Oppenheimer : the tragic intellect / Charles Thorpe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thorpe, Charles, 1973-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 1904-1967.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert.

Physicists--United States--Biography.

Physicists.

Scientists--Intellectual life--20th century.

Scientists.

Science--Moral and ethical aspects.

Science.

Science and state--United States.

Science and state.

Atomic bomb--United States--History.

Atomic bomb.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (446 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

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 cultu

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?

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

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

ISBN:

9786611966652

9781281966650

1281966657

9780226798486

0226798488

OCLC:

436148396