Hollywood movie aside, just how good a physicist was Oppenheimer?

Oppenheimer was a genius, but his superpower was being good at both theoretical and practical physics. He did Nobel-prize level work and also ran the Manhattan Project. I think that’s comparable to getting the gold medal at the Olympics for 2 different sports.<p>General Leslie Groves thought very highly of Oppenheimer, and if you got the stamp of approval from Groves, you were doing something right.<p>Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project. It probably would have been the Oppenheimer Medal if it weren’t for Senator McCarthy.<p>Oppenheimer beat Heisenberg (also a pretty smart guy) to the bomb and not by a little either. And thank whatever higher power is out there he did.<p>(I am reusing most of my comment from a different story)

I really don&#x27;t understand this American attitude where everything someone does always has to be a revelation like never seen before. Oppenheimer was clearly an extremely capable physicist, and to portray him as &quot;no Einstein&quot; is just lazy, dishonest, and plainly ignorant.<p>There was a similar thread were people were talking about Alan Turings running times, and concluding that they are worthless compared to modern-day Olympic athletes. I mean, if that&#x27;s really the thing you want to point out about Alan Turing, to me that just demonstrates that <i>you</i> have some issues.

Freeman Dyson&#x27;s expansive 1997 interview for &quot;Web of Stories&quot; has his opinions. Starts off around Episode 78 and several subsequent fragments. Dyson describes a very dogmatic man that resisted what the young people at the time were doing, who didn&#x27;t even believe in his own (Oppenheimer&#x27;s) landmark results in black holes, and who needed the limelight (Episode 83). Dyson even says Oppenheimer may have been better off for having had his clearance revoked (Episode 96). Despite all that, he was ready to leave the IAS if Oppenheimer had been fired as its Director (Episode 97).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&amp;list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN&amp;index=78">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=N44DZJW4LSw&amp;list=PLVV0r6CmEs...</a>

From the accounts I&#x27;ve read of other scientists in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer had a connector style of personality that made him very well-suited to the role. For this type of job you don&#x27;t want an Einstein who is prone to thinking deeply on one problem for weeks at a time. Oppenheimer seemed to be the one person who understand broadly what everyone was doing.

Veritasium posted a good video about Oppenheimer the other day if you have 32 minutes<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Xzv84ZdtlE0</a>

It seems like the answer based on this article is &quot;pretty good.&quot; The evidence in favor of this is his paper on collapsing stars causing black holes (which the author suggests would have won him a Nobel Prize in other circumstances) and that he was the conceptual designer for the bomb itself. That&#x27;s a pretty good case in my book.

Ranking scientific achievement is a very dodgy pursuit and physics is no exception.<p>There is a path dependence that makes it almost impossible to compare individuals that worked in different eras. This is hinted at by the famous &quot;standing on shoulders of giants&quot; quote of Newton and is further complemented by something I believe Lev Landau has expressed using the phrase &quot;all the brides are taken&quot; (he felt there weren&#x27;t big enough problems for him to have a chance to measure against the &quot;greats)&quot;<p>There is one and only Universe, the understanding of which by humans is a single historical trajectory. There is no possibility to control for any variable and repeat the experiment.<p>Would the absence of the specific &quot;Newton&quot; individual delay the process of understanding the physical works? by how much? A few years, decades, centuries? Taking into account that ideas and possibilities tend to &quot;float&quot; in the environment of a particular era but also the presence of non-linear loops such as: influential scientists that get recognized early on can stall further development during their own lifetime!<p>Making the best of a risky task would require that we only compare apples with apples, individuals of a particular era and operating in the same information environment. So in this instance, ranking Oppenheimer against individuals of his generation only.<p>Having said all that, imho there is really nobody like Einstein. Ever since the 18th century most physics is in a sense &quot;programmatic&quot;. There is a defined mental framework that people apply repeatedly to an ever growing range of accessible or relevant domains. Einstein&#x27;s journey created an entire new paradigm (the fabric on which physics plays out is itself physics) and one we still have not fully understood.<p>The most exciting possibility is that somebody might be able to piece together that growing observational hints from cosmology and the various puzzles of black holes to take that paradigm to the next stage.

