Robert Oppenheimer speaking at UCLA 5/14/1964 

I agree was expecting Oppenheimer talking about Oppenheimer

Neils Bohr is God, Oppenheimer saw that.

Thank you.

⁠u

German discovered Uranium American found Plutonium 💣 😊

Yes, I think it is basically the quite real difference between using existing, or known, mathematics as a tool to accomplish a study into an unknown, vs. essentially creating (or discovering, we can debate that elsewhere) some new aspect of mathematics in order to solve (probably) a really tough problem. The literal invention of the imaginary number, i, might be an example of work that was actually "doing" mathematics. Bohr was much more a good user of mathematics, her could understand it well, than he was a pioneer explorer into new aspects of mathematics in order to answer some deep question, explain some phenomenon, etc. I think it's fair to say that most of his work was more in the former areas than in the latter.

Oppenheimer deserved a Nobel for his work. But because of suspicion of his left connection he was denied. His security was taken off.

@@desaivinod1 which particular work, his work seems to be rather diverse from nuclear to astrophysics

Please read his biography

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Yes, very sad. I think all reflective people find themselves in a laybrinth (yeah, I know I spelled it wrong) of dilemmas that involve intense struggles between personal ambition, and moral and ethical sensitivities...and, I guess, human limitations.

yeah except now its directed energy weapons, AI, and Cybernetics, so I think his soul can rest easy. Nuclear weapons are many decades out of date and of no consequence.

A man with so much money and he builds the most destructive bomb known to earth, its cruel really

He sounds like Mr Rodgers, at the frontier of Nuclear Physics.

A gentle man in an ungentle world.

It looks like history is created by humans, but history has been creating itself.

there's amatuer porn here?...

+REAPER3fitty amateur pop?

+James Caldwell Yeah or you can listen to this and watch cute kittens in another tab with the audio muted. That's what Oppenheimer would have wanted.

Anything is possible in the big city. Lol.

Movers, shakers, salad-shooters...

Teller looked at anyone standing in the way of his H bomb as a mortal enemy. It is odd because after Germany surrendered, Teller was one of the physicists at Los Alamos who recommended caution while continuing development of the much "smaller" fission bomb!

@@dovbarleib3256 Not to mention his mathematics were flawed, didn't Ulam come in his office & tell him so? Not a pleasant person. Ego & spite, not a nice combination.

@@dominicseanmccann6300 Yes, true re: Ulam. Im fact, the quip in the math-physics world is that Teller is not actually the "Father of the H-bomb." Ulam is the father, because he gave Teller the seminal mathematics and solution to the problem that Teller struggled with. Ulam's idea therefore impregnated Teller's work, and so he actually became the "Mother of the H-Bomb." When I first heard this story, I laughed at the clever quip. But in time, I see it's really the more accurate truth of who was in fact the father, and who the mother, of the H-Bomb. So, OK, if it requires both a father and a mother, is Oppenheimer the rightful "Father of the A-Bomb?" If not, who is? And if so, who for the A-Bomb can make the rightful claim of motherhood?

@@daviddavis-vanatta1017 😀

it came down to the difference in their philosophies. teller and mccarthy operated under the specter of fear, while bohr and oppenheimer were advocates of peace and love. i don’t know if it ever occurred to teller that an open world is possible.

exactly what i thought

The weight of the instant death of 115k people and eventually 375k total is on his shoulders. It sounds like a terrible burden to bear.

@@mangoman667 It was a collaborative work made possible with hundreds of scientifics. He wasn't at the top, all followed orders and pressures and nobody did it, it just happened. That seems the attitude of all who were being involved. Nobody wants to own that chair.

It was a tragedy for Oppenheimer to believe that burden was deserved. Obviously Oppenheimer built on the work of others. The development of atomic power was inevitable. Oppenheimer, as a scientist, was a lone voice advocating for a serious global consideration of the future potential benefits, and horrors, of nuclear power.

@@mangoman667 You've made an unfair comment. We were at war. Good people were being deprived, tortured, and killed in large numbers. The priority of war is victory and bringing the war to an end. Oppenheimer and his colleagues gave America a tool of war that brought that war to a nearly immediate conclusion and, in the process, saved millions more civilians and soldiers alike from suffering and dying.

he was the mr rogers of nuclear mass destruction.

I totally agree with you! Although I was born in 2010

So exactly right.

@@joey3708 It would be an honor for me to talk with such men of science! You are a lucky guy, sir!

I graduated high school in 2000, but everything I love (music, film, humor, etc) was made before me. I can't talk to anyone...

Also, he can often speak off the top of his head for one hour without supplemental notes.

you mean his zombie like monotone, you have very bad taste imo

I think it is much sadder for all of the lives lost because of the war pigs. You have very twisted priorities imho. Get well soon!

Yes--it's one thing to hear people say "he was a charming physics professor and project leader" and another thing to be actually charmed.

Who cares?

I think Cillian is a perfect casting choice. He can do different voices very well and he has similar looks. When I read the bio I couldn't imagine anybody else as Oppie, than cillian

@@themovingforestWho cares?

