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He had a little cup of hemlock and he counted up to nine
My father just sent me the news that the AEC's 1954 decision to revoke the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer has been vacated by the Department of Energy. I seem to have much the same reaction as to the posthumous pardon of Alan Turing in 2013: good for the relevant government, better to have done it in his lifetime, better not to have needed to reverse the judgment at all. That said, the statement by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm is worth reading in full:
The reconsideration of an order of the AEC concerning an individual long-deceased is not something this Department has ever done and not something that would ordinarily be considered. And yet, the Oppenheimer matter was extraordinary in several respects that merit its reconsideration [. . .] These failures warrant vacating the AEC's order and, in the case of an active clearance seeker, would warrant a new adjudication conducted in accordance with the applicable rules. In the case of Dr. Oppenheimer there will of course be no new adjudication.
Look, I read An-sky. You just need a beit din. Give him back his security clearance; he won't be worse than some of the nuclear ghosts we've got haunting this country. Besides, I doubt this one was exorcised to begin with. I am desperately hoping the upcoming film by Christopher Nolan is any good.
(I know that the popular synonymy of scientist and mad makes my objections a lost cause, but I can't help side-eyeing the NYTimes description of Oppenheimer as "an eccentric genius fond of pipes and porkpie hats." I don't just mean that the man never chained a tea-mug to a radiator; I mean there were far weirder figures roaming the landscape of theoretical physics in those days, even agreed on as such by their colleagues. Paul Dirac once declined the loan of a couple of books from Oppenheimer on the grounds that reading interfered with thought. (Egon Spengler resembles that remark.) Oppenheimer could be nervy, self-sabotaging, and tactless—as a grad student at Göttingen, which he had gladly exchanged for the depressions and failures of Cambridge, he was notoriously the subject of an ultimatum by his fellow students to stop talking over the rest of the class before they boycotted it—and lay himself open to charges of pretentiousness and conceit, but I am unconvinced that any of this behavior qualifies as eccentricity. It is true that by 1948, the inaugural issue of Physics Today could use a photograph of his signature, now internationally recognizable pork-pie hat as a symbol of its contents and concerns. Everyone who has a favorite item of clothing, you are all weirdos.)
The reconsideration of an order of the AEC concerning an individual long-deceased is not something this Department has ever done and not something that would ordinarily be considered. And yet, the Oppenheimer matter was extraordinary in several respects that merit its reconsideration [. . .] These failures warrant vacating the AEC's order and, in the case of an active clearance seeker, would warrant a new adjudication conducted in accordance with the applicable rules. In the case of Dr. Oppenheimer there will of course be no new adjudication.
Look, I read An-sky. You just need a beit din. Give him back his security clearance; he won't be worse than some of the nuclear ghosts we've got haunting this country. Besides, I doubt this one was exorcised to begin with. I am desperately hoping the upcoming film by Christopher Nolan is any good.
(I know that the popular synonymy of scientist and mad makes my objections a lost cause, but I can't help side-eyeing the NYTimes description of Oppenheimer as "an eccentric genius fond of pipes and porkpie hats." I don't just mean that the man never chained a tea-mug to a radiator; I mean there were far weirder figures roaming the landscape of theoretical physics in those days, even agreed on as such by their colleagues. Paul Dirac once declined the loan of a couple of books from Oppenheimer on the grounds that reading interfered with thought. (Egon Spengler resembles that remark.) Oppenheimer could be nervy, self-sabotaging, and tactless—as a grad student at Göttingen, which he had gladly exchanged for the depressions and failures of Cambridge, he was notoriously the subject of an ultimatum by his fellow students to stop talking over the rest of the class before they boycotted it—and lay himself open to charges of pretentiousness and conceit, but I am unconvinced that any of this behavior qualifies as eccentricity. It is true that by 1948, the inaugural issue of Physics Today could use a photograph of his signature, now internationally recognizable pork-pie hat as a symbol of its contents and concerns. Everyone who has a favorite item of clothing, you are all weirdos.)
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And I thought that you (and your father) would also like to know.
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This is a terrible streak and it should stop. Thank you for linking me the family obit.
And I thought that you (and your father) would also like to know.
I'll have to tell my mother, too!
*hugs*
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I believe most of it is from the Thames TV webpage, only the last paragraph is from the family - but that bit was very sweet!
I'll have to tell my mother, too!
Of course! But I knew it was your father who was setting out to watch all the Michael Chapman. <3
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But also yeah, yeah, like...I feel like the pipe-and-porkpie-hat thing is imposing our own standards on the previous decades, because there are LOADS of people, especially men people, smoking pipes in those decades. My grandpa smoked a pipe back then. Not in my memory, but in 1954? absolutely. And men wore more hats back then, so "Oooooh he wore a haaaaat" was not nearly the specific affectation it is now. So he liked the same hat and not different hats. Okay, fine.
I am also desperately hoping about the upcoming film. We can desperately hope together.
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(My mother said that women stopped wearing hats so much after beehive hairstyles made them not fit right, a little later).
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Of course, there were times and places where it didn't take much to get a reputation for eccentricity. In my father's time, there was apparently a polymer chemist at the university of Illinois who was well known for not wearing socks. WTF! These days, I'd be surprised if more than 90% of Cambridge wears socks when it's not actively snowing.
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Is that Salmagundi? I meant to get there over the summer, but it never happened.
I took a friend in there who couldn't imagine why something would be called a porkpie hat. After seeing one, she said, "Oh. It looks like a pork pie." Up close, anyway.
I'm glad to know that. I am not sure I've ever interacted with one in the wild.
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I've only ever been to the one in Jamaica Plain! They repaired my great-grandfather's flat cap. (It has since died, through no fault of theirs.)
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https://salmagundiboston.com/
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Most people still can't tell the difference between a trilby and a fedora!
In my father's time, there was apparently a polymer chemist at the university of Illinois who was well known for not wearing socks.
I think it's nice that that was notable.
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"You know it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine . . ."
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You're welcome!
But also yeah, yeah, like...I feel like the pipe-and-porkpie-hat thing is imposing our own standards on the previous decades, because there are LOADS of people, especially men people, smoking pipes in those decades.
Right! I didn't even want to touch the implication of pipe-as-affectation; my grandfather in the '50's also smoked a pipe. (My grandmother just chain-smoked.) Oppenheimer is supposed to have taken to wearing a pork-pie hat after Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld, who was one of his youthful idols. That's adorable and exactly the sort of thing that a person never changes if they can help it. Otherwise, it felt a bit like "tell me you don't know a lot of Jewish intellectuals without telling me you don't know a lot of Jewish intellectuals," which I don't expect from the New York Times.
I am also desperately hoping about the upcoming film. We can desperately hope together.
On the pettiest level, I like Cillian Murphy, but he was so far down the list of contemporary actors I would have cast as Oppenheimer, he wasn't even on it.
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Preeeeeeeeeeeecisely.
Christopher Nolan? Hm. Might work. This'll be interesting!
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It's so much easier to be kind to people when they're dead.
Christopher Nolan? Hm. Might work. This'll be interesting!
I am very hit-or-miss with Christopher Nolan—I have loved films of his, I have wanted them slingshot into the sun—and I really don't want a re-run of The Imitation Game (2014).
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That's neat! I saw something similar during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) in New Haven.