Einstein–Oppenheimer relationship
Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer were twentieth century physicists who made pioneering contributions to physics.
[2] J. Robert Oppenheimer, called the American physics community's "boy-wonder" in the 1930s, became a popular figure from 1945 onwards after overseeing the first ever successful test of nuclear weapons.
[a] When in 1945 the first ever nuclear weapons were successfully tested, Oppenheimer was acknowledged for bringing forth to the world the astounding "instrumental power of science".
[3] Einstein, after facing criticism for having "participated" in the creation of the atomic bomb, answered in 1950 that, when he contemplated on the relationship between mass and energy in 1905, he had no idea that it could have been used for military purposes in anyway, and maintained that he had always been a "convinced pacifist".
[10] Despite their differences in stances, both Oppenheimer and Einstein were regarded as "deeply suspicious" figures by the authorities, specifically by J. Edgar Hoover.
[10] With the advent of modern physics in the twentieth century changing the world radically, both Einstein and Oppenheimer grappled with metaphysics that can provide an ethical framework for human actions.
Oppenheimer became engrossed in the eastern philosophy, with particular interest in the Bhagavad Gita, and an affinity with the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism.
[13] When in 1939, the general public became aware of the Einstein–Szilard letter that urged the US government to initiate the Manhattan project, for the development of nuclear weapons, Einstein was credited for foreseeing the destructive power of the atom with his mass–energy equivalence formula.
[19] For one of Einstein's birthdays, Oppenheimer gifted him a new FM radio and had an antenna installed on his house so that he may listen to New York Philharmonic concerts from Manhattan, about 50 miles away from Princeton.
[15] Oppenheimer did not provide an article to the July 1949 issue of Reviews of Modern Physics, which was dedicated to the seventieth birthday of Einstein.
[12] Oppenheimer's initial harsh assessment was attributed to the fact that he found Einstein highly skeptical about the quantum field theory.
[12] After the death of Einstein in April 1955, in a public eulogy Oppenheimer wrote that "physicists lost their greatest colleague".
[25] Einstein in his last twenty-five years of life focused solely on working out the unified field theory without considering its reliability nor questioning his own approach.
In 1900, while still a student at ETH, he wrote in a letter to his friend Marcel Grossmann that, "It is a glorious feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena, which appear to direct sense perceptions as quite distinct things.
[31] The speech received considerable media attention, New York Times reported the story headlined “Oppenheimer View of Einstein Warm But Not Uncritical”.
[32] After the speech, as part of an effort to amend any misunderstandings, in an interview with the French magazine L'Express, Oppenheimer said, "During all the end of his life, Einstein did no good.
"[33] Einstein appreciated Oppenheimer for his role in the drafting and advocacy of the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, and for his subsequent work to contain the nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union.
[15] At the IAS, Einstein acquired profound respect for Oppenheimer on his administration skills, and described him as an “unusually capable man of many sided education”.