@@jqyhlmnp diminished intellects definitely won't

He did that 💯

What did Bethe say exactly?

@@edwardjones2202 and then some...

That is one of the most interesting "what if ...." questions in physics. What would Oppenheimer have done in physics, for physics, but for WWII and the Manhattan Project? He was deeply interested in the 1930's work to rectify and join completely quantum mechanics and special relativity. By the late 1930's, everyone knew that this unification was the golden apple, the great secret, and what would propel physics forward for a long time to come, and without which it would remain stalled. Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga ended up with ownership of, and recognition for, the work that did this unification that we now call Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED). After some passage of time, it became clear that Freeman Dyson's name justifiably should be included with the other three for QED. But history is now history, and no one can ever know whether or not, if Oppenheimer had been able to turn his genius toward this problem, his name too, or even alone, might have been on the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. If not, his name almost surely would have been recognized for some pinnacle in physics, for all time, rather than for a weapon that is the Vishnu-Shiva "Destroyer fo Worlds."

He's considered by some super smart nobel prize winning physicists as the smartest man alive.

He passed away three years later. His spirit and energy already depleted in 1964. Not the same charismatic speaker as he was in the past. The witch hunt hearing destroyed him.

World would also be a better place if people stopped saying, "uhhh" "um" "like" It's SO EASY to [not] do, and for lazy people it's LESS things one 'has to do.' Give it the old college try, I say. Bad language, and using UHHH every other word are indicators that you don't have anything valuable to add. (Not you, OP/adel, just piggybacking on your comment)

@@owlredshift Listen more carefullly. Oppenheimer says it, too. It's human nature to think before (at least ideally) and while speaking. We are social animals; not word processors.

FDR's sudden death happened in April 45. Otherwise spot on.

It is a very good book indeed

@@mikkokarkkainen2807 I second that quick book review. It is a superb book on Oppenheimer and his work, and the time he lived in. Kai Brd was an undergrad classmate of mine.

Reading it right now!

I love your photo. My favorite of him.

Elizabeth, I keep seeing comments from you all over the places I go. You seem to love Oppenheimer just as much as I do.

That would be an understatement 💕

Hehehe ;-) I`m also a woman by the way (I know my name is misleading). Amazing how he is still able to charm us after his death.

Such a beautiful man and a gentle soul. Such depth in his beautiful blue eyes.

You need to read more about the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was a willing and enthusiastic participant. You misunderstand his background. In the 1930's he was a member of a Communist Party front organizations and both his wife (in the 1930's) and his brother were members of the Communist Party USA. In fact, Leslie Groves had to personally intervene and direct the FBI to ignore his past associations in order to get him a clearance to work at Los Alamos. This can hardly be categorized as "false suspicions" unless you're tying to make him a victim of something other than the life choices he made.

@@buckhorncortez That does add context. Thanks for the historical perspective. And yet, unlike Fuchs. Oppenheimer stayed true to the project to the very end. He never betrayed the country and earned better treatment than he received in return.

@@gregparrott I know for a lot of people, they think he was somehow duped into working on the atomic bomb. He wasn't. By October of 1942, he had spent at least a year working on fast neutron interactions which are critical for atomic bomb theory. He also contributed $1,000 a year ($18,000 in 2020) to the Communist Party starting in the late 1930's (probably 1937), and ceased contributions in 1942. The money was supposed to be for use by the rebels in the Spanish Civil War. When confronted with the fact that the money may not have been used for that purpose, his response was, "I never thought of that." For a guy who was as intelligent as Oppenheimer, he often proved he wasn't very smart about making life choices.

​@@buckhorncortez Back in 1937, helping the Spanish was arguably a good cause, as the communists were the only ones actively fighting the fascists, specifically Mussolini and Hitler. Mussolini sent in ~50,000 troops along with thousands of tons of weapons. In 1937, Hitler's Luftwaffe used Guernica to test aerial bombardment strategies and used his transport planes to fly in proxy fighters. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica Prior to WWII, I doubt communism had the same connotation that it does today.

Well, don't lose track of the fact that he lead the project. Yet, in some ways, the development of it was inevitable. If he'd walked away, and not participated, someone else would have done that work. It would have been built. When you're in a situation like that: it will happen with you or without you, and you know you have the ability and talent to do it, its very hard to say no. Here, the moral issues were epic in proportion. You're fighting the war on the side of the good guys, and your creating a weapon of mass destruction. To be in this position and to remain stout and resolute ... Ooof.

Before to get to know some base line facts and to familiarize myself with his accomplishments early in his life. Impressive indeed...

The 1980 BBC series Oppenheimer with Sam Waterson ? Yes !

Works both ways, good luck getting professors like Oppenheimer or Feynman today.

***** I recently watched a Noam Chomsky lecture and the audience baffled me in more ways than one. Not exactly like this or the Feynman messenger lectures - same fedoras, but back then "hats off" was more than an expression apparently.

