Robert Oppenheimer è stata una delle figure più enigmatiche e carismatiche della fisica contemporanea. Ancora ventenne contribuì in maniera fondamentale allo sviluppo della teoria quantistica, ma divenne famoso in tutto il mondo come direttore del gruppo di ricercatori di Los Alamos che, in venti mesi di febbrile sperimentazione, mise a punto la bomba atomica. Abraham Pais, a sua volta grande fisico, che conobbe personalmente Oppenheimer e condivise con lui lunghi anni di insegnamento a Princeton, ripercorre, in questa biografia, tutte le tappe di un percorso scientifico fondamentali per il ventesimo secolo. (fonte: retro di copertina)

This is a book about the enigmatic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, or Oppie as some people called him, by Abraham Pais, a physicist himself. The author says right at the beginning, that while he always thought of Einstein and Bohr as simple good men and felt it easy to write about them, he could not say the same about Oppenheimer. The book starts with an annoyingly brief account of Oppenheimer's early life and just a brush through his days spent as something as important as the head of the Manhatton Project that built the Atom Bomb. The first 100 pages has some interesting stories and comments, but leave you a bit irritated. Then it gets better as the author covers those days he himself spent with Oppenheimer. This was when Oppenheimer served as the directory of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. A lot of pages of the book are dedicated to the Institute, its history, its members, life in it, and its internal politics. This is followed by a gripping account of the Oppenheimer hearings where he was put on trial with suspicions of him passing on secrets to Russia. There is a lot here that reveals things about not just Oppenheimer, but also about the people and thinking of those perilious times of Cold War, and make you think about how circumstances can easily cloud people's thinking and bend the common understanding of ethics.

Oppenheimer comes across as a brilliant and mysterious man with immense charisma. The author, with his benefit of close acquaintance with not only Oppenheimer but many other famous physicists like Einstein and Rabi, as well as his understanding of the subject itself, gives a very candid account of Oppenheimer's life, and his and other people's opinion of Oppenheimer. The frankness is illustrated in lines such as where he calls Kitty Oppenheimer (Robert's wife), "the most despicable female I have known". Oppenheimer gives rise to a varied range of feeling in various people, and frustrates any description. From great respect for his brilliance there is the very apparent dissatisfaction about his contribution to his subject. There is annoyance about his arrogance, accounts of being mesmerised by his speech, and compassion for his condition. Interestingly, some phyisicists such as Rabi also point out Oppenheimer's interest in fine culture, paintings, literature and particularly his readings such as that of the Bhagavad Gita in original Sanskrit; as being the reason why he never could achieve what a simple minded physicist with complete faith in his subject can. The book also has many personal accounts of the impression Oppenheimer made on people, and little stories about him.

While the book is a good one, I think anyone interested in knowing about Oppenheimer, should also read some book in addition to this one.
(My review from: http://www24.brinkster.com/srineet/reviews.html#OppenheimerByPais) ( )