Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (130 page)

58
. ‘Among the collegiate herd’: Cassidy (2005), 72

58
. ‘I don’t know’: ibid.

58
. ‘assinine pomposity’: S & W, 15

58
. He has recalled: ibid., 33

59
. ‘a little bit precious’: Thorpe (2006), 34

59
. ‘I was very fond of music’: S & W, 33–4

59
. ‘You’re the only physicist’: ibid., 34

59
. ‘Category Phoenix’: Ellanby (1952)

59
. ‘Chain Reaction’: Ellanby (1956)

59
.
Races and People
: Boyd and Asimov (1955)

59
. Boyd and Asimov argued: ibid., Chapter 2

59
. ‘the closest friends’: S & W, 45

60
. later letters to Horgan: see, e.g., ibid., 40–41

60
. Prescott Street: ibid., 12

60
. doubtful that he ever met Fergusson: ibid., 44

60
. ‘Boyd, as you charitably predicted’: ibid., 57

61
. ‘seen something of Robert’: ibid., 16

61
. ‘a little science club’: ibid.

61
. ‘get professors’: ibid.

61
. ‘an aberrant Cambridge Puritan’: ibid.

62
. In his first year: ibid., 14

62
. ‘a wonderful man’: ibid.

62
. ‘quiet futility’: ibid., 15

62
. ‘is not an educational institution’: Cassidy (2005), 74–5

63
. he applied
twice
: see S & W, 15

63
. but was rejected: ibid., 57

63
. ‘I contend’: Karabel (2005), 121

63
. ‘bookworms’: ibid.

63
. ‘fondness of’: ibid.

63
. a formula: ibid.

64
. ‘I am again’: S & W, 18

64
. ‘a disgusting and doddering syphilitic’: ibid., 19

64
. ‘I shall send you my story’: ibid., 20

64
. ‘received another inspiration’: ibid., 24

64
. ‘Here are the masterpieces’: ibid., 25

65
. ‘imitation of Katherine Mansfield’: ibid., 27

65
. ‘artificiality of emotional situation’: ibid.

65
. ‘conscious’: ibid.

65
. ‘I should not have the hardihood’: ibid.

65
. ‘nothing but admiration’: ibid., 52

65
. ‘I am overwhelmed’: ibid., 55

65
. ‘skill with people’: ibid.

66
. ‘I find it hard to swallow’: ibid., 56

66
. ‘I suppose’: ibid.

66
. ‘I find these awful people’: ibid., 57

67
. ‘the whole tone’: Bernstein (2004), 16

67
. ‘Scandal’: Cather (1920), 169–98

68
. ‘While he was still’: ibid., 186–7

68
. ‘His business associates’: ibid., 187

68
. ‘that used to belong’: ibid., 191

68
. ‘She and I are in the same boat’: ibid., 198

69
. a huge biography: Horgan (1976)

69
. ‘Willa Cather’s Incalculable Distance’: Horgan (1988), 79–92

69
. ‘a true artist of prose’: ibid., 90

69
. ‘Doesn’t A Lost Lady remind you’: S & W, 51

69
. ‘represents civilization in the West’: Randall (1960), 176

69
. ‘The Old West’: Cather (1923)

70
. ‘scintillated more’: S & W, 22

70
. ‘Are you again’: ibid., 19

70
. ‘insanely jealous’: ibid., 22

71
. ‘But oh, beloved’: ibid., 32

71
. ‘Please’: ibid., 33

71
. ‘hear about your adventures’: ibid., 67

71
. ‘the classic confectionery’: ibid.

71
. remarked many years later: ibid., 68

71
. ‘similarly satisfying’: ibid., 32

71
. ‘searched the plant’: ibid.

72
. ‘Only one wretch’: ibid., 32–3

72
. ‘The job and people’: ibid., 33

72
. ‘Paul [Horgan] has been with me’: ibid., 35

72
. ‘It was my first taste’: ibid., 34

72
. He recalls: ibid., 36

72
. ‘And toward the end’: ibid., 38

73
. Horgan himself: ibid., 37

73
. Boyd was impressed: see ibid., 34 and 37

73
. Bernheim, on the other hand: ibid.

73
. ‘. . . we would go out’: ibid., 36–7

73
. ‘salt-encrusted’: ibid., 28

73
. ‘But really, maestro’: ibid., 35

73
. ‘more elementary’: Jeans (1908), v

73
. ‘The present book’: ibid.

