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A Physicist for All Seasons: Part II

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Abstract

The second part of this interview covers Frank Oppenheimer’s move to the University of California at Berkeley and wartime work at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the electromagnetic-separation plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at Los Alamos, New Mexico (1941–1945); his postwar research at Berkeley (1945–1947); his appointment at the University of Minnesota in 1947 and firing two years later after being required to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee; his decade as a rancher in Colorado (1949–1959) and high-school science teacher toward the end of this period; his research at the University of Colorado in Boulder after 1959; his year as a Guggenheim Fellow at University College London in 1965; and his founding of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. California, in 1969. He also discusses his wartime relations with his older brother Robert and postwar events in Robert’s life, including his Hearings before the Personnel Security Board of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.

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Notes

  1. The Calutron was a mass spectrometer whose name was formed by contracting Cal[ifornia] U[niversity] [cyclo]tron.

  2. Robert Oppenheimer said that a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds,” floated through his mind.

  3. The Potsdam Conference took place from July 17 to August 2, 1945.

  4. This experiment was reported only in an unpublished laboratory report (see below).

  5. The Acheson-Lilienthal Report was finalized on March 17, 1946.

  6. The Q or quality of a resonant cavity is a measurement of its resistance to oscillation, so the higher the Q, the lower the resistance.

  7. This experiment was reported only in an unpublished laboratory report (see below).

  8. General Mills, Inc., in Minneapolis had established a Mechanical Division for military work during the war, and one of its members, Otto C. Winzen, had pioneered the use of polyethylene as a packaging material, which is light, relatively cheap, and unaffected by ultraviolet radiation. Jean Piccard, Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, was a pioneer in high-altitude balloon flights, and after the war he and Winzen worked out a plan for balloon flights into the stratosphere. They then succeeded in persuading General Mills to manufacture thinner and thinner polyethylene balloons until they were thinner than a human hair, which were ideal for carrying instrumentation to higher and higher altitudes for cosmic-ray research.

  9. Phyllis Freier received her Ph.D. degree in physics at the University of Minnesota in 1950.

  10. The J. Robert Oppenheimer Hearings took place before the Personnel Security Board of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., from April 12 through May 6, 1954.

  11. 4-H is a youth organization administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Its name represents its focus on four areas of personal development, head, heart, hands, and health.

  12. The albedo represents the reflectivity, in this case of neutrons from the sun’s surface.

  13. In 1973 physicists carrying out experiments using the 70-GeV (Giga-electron-volt) proton synchrotron at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, near Moscow, Russia, detected four antitritium nuclei, each containing one antiproton and two antineutrons.

References

  1. Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, Chaim Richman, and Frank Oppenheimer, “Control of the Field Distribution of the Linear Accelerator Cavity,” Physical Review 73 (1948), 535 [Abstract]; Luis W. Alvarez, Hugh Bradner, Jack V. Franck, Hayden Gordon, J. Donald Gow, Lauriston C. Marshall, Frank Oppenheimer, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, Chaim Richman, and John R. Woodyard, “Berkeley Proton Linear Accelerator,” The Review of Scientific Instruments 26 (1955), 111-133.

  2. Carl Bailey, D.L. Drukey, and F. Oppenheimer, “A Magnetic Ion Source,” Rev. Sci. Inst. 20 (1949), 189-191.

  3. Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps, “’Passport, please’: Legal, Literary, and Critical Fictions of Identity,” College Literature 25 (Winter 1998), 94-138; especially “I. The Unimaginable Mrs. Shipley,” 94-98.

  4. Alice Kimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America: 1946-47 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

  5. Frank Oppenheimer, Lawrence H. Johnston, and Chaim Richman, “Drift Tubes for Linear Proton Accelerator,” Phys. Rev. 70 (1946), 447-448 [Abstract].

