| Gulf Spill May Defy Darkest Predictions Preliminary reports from scientists suggest that the damage done by the oil spill may be significantly less than was feared. feeds.nytimes.com |
Frank Oppenheimer Brother of the famous Robert, Frank Oppenheimer was more than just a physicist. Alice Bell looks at the life of her favourite scientistAlice is a lecturer in science communication and blogs at Through the looking glassLet me tell you about my favourite scientist: a 20th century American physicist named Frank Oppenheimer. Perhaps a better description would be cowboy/ teacher/ museum-maker/ physicist. He really was that cool.It was Frank's big brother, J Robert Oppenheimer, whom you've probably read about in science or history textbooks. The father of the atomic bomb, it was Robert who was scientific director of the Manhattan Project and held Albert Einstein's old position of senior professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Frank, though, is who I want to tell you about.As a teenager, Frank would devour letters Robert sent home from college at Harvard and, later, graduate school in Europe. They were full of news and gossip of the big characters of early 20th century physics, people such as Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and JJ Thomson. Inspired, Frank decided to follow his brother into physics. After graduating from Johns Hopkins in 1933, Frank spent some time at labs in Cambridge and Florence, before moving to the California Institute for Technology for a PhD on artificially induced radiation.Frank's obsessions were not limited to physics. He had an oft-told story of how he had "discovered" his sperm under a microscope as a child. The "most wonderful scientific discovery that I ever made", he said. While at Cambridge, Frank took time to earn a pilot's licence. By the time he left Florence, he knew the paintings in the Uffizi intimately. He loved to tinker with machines too: as a PhD student, he made a phonograph for one of his colleagues.Around the same time, he also got into politics. This was the 1930s, and Frank was hugely affected by stories of the Great Depression and Spanish civil war. He spent so much time absorbed in political work that it delayed the completion of his PhD, leading big brother Robert to accuse Frank of being "slow". It was through politics, though, that Frank met his wife, Jackie. They became members of the Communist party soon after they married in 1936. Frank never felt at home in the party though, and the couple both left in 1940.Near the end of the second world war, Frank joined his brother on the Manhattan Project, and stood by him when the atom bomb was first tested – a sight that haunted both brothers for the rest of their lives. Post war, Frank secured a job at the University of Minnesota, as an assistant professor studying cosmic rays. This was an adventurous area of physics, and he had enormous fun sending balloons high into the atmosphere.But there was trouble ahead. The couple's membership of the Communist party had not gone unnoticed. The FBI had been tracking them since 1941 and, in June 1949, Frank received summons to appear before the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives. Blackballed from academia, he became a cowboy.OK, really the couple bought a cattle ranch, paid for by selling a Van Gogh he'd inherited from his father. I like the cowboy image, though.The Oppenheimers gradually settled into small town life (this was Pagosa Springs, Colorado, pop. 1,500). When an unexpected vacancy for a science teacher opened at the local high school. The local physics professor seemed the obvious choice. Frank was keen to take the challenge, hoping it might be a route back to academia. An inventive teacher, he'd start lessons with trips to the local dump to collect bits of old machines to use in demonstrations of thermodynamics. On one occasion, he even killed and dissected a kitten to demonstrate part of the ear.By 1959 he achieved his aim of a post at the local university. However, he found academic life had changed. No longer a haven for adventurous eccentrics, the university was something slicker: more competitive, more businesslike. Academics kept their heads down, didn't mention politics and taught students to pass their tests. This wasn't Frank's style.In 1965 he secured a fellowship to do some research at University College London. While there, he visited the Science Museum's Children's Gallery, and decided to build his own (but better) museum. By May 1969, he'd wangled a dollar-a-year lease for some space by the sea in San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, a pseudo-Roman ruin left over from 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the "Exploratorium" was opened ("museum" was too formal).The Exploratorium was built on a very scientific commitment to honesty, the sharing of knowledge and continuous development. Their workshops were set in the centre of the museum, with windows so visitors could see the exhibits being developed and fixed. They also kept some of the science-via-junkyard approach Frank had honed as a high school teacher: the Bernoulli Blower exhibit was inspired by a demonstration used by vacuum cleaner salesmen. Someone spotted new traffic lights in the street outside, so they asked the company that manufactured the lights to donate the old ones to use in an optics exhibit. Crucially, they shared instructions of how to make their exhibits with other institutions. Visit any science museum in the world, and you'll probably find at least one exhibit that owes something to the Exploratorium.So, Frank Oppenheimer (1912-1985): physicist, bomb-builder, balloon-launcher, political activist, cowboy(ish), teacher and museum-maker. A fascinating chap. Even if he did kill kittens.If you want to know more, KC Cole's brilliant biography, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens is out in paperback this month. There are also pictures, videos, articles and biographical sketches at the Exploratorium site.Alice Bell is a lecturer in science communication and blogs at Through the looking glassPeople in sciencePhysicsAlice Bellguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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