Freeman Dyson on How Robert Oppenheimer Ran Hot and Cold - Facts So Romantic
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Robert Oppenheimer could be extremely generous and friendly or he could be very harsh. He was very quick to judge and decide that somebody was no good, and then that was final.Photograph by Ed Westcott (U.S. Government photographer) / WikicommonsKai Bird is miffed. His 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer was exhaustively researched, but not quite to his satisfaction. Bird’s co-author, Michael J. Sherwin, had hit up Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist and mathematician, to open up about his time working with and under Oppenheimer, who, after having given birth to the atomic bomb, began directing the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. Dyson never let loose that he had a store of letters Bird and Sherwin could (...)