  6. Bailey, Drukey, and Oppenheimer, “Magnetic Ion Source” (Ref. 2).

  7. Phyllis Freier, E.J. Lofgren, E.P. Ney, F. Oppenheimer, H.L. Braht, and B. Peters, “Evidence for Heavy Nuclei in the Primary Cosmic Radiation,” Phys. Rev. 74 (1948), 213-217; Phyllis Freier, E.J. Lofgren, E.P. Ney, and F. Oppenheimer, “The Heavy Component of Primary Cosmic Rays,” ibid., 1818-1827; E.P. Ney, P. Freier, E.J. Lofgren, and F. Oppenheimer, “Observations on Heavy Nuclei in Cosmic Radiation,” ibid. 75 (1949), 340 [Abstract]; H.L. Bradt, Phyllis Freier, E.J. Lofgren, E.P. Ney, F. Oppenheimer, and B. Peters, “Evidence for Heavy Nuclei as a Component of Primary Cosmic Radiation, Reviews of Modern Physics 21 (1949), 101-103.

  8. Walter Frick, Edward J. Lofgren, Frank Oppenheimer, and Edward P. Ney, “Equipment for Photographing Cosmic-Ray Cloud-Chamber Tracks at 100,000 Ft.,” Phys. Rev. 74 (1948), 1258 [Abstract]; Edward J. Lofgren, Edward P. Ney, and Frank Oppenheimer, “Data Obtained from Cosmic-Ray Cloud-Chamber Tracks Taken at 100,000 Feet,” ibid. [Abstract].

  9. F. Oppenheimer and E.P. Ney, “Wide Angle Sprays of Minimum Ionization Particles,” Phys. Rev. 76 (1949), 1418-1419 [Letter to the Editor].

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  10. Freier, et al., “Heavy Component” (Ref. 7); Freier, et al., “Evidence for Heavy Nuclei” (Ref. 7); Bradt, et al., “Evidence” (Ref. 7); H.L. Bradt and B. Peters, “The Heavy Nuclei of the Primary Cosmic Radiation,” Phys. Rev. 77 (1950), 54-70.

  11. P.S. Freier, E.J. Lofgren, E.P. Ney, and F. Oppenheimer, “Star Production at High Altitudes,” Phys. Rev. 75 (1949), 340 [Abstract]; Phyllis Freier, Edward P. Ney, and Frank Oppenheimer, “Energies of Heavy Nuclei in Cosmic Rays,” Phys. Rev. 75 (1949), 991-992 [Letter to the Editor]; P. Freier, E.P. Ney, and F. Oppenheimer, “Cosmic-Ray Induced Nuclear Stars at High Altitudes,” ibid., 1451-1452 [Letter to the Editor]; Oppenheimer and Ney, “Wide Angle Sprays” (Ref. 9); Phyllis Freier, E.P. Ney, and F. Oppenheimer, “Properties of the Heavy Primaries,” ibid. 77 (1950), 752 [Abstract].

  12. Freier, et al., “Heavy Component” (Ref. 7).

  13. Bradt and Peters, “Heavy Nuclei” (Ref. 10).

  14. C.M.G. Lattes, G.P.S. Occhialini, and C.F. Powell, “Observations on the Tracks of Slow Mesons in Photographic Emulsions,” Nature 160 (1947), 453-456, 486-492; reprinted in E.H.S. Burhop, W.O. Lock, and M.G.K. Menon, ed., Selected Papers of Cecil Frank Powell (Amsterdam and London: North-Holland, 1972), pp. 228-238, 239-255.

  15. Freier, et al., “Evidence for Heavy Nuclei” (Ref. 7).

  16. Arthur H. Compton and Samuel K. Allison, X-Rays in Theory and Experiment (New York: Van Nostrand, 1936).

  17. Gerhard Herzberg, Atomic Spectra and Atomic Structure. Translated with the Co-operation of the Author by J.W.T. Spinks (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937).

  18. Oppenheimer and Ney, “Wide Angle Sprays” (Ref. 9).

  19. Alvarez, et al., “Berkeley Proton Linear Accelerator” (Ref. 1).

  20. Frank Oppenheimer, “The Sentimental Fruits of Science,” Durango Herald (May 1959).

  21. Philip M. Stern, The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial. With the collaboration of Harold P. Green (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, 1969).

  22. See, for example, Jean Newman and Frank Oppenheimer, “Absence of any Temperature Dependence in the Ultraviolet Reflectivity of Platinum and Gold,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 52 (1962), 948-949 [Letter to the Editor].