74
. ‘what I liked in chemistry’: S & W, 45

74
. ‘I can’t emphasise strongly enough’: ibid., 45–6

74
. wrote to Edwin C. Kemble: ibid., 28–9

75
. ‘partial list’: ibid., 29

75
. his inaugural lecture: Lewis (1914)

76
. ‘any man’: ibid., 6

76
. ‘Mr Oppenheimer’: S & W, 29

76
. ‘Years later’: ibid.

76
. ‘the textbook bible’: Kevles (1995), 160

77
. a telegram: see S & W, 39

77
. a great variety of courses: see ibid., 45

78
. ‘I’m sorry to contradict you’: various versions of this story have appeared in print over the years, beginning with that in
Time
magazine, 8 November 1948, 71, and continuing with: Royal (1969), 29–30, Michelmore (1969), 13, Goodchild (1980), 16, and
B & S, 34. My version combines the Royal and
Time
accounts. The various versions are all substantially the same, except that, in the Michelmore/Goodchild accounts, Oppenheimer places the temple ‘fifty, a hundred years earlier’. Oppenheimer’s view that the temple was built before 400
bc
receives
some
support from modern scholarship, which dates it to 430–420
bc
(see Cerchiai et al. [2004], 276).

78
. Jeffries Wyman: for more on Wyman’s life and work, see Alberty et al. (2003), Gill (1987) and Simoni et al. (2002)

78
. ‘Francis was full of talk’: see Thorpe (2006), 29

78
. ‘Jeffries too’: S & W, 39

79
. ‘was a little precious’: ibid.

79
. as Boyd had: see ibid., 33–4, where Boyd is quoted as saying that the chief thing he and Oppenheimer did
not
have in common was a love of music; while Boyd was ‘very fond of music’, he considered Oppenheimer to be ‘totally amusical’.

79
. ‘completely blind’: ibid., 39

79
. ‘found social adjustment very difficult’: ibid., 61

79
. ‘We were good friends’: ibid.

79
. ‘He wasn’t a comfortable person’: ibid., 44

79
. ‘he was pretty careful’: ibid., 45

79
. he later said:
Time
magazine, 8 November 1948, 71

80
. ‘I am working very hard now’: S & W, 51

80
. ‘Generously, you ask what I do’: ibid., 54

80
. ‘The whole tone’: Bernstein (2004), 16 – see also page 67 above

80
. ‘We were all too much in love’: S & W, 60

80
. ‘ravishing creature’: ibid., 69

80
. have dinner at Locke-Ober’s: Michelmore (1969), 15

80
. Boyd also remembers: S & W, 60–1

81
. And bernheim recalls: ibid.

81
. trips to Cape Ann: ibid., 25

81
. ‘ramshackle cottage’: ibid., 24

81
. ‘mythological landscape’: ibid., 25

81
. ‘Even in the last stages’: ibid., 60

81
. ‘For me’: ibid., 62

81
. Oppenheimer discovered: ibid., 65

81
. ‘I cannot decide’: ibid., 67

81
. ‘I am taking a course’: ibid.

82
. ‘It is almost forty years ago’: ibid., 71

82
. In addition: for a list of courses Oppenheimer took during his final year, see ibid., 68

82
. George Birkhoff: for a brief account of Birkhoff’s life and work, see Dool (2003)

82
. ‘because he’d been working on it’: S & W, 69

82
. ‘one of the world’s greatest academic anti-Semites’: see Siegmund-Schultze (2009), 225

83
. ‘He is Jewish’: Thorpe (2006), 35

83
. ‘I found Bridgman’: S & W, 69

83
. ‘a certificate’: ibid., 70

83
. he wrote to Francis Fergusson: ibid., 72–3

83
. ‘frantic, bad and graded A’: ibid., 70

83
. two Bs: ibid., 73–4

83
. ‘got plastered’: ibid., 74

84
. ‘You will tell me’: S & W, 73

84
. ‘your ability’: ibid., 86

84
. ‘sailing and recuperating’: ibid., 73

84
. ‘to see about laboratory facilities’: ibid., 79

85
. ‘The Parents’: ibid., 80

85
. ‘immense, huge, pounding rain’: ibid., 81

85
. ‘near the centre’: ibid., 75

85
. Rutherford: for more on Rutherford’s life, see Eve (1939), Birks (1962), Wilson (1983) and Campbell (1999). For a shorter summary account, see Cropper (2001), Chapter 21. For the original expression of Rutherford’s planetary model of the atom, see Rutherford (1911). Popular accounts of that model are available in Bizony (2007), Part Two, Gamow (1965), ‘Chap. 10½’, Gamow (1985), Chapter II, Gamow (1988), Chapter VII, and Gribbin (1984), Chapter 2.