***** Not to take away from oppy, but I think the silence was more of a symptom of times. People listened, respected, had a natural curiosity for the esoteric science, and most importantly, were patient to a lecturer.

***** Now you can't talk and gather thoughts simultaneously or people think your dumb, or boring. I'll point to the trend in youtube videos snipping dead space out of lectures for proof.

Russ Makar good like getting professors, not, like, Oppenheimer or Feynman

The ending makes me cry (Sherwin version)

what did they do?

@@thelonespeaker As i understand regarding J Robert Oppenhiemer was that immediatley following the end of the Mannhatten project the group of great minds at Los Alamos was split into two camps with most regretting and condemning the use of the atomic bomb, and Edward Teller (working with Stanislaw Ulam) especially, advocating the "super"...or, thermonuclear two stage bomb to be developed with unlimited yield poetential ,and more efficient A.S.A.P before the Soviets got crackin and finished the RDS-6 "layercke, or sloyka" weapon.Then, the infamous and evil "comittee against unamerican actions", or whatever they were called started to make life hard for Oppy,Branding him publically him a commie and yanking his security clearance., and in turn he sorrowfully gave them names (i think,sorry if i am wrong)...which furthur created friction and unhappiness ( he was a sensitive man),and the rest of his life struggled with decisions made during wartime with his excellent work as lead scientist on the atomic bomb project during second world war. Hope i didnt make a fool of myself trying to answer your question. (Dr. Oppenhiemer was a amazing speaker, not any sort of a orator, or politician, but honest and engaging in my opinion.

@@thelonespeaker black balled him

no they blackballed him. Oppie was not a sociopath at all.

@RED PILL PORTAL no I do not think he was.

I just chalked his hmmm's to nervousness due to the distinguish crowd he was lecturing to. UCLA ain't PodunkU.

I reckon I like mustard and biscuits...mmhm and I tinker around with thermonuclear bombs mmmmmm...I like the way you talk

He died of throat cancer a few years later, all that nicotine. So I suppose that was part of the affectation also.

Yet explain how he rejected to sign, and convinced others not to sign the letter that was sent by scientists to not use atomic bomb on civilians?

I wonder how this realization would change German politics right now in the context of Ukraine war.

And if Stalin had not forced communism upon Eastern Europe, we might not have had the Cold War. But Stalin was Stalin, Mao was Mao, and North Korea is still hermetically sealed in a hyper-idolatrous cult of communist lies claiming the USA is their sworn enemy, and Kim has now developed multiple warheads with increasing ability to hit the USA.

Japan would have won in the Pacific. We couldn't make enough uranium for more than the two bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Tellers hydrogen bomb was still years away.

@@albanyorganics3030 wed onto know that for a fact. There are some that claim after the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan, the Japanese would have capitulated. I guess we don’t know.

a voice of salvation for millions. He ended a war that killed over 70M people, it was a numbers thing. The invasion of Japan would of killed hundreds of thousands on both sides.

God of destruction seems a term too far

@@tonymarchant2860 His own quote.

@@bobbowie5334 a bit harsh o himself

@@tonymarchant2860 That he was,. Very much so.

*regard

@@January. Nobody uses this word correctly anymore.

*treasured

Visionary? No. There r kind humans who r visionary. He was a psychopath

In that scenario, do you think that the Soviets would have invaded from the north and Japan would have eventually been divided in two like Korea? It seems to me that many more lives would have been lost under a communist North Japan as well.

@@nickborquez9468 perhaps but we’ll never know. The Soviet’s were definitely on our heels and Stalin was as much an imperialist as he was unpredictable.

@@nickborquez9468 perhaps but we’ll never know. The Soviet’s were definitely on our heels and Stalin was as much an imperialist as he was unpredictable.

Amen.

nope he should be glad we can finally end humanity. the world is not for humans to share it belongs to psychopaths.

That is a beautiful reflection and delivery of humility and humanity. Thank you.

It’s his way to release tension. Sometimes it makes sense in the context as if he is laughing about his own words.

It's kind of soothing almost, it nakes his speech sound way gentler for some reason

I have read through mainstream media he had Depression,mental issues,attacking aggressive,met Therapist,etc.Hearing him in this Lecture total opposite He is Someone Genius,Thoughtful,calm & Honest person.

He had that reputation when he was younger, certainly. By all accounts he mellowed out when he got older.

I'm sure he spoke to his peers differently. More of a "you should know better" tone.

that is simply just not the case brother

Symptoms do mellow over time. Sometimes the Intellectuals are too far ahead of the Emotionals. In time one catches up to the other.

You’re right. In the book American Prometheus it is mentioned that Oppenheimer had verbal tics when he gave lectures.

Professor Frink.

I am 99% sure the man was autistic. Explains the genius, the tics, and the social struggles.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Was just about to comment the exact same.

Do not insult Mr Rogers like that.

@@lovemeg5186 Each of these creatively intelligent minds, Oppenheimer and Mr. Rogers respectfully, merely pursued and accomplished what they believed was best for their lives and the lives of others. Degrading a man for what he loved to do and what he had little major effect in doing is simply disrespectful.