In the late 60's Frank Oppenheimer was my physics professor. During the time of the Vietnam War. He invited students to remain after class to discuss current events. As the class was attended primarily by engineering students, there were no takers. I'll always recall the profound sadness that accompanied J. Robert's brother. I made note of the human, emotional scars that remained. (And, as my father, was also a nuclear physicist, I looked there for something similar, which I did not find.) With respect to Gaza, one of my mentors in peacemaking shared with me a year ago that he had attempted to bring about movement with Hamas for over thirteen years. He concluded that it was not possible. The changes in Japan are not possible because of the heartened hearts of Hamas, a very different situation.
This is fascinating. On my father's side, I hail from military men and engineers, including nuclear engineers, and I have found there to be minor reflections of their personality in the minds of other aerospace and nuclear engineers. For one thing, they have a high tolerance for risk and more easily slip from granular analysis to big-picture thinking than other folks, often in a way that can be jarring. I'd love to know, how was Professor Oppenheimer as a man, in terms of his general daily personality?
I fear you are right about Hamas. Worse, I fear this holds true of Gazans overall. Every new piece of survey data or anecdotal news report only seems to reinforce the impression. But if we do not at least try to turn this ship around, all I see ahead of us is the carnage of Palestinian people.
Frank Oppenheimer physically was the prototype mad scientist. Central casting. As noted, he carried with him a certain unshakeable sadness, a weight that it appeared arose from his work with his brother. It was a sadness that had a depth that was chilling, it was a "feeling" that I noted and said to myself, "Do not forget that look." As a professor he was awesome. The best. The physics lab for our course took up the entire top floor of a building on the Colorado U campus. Later, that lab design became the Exploratorium Museum in Golden Gate Park in S.F. Taking his tests was both stressful and joyful. We would gather in amphitheatre style classroom with our slide rules and best competitive minds. The questions were always multifaceted problems that required solving multiple steps. Rote knowledge was defeated at the outset. We would meet for pizza and beer afterwards, as though we just attended a major football game. Of course after a few beers loosened one's nerves, the answers came to mind! He created an atmosphere that made one think one was "doing physics." There were many top notch physicists there at the time... with their doors open! And being a stupid freshman I did not take advantage of the opportunity. (Though I did get to visit with Dr. Condon re Project Blue Book.)
David, I’m truly impressed by this essay. Twenty or so years ago I naively hoped that Iraq would rise from the ashes as Germany and Japan had after WW2. My disappointment at the outcome led me back to 1968/69 when I was in junior high school and being introduced to multiculturalism. As an Italian-American whose family rose from New York tenements to my father’s impressive career in early nuclear medicine (biology and physics, where many of the pre-eminent Manhattan Project physicists transitioned to, perhaps from a feeling of needing to apply their specialties to helping rather than destroying their fellow humans) and my uncle who was awarded the National Engineering Award (later, by President Clinton), I truly believed in the melting pot theory and I won’t apologize for still believing in it. The realization that multiculturalism had rooted itself so deeply in America’s institutions as I saw all the blood and treasure in Iraq wasted because we were too virtuous to point out that a cultural change, an alignment to Western values, would violate progressive ideology caused a fundamental shift in my own politics. I’ve read enough of your essays to say it makes me happy that you are speaking out and that I can support you.
Thank you, John. And thanks for your support. Like you, I believe in a multicultural America. I think anyone who lived through the 80s and 90s in America is going to have lasting faith in that ideal, because that era was the high-water mark of multiculturalism. We believe in it because we literally lived through it, so we are totally convinced it's possible because it already happened once before. But the question is, is it possible again? And honestly, I'm not sure. We were still regaining our balance after the tech disruption of the internet when social media hit us, and we're still spinning out over that as AI is starting to hit us. If and when society stabilizes again, we may return to saner times, but we'll have to wait and see because the longer the chaos endures, the less likely things will return to normal.
