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Oppenheimer : the tragic intellect / Charles Thorpe.

By: Thorpe, Charles, 1973-Material type: TextTextPublisher: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006Description: xx, 413 p., [12] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cmISBN: 0226798453 (acid-free paper); 9780226798455 (acid-free paper); 9780226798462 (pbk.); 0226798461 (pbk.)Subject(s): Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904-1967 | Physicists -- United States -- Biography | Scientists -- Intellectual life -- 20th century | Science -- Moral and ethical aspects | Science and state -- United States | Atomic bomb -- United States -- HistoryDDC classification: 530.092 | B LOC classification: QC16.O62 | T56 2006Other classification: 33.01 | UB 3255
Contents:
Introduction : charisma, self, and sociological biography -- Struggling for self -- Confronting the world -- King of the hill -- Against time -- Power and vocation -- "I was an idiot" -- The last intellectual?
Summary: At a time when the Manhattan Project was synonymous with large-scale science, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) represented the new sociocultural power of the American intellectual. Catapulted to fame as director of the Los Alamos atomic weapons laboratory, Oppenheimer occupied a key position in the compact between science and the state that developed out of World War II. By tracing the making - and unmaking - of Oppenheimer's wartime and postwar scientific identity, Charles Thorpe illustrates the struggles over the role of the scientist in relation to nuclear weapons, the state, and culture. A stylish intellectual biography, Oppenheimer maps out changes in the roles of scientists and intellectuals in twentieth-century America, ultimately revealing transformations in Oppenheimer's persona that coincided with changing attitudes toward science in society.
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Book University of Texas At Tyler
Stacks - 3rd Floor 		QC16 .O62 T56 2006 (Browse shelf) Available 0000001907542

Includes bibliographical references (p. [371]-396) and index.

Introduction : charisma, self, and sociological biography -- Struggling for self -- Confronting the world -- King of the hill -- Against time -- Power and vocation -- "I was an idiot" -- The last intellectual?

At a time when the Manhattan Project was synonymous with large-scale science, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) represented the new sociocultural power of the American intellectual. Catapulted to fame as director of the Los Alamos atomic weapons laboratory, Oppenheimer occupied a key position in the compact between science and the state that developed out of World War II. By tracing the making - and unmaking - of Oppenheimer's wartime and postwar scientific identity, Charles Thorpe illustrates the struggles over the role of the scientist in relation to nuclear weapons, the state, and culture. A stylish intellectual biography, Oppenheimer maps out changes in the roles of scientists and intellectuals in twentieth-century America, ultimately revealing transformations in Oppenheimer's persona that coincided with changing attitudes toward science in society.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Charles Thorpe is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

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