Robert Oppenheimer used to tell of the pioneer mysteries of building reliable Geiger counters that had low background noise. Among his friends, he said, there were two schools of thought. One school f...
The career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the Manhattan Project, draws such questions to a focus that resembles the bead of a laser-gunsight on a victim’s breastbone. It was Oppenh...
…suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, con...
Beyond aspects of pain that are physical, thought Oppenheimer, sickness or injury or privation, beyond the so-called obvious, suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things...
Oppenheimer, haunted by his leading role in the first use of atomic weapons, understood only one aspect of prudence. His longing not to do evil himself blinded him to the need to ward off the evil of...