In the late 60's Frank Oppenheimer was my physics professor. During the time of the Vietnam War. He invited students to remain after class to discuss current events. As the class was attended primarily by engineering students, there were no takers. I'll always recall the profound sadness that accompanied J. Robert's brother. I made note of the human, emotional scars that remained. (And, as my father, was also a nuclear physicist, I looked there for something similar, which I did not find.) With respect to Gaza, one of my mentors in peacemaking shared with me a year ago that he had attempted to bring about movement with Hamas for over thirteen years. He concluded that it was not possible. The changes in Japan are not possible because of the heartened hearts of Hamas, a very different situation.
This is fascinating. On my father's side, I hail from military men and engineers, including nuclear engineers, and I have found there to be minor reflections of their personality in the minds of other aerospace and nuclear engineers. For one thing, they have a high tolerance for risk and more easily slip from granular analysis to big-picture thinking than other folks, often in a way that can be jarring. I'd love to know, how was Professor Oppenheimer as a man, in terms of his general daily personality?
I fear you are right about Hamas. Worse, I fear this holds true of Gazans overall. Every new piece of survey data or anecdotal news report only seems to reinforce the impression. But if we do not at least try to turn this ship around, all I see ahead of us is the carnage of Palestinian people.
Frank Oppenheimer physically was the prototype mad scientist. Central casting. As noted, he carried with him a certain unshakeable sadness, a weight that it appeared arose from his work with his brother. It was a sadness that had a depth that was chilling, it was a "feeling" that I noted and said to myself, "Do not forget that look." As a professor he was awesome. The best. The physics lab for our course took up the entire top floor of a building on the Colorado U campus. Later, that lab design became the Exploratorium Museum in Golden Gate Park in S.F. Taking his tests was both stressful and joyful. We would gather in amphitheatre style classroom with our slide rules and best competitive minds. The questions were always multifaceted problems that required solving multiple steps. Rote knowledge was defeated at the outset. We would meet for pizza and beer afterwards, as though we just attended a major football game. Of course after a few beers loosened one's nerves, the answers came to mind! He created an atmosphere that made one think one was "doing physics." There were many top notch physicists there at the time... with their doors open! And being a stupid freshman I did not take advantage of the opportunity. (Though I did get to visit with Dr. Condon re Project Blue Book.)
David, I’m truly impressed by this essay. Twenty or so years ago I naively hoped that Iraq would rise from the ashes as Germany and Japan had after WW2. My disappointment at the outcome led me back to 1968/69 when I was in junior high school and being introduced to multiculturalism. As an Italian-American whose family rose from New York tenements to my father’s impressive career in early nuclear medicine (biology and physics, where many of the pre-eminent Manhattan Project physicists transitioned to, perhaps from a feeling of needing to apply their specialties to helping rather than destroying their fellow humans) and my uncle who was awarded the National Engineering Award (later, by President Clinton), I truly believed in the melting pot theory and I won’t apologize for still believing in it. The realization that multiculturalism had rooted itself so deeply in America’s institutions as I saw all the blood and treasure in Iraq wasted because we were too virtuous to point out that a cultural change, an alignment to Western values, would violate progressive ideology caused a fundamental shift in my own politics. I’ve read enough of your essays to say it makes me happy that you are speaking out and that I can support you.
Thank you, John. And thanks for your support. Like you, I believe in a multicultural America. I think anyone who lived through the 80s and 90s in America is going to have lasting faith in that ideal, because that era was the high-water mark of multiculturalism. We believe in it because we literally lived through it, so we are totally convinced it's possible because it already happened once before. But the question is, is it possible again? And honestly, I'm not sure. We were still regaining our balance after the tech disruption of the internet when social media hit us, and we're still spinning out over that as AI is starting to hit us. If and when society stabilizes again, we may return to saner times, but we'll have to wait and see because the longer the chaos endures, the less likely things will return to normal.