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The late Abraham Pais wrote the definitive biography of Albert Einstein, "Subtle is the Lord," which won an American Book Award. As a distinguished physicist and Einstein's colleague, Pais combined a sophisticated understanding of physics with first-hand knowledge of this notoriously private individual, offering rare insights into both. It is his unique double perspective that makes his work so valuable.
Now Abraham Pais offers an illuminating portrait of another eminent colleague, J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the most charismatic and enigmatic figures of modern physics. Pais introduces us to a precocious youth who sped through Harvard in three years, made signal contributions to quantum mechanics while in his twenties, and was instrumental in the growth of American physics in the decade before the Second World War, almost single-handedly putting American physics on the map. Pais paints a revealing portrait of Oppenheimer's life in Los Alamos, where in twenty remarkable, feverish months, under his inspired leadership, the first atomic bomb was designed and built, a success that made Oppenheimer America's most famous scientist. Pais, who was his next-door neighbor for many years, describes Oppenheimer's long tenure as Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, but also shows how Oppenheimer's intensity and arrogance won him powerful enemies, who would ultimately make him one of the principal victims of the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Told with compassion and deep insight, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most comprehensive biography of the great physicist available. It is Abraham Pais's final work, completed after his death by Robert P. Crease, an acclaimed historian of science in his own right.
- Sales Rank: #2041449 in Books
- Published on: 2006-04-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.30" h x 1.50" w x 9.30" l, 1.53 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Back in the 1990s, when Pais ("Subtle Is the Lord...") began to seriously consider writing about Oppenheimer, there was no full-scale biography of the scientist who led America's effort to create the atom bomb. But with a surfeit of books about Oppenheimer in the last year, this one comes too late—and suffers greatly in comparison to Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's more comprehensive and cogent American Prometheus. Though Pais, a physicist as well as a science writer, was a close colleague of Oppenheimer's at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, he is largely incurious about the parts of his subject's life that he didn't observe personally. He does little more than acknowledge the Manhattan Project, for example, noting that it has been covered elsewhere, and dismisses Oppenheimer's wife as despicable with barely any supporting evidence. Some chapters are assembled by lengthy quotes from secondary sources, others by anecdote, some barely developed past outline form; none are particularly engrossing. Pais died before he could write about the political hearings that cost Oppenheimer his security clearance and public reputation. The final chapters covering this period, written by Crease, a historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory and author of The Prism and the Pendulum, are such a marked improvement that one wishes he'd produced a biography on his own. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Scientific American
Before you mutter "Not another book about Oppenheimer," recall that the author of this one--the late Abraham Pais--wrote what is arguably the most comprehensive biography of Albert Einstein, Subtle Is the Lord, which won a National Book Award. In the present book, Pais (who was a distinguished theoretical physicist) once again combines his sophisticated understanding of the science and his insider's knowledge of the man (he was Oppenheimer's next-door neighbor for many years) to produce a stunning portrait. Historian of science Crease completed the book after Pais's death.
EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
From Booklist
*Starred Review* "We pursue him, and he eludes us." So John Leonard remarked about the maddeningly elusive physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. And now the controversial scientist has slipped beyond the grasp of Pais, the much-acclaimed biographer of Einstein and Bohr. Pais, a longtime colleague of Oppenheimer, long postponed the writing of this life study because of deep personal ambivalence toward the man who presided over the making of America's first atomic bomb only to fall victim to McCarthy-era hysteria. As a consequence of that delay, Pais died before finishing his book. Surprisingly, readers may find that an unintentionally truncated book actually highlights the troubling incompleteness that Pais perceives in Oppenheimer's character. For although Pais details Oppenheimer's rare achievements as a researcher, teacher, and administrator, the portrait he finally delivers is that of a brilliant but arrogant mind falling short of lofty expectations. To the end of his life, Oppenheimer harbored a bitter consciousness of having himself failed to achieve any epoch-making discovery in the science he tirelessly promulgated. Pais' account of the personal contradictions within the man makes an excellent counterpoint to Bird and Sherwin's American Prometheus (2005), the award-winning, full-dress biography of Oppenheimer in which the emphasis falls on the more public side of his life, the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. In context with Bird and Sherwin, Pais offers an indispensable new look at the ever-enigmatic private Oppenheimer. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
42 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
The best book on Oppie at IAS
By John Matlock
There have been several good biographies of Oppenheimer in the past few years. As biographies the others are probably better. This book though has two real advantages over the others:
First, Abraham Pais was a physicist himself. He worked with Oppenheimer and knew all or most of the significant physicists involved with atomic energy during and after the war. His insights on the physics being done at the time is very insightful.
Second, Oppenheimer is most known for Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. But after that, after he lost his security clearance Oppenheimer was head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. This is where Pais knew him and it is in this part of his life that this book excells.
Oppenheimer was an enigmatic person. He was certainly an accomplished physicist. Not perhaps the equal of the very best, but clearly on the first string. Oppenheimer's work in physics earned him what might be called an honorable mention in the history books. Oppenheimer's work as a manager of the project and as director of the institute required not brilliance in physics but managerial capabilities far beyond those exhibited by other physicists of the time (with the possible exception of Edward Teller).
Oppenheimer's expulsion from Government service over security issues was one of the travesties of the McCarthy era. It seems though that his subsequent work at the IAS gave him enough pleasure that he was not unhappy. He continued to work at the forefront of physics.
If you want to know more about Oppenheimer's life before and during the war, look to other books. If you want some insight into his later life and into the depth of his character, this is the best book I have found.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
good work!
By Allen Scott
I am very pleased with the quality and service.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Not For The Non-Professional
By rctnyc
While I generally agree with the authors of the reviews below that this book provides insight into Oppenheimer's character, the development of IAS, and the inner workings of the Manhattan Project, I did not find this biography helpful in understanding either Oppenheimer's scientific work or the wider scientific research in quantum theory in which he played a role. I took to reading the "science" chapters with my laptop, set to Wikipedia, at my side, because -- perhaps because he died before revising or expanding the chapters that he had completed -- Pais does not define, let alone explain, any of the concepts and theories underlying Oppenheimer's research, but merely summarizes those ideas as though he were addressing an audience of science professionals. While no scientist, I'm not a science illiterate. Yet I understood very few of the descriptions in this book of Oppenheimer's actual scientific work. Therefore, I'd recommend this bio to readers interested in learning more about Oppenheimer's life, the history of IAS and the birth of the atomic age, but not to those nonscientists who want to learn more about Oppenheimer's research.
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