85
. the Cavendish Laboratory: see Crowther (1974), Larsen (1962) and Thomson (1964)

86
. J.J. Thomson: see Thomson (1964a and 1964b)

86
. in 1897 he discovered: see Thomson (1897)

86
. Niels Bohr: for Bohr’s life and work, see Moore (1967), Pais (1991) and Rozental (1967)

86
. the ‘Rutherford–Bohr model’: first put forward in Bohr (1913), reprinted in Bohr (1981). Many popularisations of this model have appeared in print over the last hundred years or so. Among the ones I have consulted are: Bizony (2007), Part Two, Gamow (1965), ‘Chap. 10½’, Gamow (1985), Chapter II, Gamow (1988), Chapter VII, Gribbin (1984), Chapter 4, Hoffmann (1959), Chapter V, and Kumar (2009), Chapter 3. Technically more sophisticated accounts can be found in Mills (1994), Chapter 12, and Treiman (1999), Chapter 3.

87
. the ‘Bohr–Sommerfeld model’: for an accessible account of this, see Kumar (2009), 112–15

88
. ‘that brief excursion’: FF to JRO, 25.4.1925, S & W, 73

88
. ‘perfectly prodigious’: ibid., 77

89
. ‘excellent applicants’: see JRO to PWB, 29.8.1925, ibid., 82

89
.
Antarctic Adventure
: Priestley (1914)

89
.
Breaking the Hindenburg Line
: Priestley (1919)

89
. ‘should like to be admitted’: JRO to REP, 30.8.1925, S & W, 82–3

89
. ‘as soon as it seems advisable’: JRO to REP, 16.9.1925, ibid., 84–5

90
. ‘knows everyone at Oxford’: JRO to HWS, 11.12.1925, ibid., 90

90
. meetings at Pontigny: see Smith (2000), 100–1

90
. ‘To be invited to Pontigny’: ibid., 101

90
. ‘rather Russian account’: S & W, 86

91
. ‘I do not think’: JRO to FF, 1.11.1925, ibid.

91
. ‘some terrible complications’: JRO to FF, 15.11.1925, ibid., 88

92
. ‘The Two Cultures’: Snow (1959)

92
. Sir Arthur Shipley: see the obituary in the
British Medical Journal
, 1 October 1927, 615

92
. ‘miserable hole’: JRO, interview with TSK, 18.11.1963, S & W, 89

92
. ‘I am having a pretty bad time’: JRO to FF, 1.11.1925, ibid., 87

92
. a curious document: see B & S, 41 and 44–5. The document is now in the Sherwin Collection, attached to an interview with FF by AKS, dated 21 April 1976.

93
. ‘was completely at a loss’: FF in interview with MJS, 18.6.1979, quoted B & S, 41 and 47

93
. ‘seemed more self-confident’: ibid., 41

93
. ‘first class case of depression’: ibid., 44

93
. ‘He found himself’: ibid.

93
. ‘Fortunately’: ibid.

93
. ‘tried to put them together’: ibid., 45

93
. ‘ridiculously unworthy’: ibid.

93
. ‘did a very good and chiefly rhetorical imitation’: ibid.

94
. ‘There they lay’: ibid.

94
. ‘The academic standard’: JRO to FF, 1.11.1925, S & W, 87

94
. Patrick Blackett: see Hore (2003), Lovell (1976) and Nye (2004)

94
. ‘a young Oedipus’: I.A. Richards, quoted in Nye (2004), 25

94
. his most important contributions: see Crowther (1974), Chapter 16

95
. Blackett’s remarkable photographs: ibid., 214

95
. Nobel Prize: Franck’s acceptance speech, with the rather unenticing title ‘Transformations of kinetic energy of free electrons into excitation energy of atoms by impacts’, can be found on the Nobelprize.org. website: at
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1925/franck-lecture.html

95
. Max Born: for Born’s life, see Born (1978) and Greenspan (2005)

95
. ‘handsomest, gayest, happiest pair’: I.A. Richards, quoted in Nye (2004), 28

95
. collection of essays: Wright (1933)

96
. ‘The Craft of Experimental Physics’: ibid., 67–96

96
. ‘is a Jack-of-All-Trades’: ibid., 67

96
. ‘The point is’: Goodchild (1980), 17

96
. Rutherford himself: see Pais (1986), 367. Rutherford told the story to Paul Dirac, who then repeated it to Pais. Dirac, Pais adds, ‘witnessed a similar occurrence later in Göttingen’.