Ed Regis by Who Got Einstein Office

Author:Who Got Einstein Office [Office, Who Got Einstein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-10T06:00:00+00:00

150

But Oppie's humiliation took its toll. Both Oppie and his wife Kitty were big drinkers, and after his defeat, things seemed to get worse. "I can remember a typical evening at that house," one visitor recalls. "You would sit in the kitchen, just gossiping and drinking with not a thing to eat. Then about ten o'clock Kitty would throw some eggs and chili into a pan and, with all that drink, that's all you had." It got to the point where mathematician Deane Montgomery went around calling Oppie's place "Bourbon Manor." Oppie, for his part, called Montgomery "the most arrogant, bull-headed son-of-a-bitch I ever met."

Evaluations of Oppenheimer's nineteen-year tenure as director are more or less divided along party lines, with the physicists remembering him fondly for having placed them at the center of attention, and the humanists admiring him for his vast erudition outside the sciences. On one occasion Oppenheimer was asked for some advice by Lansing V. Hammond, who was working for the Commonwealth Fund, a program set up by the British government to send bright and promising young British scholars to study in the United States. Hammond was awash in applications and called on Oppie for help with his physics applicants.

Oppenheimer handled the physics applicants pretty quickly, but then asked to see the others, even those in the humanities.

"Umm . . . indigenous American music," Oppie said, looking at an application form. "Roy Harris is just the person for him; he'll take an interest in his program. . . Roy was at Stanford last year, but he's just moved to Peabody Teacher's College in Nashville. . . Social psychology; he gives Michigan as his first choice . . . Ummm ... he wants a general, overall experience; at Michigan he's likely to be put on a team and would learn a great deal about one aspect. I'd suggest looking into Vanderbilt; smaller numbers; he'd have a better opportunity of getting what he wants."

"Symbolic logic," Oppie said, turning to another application. "That's Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, or Berkeley; let's see where he wants to put the emphasis. . . . Ha! Your field; eightenth-century English lit. Yale is an obvious choice; but don't rule out Bate at Harvard; he's a youngster but a person to be reckoned with."

And so it went for the next hour or so. Of some sixty applications, Oppie was unable to help with only two or three. For the others. . . well, he seemed to be just about omniscient. No wonder the humanists liked him.

Oppie's main enemies at the Institute were the mathematicians, who saw him packing the place with physicists, and paying scant attention

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.