人格分裂与社交魅力

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a man with a very divided self and an insecure self. He never quite pulled himself together as a human being. And as is true with many people with that kind of personality structure, he was a superb actor. He could play lots of different roles, and he did. Women adored him; he was one of the most lavish courters of women. He would bring a bouquet of flowers to their first date, which was apparently shocking to people in those days. He was just a lovely, courtly man.

课堂上的严厉与刻薄

But in the classroom, if somebody made a stupid mistake, he would just chew them out, and he was nasty to people all the time, in a way that bothered a lot of people.

同事冲突与不安全感

Louis Alvarez, who was someone I got to know pretty well because I helped him write his Memoirs (回忆录: 个人经历或事件的记述), was one of the important scientists that Los Alamos really didn't get along with Oppenheimer at all, because Oppenheimer was so condescending to everyone. And Larry was kind of a hothead, and he didn't like people condescending to him. Oppenheimer never wanted to know Bill. Louie did, and so forth. So there was this layer of Oppenheimer being waspish all the time, which was his insecurity.

物理学研究中的浅尝辄止

And his insecurity extended to physics. And rather than dig deep into one problem, Robbie said later, he just, he didn't have the... Flash. He couldn't sit down and focus on one problem because he always wanted to be someone who always knew everything that was going on in his in physics. Well, you could call that someone who was a very sophisticated, knowledgeable scientist. You could call him a, uh, someone who was superficial. And he was superficial. He knew broadly rather than deeply, if you will.

战前残酷与战时领导力

And for the period of the war, Hans Bethe told me this. He said, before the war, Robert really could be cruel. Uh, he would pounce on a mistake you made. And Bethe, a Nobel laureate (Nobel Prize winner: 诺贝尔奖得主), discovered what makes the sun work. That's how important Bethe's work was and how significant. Bethe told me, and of course, everyone makes mistakes. I made mistakes. Oppenheimer would charge me with the mistake if I spoke wrong.

战时明智的实验室主任

But he said, before the war, after the war, but not during the war. During the war, he was the superb kind of wise lab director because unlike most scientists, he was not only a physicist of high class, but he really was psychologically astute as a human being, as I think insecure people often are, because they've got to scope out what's going on.

战后年轻科学家与核武野心

When the war was over, these were mostly graduate students or new PhDs who had been recruited for this program. The average age at Los Alamos was 27. Oppenheimer was an old guy, he was 39. Right? So these were young guys who'd been pulled out of their lives, pulled out of their careers. They wanted to get back to the university and do the work they had started out to do. And by and large, they did, unless Allen was just emptied out.

泰勒的氢弹计划

Edward Teller was horrified. Teller wanted the bomb program to continue because he wanted to build his hydrogen bomb (核武器: 一种利用核反应释放巨大能量的武器). It was going to be his, his, his bid for history, just as Oppenheimer's bid for history was the fission bomb, if you will. Teller's was going to be the hydrogen bomb.

采访泰勒的经历

You talked to Teller in writing the book, is that right? I did. What was his feelings when you talked to him about this? I made the mistake of going to see Teller at his house on the grounds of Stanford University early on in my research when I really didn't have as clear a grasp of who everyone was and what I should ask and so forth. And I sent him a copy of an essay I'd written about Robert Oppenheimer for a magazine. And that set him off.

泰勒的偏执与控制欲

He had reached the point where he was telling TV interviewers, asking them how much time he would actually be on the air. And if they said three minutes or whatever, he would say, all right, then I will answer three questions, no more. Trying to control because he was convinced that everyone was cutting the story to make him look bad. He really had quite a lot of paranoia at that point in his life.

激烈的争论与意外的评价

So when he read my essay on Oppenheimer, he used that as the basis for basically shouting at me, waving my big heavy book, one of my big heavy books at him. I remember thinking, oh my God, he's going to hit me with my book. Then I thought, wait a minute, this guy's 80 years old, can't take him.

敌人的赞誉

So, but he finally said, all right, I will answer three questions. And we sat down and I asked him why. And he didn't give me an interesting answer. I asked him the second question, and it was worth the whole interview. I said, was Robert Oppenheimer a good lab director? And I thought, well, here's a chance where he'll slash him. But his worst, Oppenheimer's worst enemy said to me, Robert Oppenheimer was the best lab director I ever knew. And I thought, Bingo. And then he chased me out of the house.

历史类比的启示

So, you know, Dwight D. Eisenhower in one of his Memoirs says, I always liked Hannibal best of all the classical figures in the military of the Roman Empire because he comes down to us only in the written Memoirs of his enemies. And if they thought he was such a good leader, yeah, he must have been a hell of a leader.