For all his obviously high intelligence and more than anything, organizational ability in partly directing the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer sort of pales in comparison to the true genius and all-around polymath who worked on the same project, and so many, many others. John Von-Neuman.<p>Even among many other extremely brilliant minds he was recognized for being exceptional. Some of the quotes from other scientists in the Wikipedia link below really hammer home his particularly, peculiarly unique brilliance. I&#x27;ve never seen Oppenheimer described this way.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_von_Neumann" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_von_Neumann</a>

Oppenheimer will forever be associated with both delivering the the nuclear weapon and with his own reflection on what he had done, whether triumph or regret. His legacy is equally sociological as it is scientific or technological.<p>To pick him apart and view him only through the lens of his physics research is very myopic, equivalent to picking apart whether Bill Gates was a great programmer.

For a very different take on Oppenheimer, from someone who knew him, see this book:<p>Freund, Peter (2007) A Passion For Discovery, World Scientific Publishing Company. Available from: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund&#x2F;dp&#x2F;9812772146" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Passion-For-Discovery-Peter-Freund&#x2F;dp&#x2F;...</a>

Obligatory old parody: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v1vXC-vKgKg</a>, they actually touch quite a few of facts from biography.

In my field, we invoke the name of Oppenheimer (the Born-Oppenheimer approximation[0,1]) in many of our formulations, every paper we write or talk we give. He did this work when he was a 23 year old grad student. He seems to have led a complex life. Either ways, I don&#x27;t see the point of this article. While building on the shoulder of giants, he managed to lead the Manhattan project to fruition under the most existential of deadlines. We could even argue that this opening of Pandora&#x27;s box has had the most consequential direct impact on modern society.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Born–Oppenheimer_approximation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Born–Oppenheimer_approximation</a> [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gallica.bnf.fr&#x2F;ark:&#x2F;12148&#x2F;bpt6k15386r&#x2F;f475.item" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gallica.bnf.fr&#x2F;ark:&#x2F;12148&#x2F;bpt6k15386r&#x2F;f475.item</a> - page 457

&gt; A-bomb architect “was no Einstein,” historian says, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes<p>As a layman I find it hard to parse the difference from “no Einstein” but still doing “Nobel-level” work.<p>The interview didn’t really help explain it.

I think the author makes a fair point that Oppenheimer was not a revolutionary physicist like Einstein or Feynman, but rather a synthesizer and organizer who brought together diverse ideas and people to achieve a common goal. I wonder how much of his success was due to his charisma and leadership skills, and how much was due to his scientific vision and intuition. I also wonder how he dealt with the ethical dilemmas and moral consequences of his work on the atomic bomb. Did he ever regret his involvement or try to prevent further nuclear proliferation? How did he cope with the political pressure and scrutiny that he faced after the war?

Not sure why so many people are offended by the fact that the interviewed person says he was no Einstein. There&#x27;s also quite much context added as to why his contributions were in some ways not comparable to the likes of these other scientists.<p>I mean, if you have a great developer who&#x27;s even better as a manager because he has both the ability to manage and understand technical problems, is it an offense to say that &quot;he wasn&#x27;t John Carmack?&quot;.

Since the movie&#x27;s release, a deluge of edits are occurring on his Wikipedia page:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenheimer&amp;action=history&amp;offset=&amp;limit=250" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=J._Robert_Oppenhe...</a>

If memory serves, Jeremy Bernstein had a beautiful essay that spoke to this question: &quot;The Merely Very Good.&quot; Unfortunately, it doesn&#x27;t seem to be available online in any good format. But it&#x27;s been collected in at least two volumes, including *The Best American Essays 1998.&quot;

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dannen.com&#x2F;decision&#x2F;targets.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dannen.com&#x2F;decision&#x2F;targets.html</a>

Why is no one talking about Leo Szilard?

Fascinating. The article implies Oppenheimer was chosen partially because Groves could control him due to Oppenheimer&#x27;s loose association with the Communist party.

&quot;Also, in the U.S., the empirical way of approaching physics was predominant&quot;<p>So at the time, practically all US physicist were interested in building actual stuffs, and not working on theoritical models&#x2F;math equations?