  23. H. Davis, F. Oppenheimer, W.L. Knight, F.R. Stannard, and O. Treutler, “A Bubble Chamber Study of the Reactions Occurring with Stopping K−-Mesons in a Mixture of Propane and Freon,” Il Nuovo Cimento A 53 (1968), 313-326.

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  24. W.L. Knight, F.R. Stannard, F. Oppenheimer, B. Rickey, and R. Wilson, “A Bubble Chamber Study of the Trapping of Λ-Hyperons in Nuclear Matter,” Nuovo Cimento 32 (1964), 598-608.

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  25. A.E. Bussian and F. Oppenheimer, “Baryon-Exchange Model in Isobar Production,” Bulletin of the American Physical Society 9 (1964), 538; idem, Physical Review Letters 22 (1964), 649-652; L. Piekenbrock and F. Oppenheimer, “Λ-P Elastic Cross Section,” Bull. Amer. Phys. Soc. 9 (1964), 538-539; idem, “Λ-p Elastic Scattering,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 12 (1964), 625-627; H.S. Davis and F. Oppenheimer, “Lifetime of the 1405-Mev Y o Resonance,” Bull. Amer. Phys. Soc. 9 (1964), 539.

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  26. Frank Oppenheimer and Malcolm Correll, “A Library of Experiments,” American Journal of Physics 32 (1964), 220-225.

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  27. Frank Oppenheimer, “The character of a university” Colorado Quarterly (Spring 1964), 265-273.

  28. Frank Oppenheimer, “The Mathematics of Destruction” [Guest Editorial], Saturday Review (January 16, 1965), 20; see also Frank Oppenheimer, “A War in the Shadow of the H-Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 24 (May 1968), 43-45.

  29. See, for example, Frank Oppenheimer, “Sophomore-Laboratory Experiment on the Viscosity of Air,” Amer. J. Phys. 32 (1962), 526-528; John R. Wilson and Frank Oppenheimer, “Silicon Controlled Rectifier Circuit for the Control of High Wattage Projection Lamps,” Rev. Sci. Inst. 35 (1964), 1013-1014.

  30. Oppenheimer and Correll, “Library of Experiments” (Ref. 26).

  31. Oppenheimer, “Sentimental Fruits” (Ref. 20).

  32. Frank Oppenheimer, “Science and Fear—A Discussion of Some Fruits of Scientific Understanding,” The Centennial Review of Arts & Science 5 (1961), 396-414.

  33. Oppenheimer, “Mathematics of Destruction” (Ref. 28).

  34. Frank Oppenheimer, “The Role of Science Museums,” paper delivered to the Conference on Museums and Education, published in Conference Report (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968). See also idem, "The Importance of the Role of Science Pedagogy to the Developing Nations," paper delivered to Symposium of World Federation of Scientific Workers, Budapest, Hungary, 1965, Scientific World 10, No. 4 (1966), 21–23, 28.

  35. See, for example, Frank Oppenheimer, “Simple Demonstration of the Retinal Evidence Involved in Distance Perception,” Amer. J. Phys. 33 (1965), 1085-1088.

  36. Frank Oppenheimer, “A Rationale for a Science Museum,” Curator: A Quarterly Publication of the American Museum of Natural History 11, No. 3 (1968), 206-209.

  37. Frank Oppenheimer, “The Exploratorium: A Playful Museum Combines Perception and Art in Science Education,” Amer. J. Phys. 40 (1972), 978-984; idem, “The Palace of Arts and Science: An Exploratorium at San Francisco, California, U.S.A.,” Leonardo 5, No. 4 (1972), 343-346. For a full account, see K.C. Cole, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), especially pp. 145-324.

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This interview with Frank Oppenheimer is adapted from an interview conducted by Charles Weiner on February 9 and May 21, 1973, in Sausilito, California. This is one of some 1,000 transcribed interviews available for study by scholars at the American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics in College Park, Maryland. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Roger H. Stuewer, Tate Laboratory of Physics, University of Minnesota, 116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA; e-mail: rstuewer@physics.umn.edu.

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Oppenheimer, F. A Physicist for All Seasons: Part II. Phys. Perspect. 15, 178–240 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-009-0010-0

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