J. Robert Oppenheimer: Histy

J. Robert Oppenheimer is a very good scientist because he has a passion for learning ever since he was a young child. “From the ages of seven through twelve, Robert had three solitary but all-consuming passions: minerals, writing, and reading poetry, and building with blocks. By the age of twelve, he was using the family typewriter to correspond with a number of well-know local geologists about the rock formations he had studied at central park” (Bird, 14). He loved to collect rocks when he was little, labeling each with their scientific names. The way he has achieved the admiration of geologists and rock collectors showed his brilliance in his early years. Ever since his grandfather gave him the encyclopedia of architecture, Oppenheimer has developed a deep love for blocks, which would come in later on in the construction and design of the atomic bombs. During his school days, Oppenheimer would “receive every idea as perfectly beautiful” (Bird 22). He loved to learn, and was skipped a few levels because of his brilliance.

Through free-spirited teaching and open-mindedness, Mr. Oppenheimer had an “aura of free-wheeling brilliance that surrounded [him]” (Bird 98). Even though he might have been wrong on a few points according to his teachers, it does not seem to affect him much in his teachings, which is one of the reasons his students are so attracted him. He also constantly changed his interests, from rock collecting, in which he was only “fascinated by the structure of crystals and polarized light” (Bird 14), to chemistry, and then physics, Oppenheimer never really stayed on one specific topic, showing that he is not bound to only one specific idea, even while he was writing and analyzing formulas, he found time to write and read some poetry and books. This also shows how extensive and open-minded he is on the different ideas of people, showing that he can not only understand the thinking of scientist, but of literalists also.

Oppenheimer is a person who can look at a situation from many angles, even though at times, it may not be the best of things. Oppenheimer, during the busy days of the Manhattan Project, he asked his daughter’s babysitter to adopt her, because he was “want[ed] somehow or other to give his child the fair deal that he felt he couldn’t give her” (Bird 264). Oppenheimer had looked at how his daughter was dealing not seeing both her parents, from all the perspective, and had decided that perhaps it was better for her to live with another family. Also, if Oppenheimer hadn’t looked at anything from different angles, he wouldn’t have “opened the door to twenty-first-century physics” (Bird 89). In which he and a fellow student Hartland Snyder studied and published a paper of Gravitational Contraction. Showing that he sees things in a different perspective than the rest of the world at times, especially when it came to science.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is a “good scientist” because he accepts the help and idea of others, and incorporates his ideas with comrades, through working with students like Carlson, in which, together, calculated the energy for the loss of electrons in 1932. ‘He influenced one of his classes to help Carlson with the finishing of his thesis’ (Bird 97). He doesn’t make anyone feel left out of anything, often “inviting a handful of students to join him for dinner” (Bird 97). He “included his students in his social life” (Bird 95). Oppenheimer would often stop over at his student’s