was the lead physicist on the Manhatten Project and that his career and much of his personal life was eventually ruined because of left-wing past. I did not know anything about Oppenheimer’s awkward early years or the heavy political influence he carried after the bombs dropped on Japan in the 1940’s. All of this amounts to a fascinating and haunting story about a fascinating and haunting individual. I recommend the book to anyone interested in physics, psychology or politics.