The Younger Oppenheimer
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Vol 461|24 September 2009 BOOKS & ARTS The younger Oppenheimer Frank Oppenheimer founded the San Francisco Exploratorium: his charisma and passion for science education made him as influential, if not as famous, as his brother, explains Robert Crease. Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up by K. C. Cole Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2009. 416 pp. $27 Alfred Russel Wallace wrote that Charles Darwin never lost “the restless curiosity of the child”. One could say the same of the experimental physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985), younger brother of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose life has been far more documented. Like Robert, Frank was involved in leftist politics in ways that damaged his career; unlike Robert, Frank’s relentless enthusiasm allowed him to forge a dramatic comeback. His masterpiece was the San Francisco Exploratorium in Cali- fornia, through which he influenced the lives of countless people. K. C. Cole, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is one of those people. In the early 1970s, the magazine Saturday Review assigned the fledgling writer — who says she had “no interest in science whatsoever” and thought an accelerator was a gas pedal — to cover Frank Oppenheimer brought a “rancher’s aesthetic” to the Exploratorium science museum. the Exploratorium. She was transformed by meeting Frank, who struck her as “a kind of years, relying on familiar sources of some- a neighbour telling her of how Frank once Yoda” and helped to launch her career as a times doubtful reliability. She does not explore became incensed by a cow’s refusal to enter a science writer. Her enthusiasm is the reason Frank’s membership of the Communist Party, pen and began to curse wildly, his expletives that her book Something Incredibly Wonderful calling it “civic minded” and accepting at face echoing back and forth across the valley. Happens, although not deep or probing, is value his remarks that it was a “casual thing”. In the 1950s, Frank became a respected affectionate and evocative. Oddly, she also glosses over his scientific work. community member, an elected repre- Frank and Robert were born in Manhat- Although she says that Frank found cosmic sentative of local cattlemen and a teacher tan, New York, to a “little royal family” whose rays “truly fascinating” and cites an obituary at the local high school. He galvanized the cultivated parents collected art and sent their that calls his articles “landmark research”, she childrens’ interest in science, making them children to private school. In 1936, while a doesn’t even tell us the papers’ titles. dissect farm animals and disassemble car graduate student in physics at the California Unable to find a job in physics, Frank retired engines at the scrapyard. To the bafflement Institute of Technology, Frank and his wife with Jackie in 1949 to an isolated cabin near of Colorado officials, students from Pagosa Jackie joined the Communist Party; they Pagosa Springs, Colorado, to become a farmer. Springs — until then a little-known farming quit, disenchanted, in 1940. During the Sec- A “gentle Jewish intellectual from Manhattan”, community — began raking in prizes at state ond World War, Frank worked on the Man- Frank initially did not even know how to turn science fairs. hattan Project that developed the atomic grass into hay. He doggedly set out to teach In 1959, Frank was offered a teaching job at KUTNICK WWW.EXPLORATORIUM.EDU/E. THE EXPLORATORIUM, bomb, watching the blinding explosion of the himself, selling an inherited Vincent van Gogh the University of Colorado, where he thrived. first nuclear test alongside his brother, who painting to pay his expenses. The enthusiastic reception to a talk he gave in was director of the Los Alamos lab in New Cole is more at home writing about a char- 1966 on science and education set him on the Mexico. After the war, Frank studied cosmic acter in an intimate setting than as an actor on track to creating the Exploratorium, which rays at the University of Minnesota. In 1949, a scientific or political stage. She gives us vivid opened in 1969. he was forced to resign and was blacklisted, portraits of Frank delivering newborn animals Cole’s real subjects are the early years of the unable to obtain employment in an academic in the snow, “pulling on the legs of the emerg- Exploratorium and its charismatic, madden- institution. ing calf while Jackie read instructions out loud ing creator. The museum was always a work Unfortunately, Cole glosses over these from a veterinary manual”. And she recalls in progress, having a “rancher’s aesthetic” — 476 © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NATURE|Vol 461|24 September 2009 OPINION exhibits were donated and jerry-built such death scene is disrupted when, to the horror of and he and his staff were called cranks. that a foot-pedal lathe became an electricity his wife and children, Frank’s mistress arrives Given Burton’s intent of “poking the generator, or a traffic light became an optics to profess her devotion — just one of several establishment in the eye”, he might have lesson. Events included the dissection of a pig’s irruptions of libidinal chaos. expected some abuse. But in such cases the eye. Children played truant to hang out there, The vividness of this scene whets our appe- best strategy is to stick to one’s guns. Alas, teenagers got high there because of all the per- tite for more insight into the ‘royal family’ itself. Burton is not so thick-skinned. He reveals ceptual stimulation and adults found it exotic Robert married an alcoholic and was himself himself as the insecure country cousin awed and magical. an adulterer; his daughter committed sui- by the sophistication of established scientists Cole writes of her own interactions with cide. In her book, Cole tells us little of Frank’s and their fancy dinner parties. He swayed Frank. Even simple encounters such as eating children, not even when they were born. The towards them, minutely measuring the dis- a meal could turn into an adventure: he once Oppenheimer family, we suspect, has yet to tance between the riverbanks lest he offend fashioned a gyroscope for her “out of pats of reveal all of its dark sides. But by shunning a the mainstream. Burton tried to replicate butter and a bread plate to explain precession”. traditional biographical tapestry, Cole success- the US establishment in Canada, but he was The book strings together many vignettes of fully, and at times movingly, limits her focus to often outbid and exploited by opportunists Frank in action. It does not matter that his Frank’s infectious passion for science. ■ who used Perimeter as a trampoline to boost ruminations on life are of uneven value and Robert Crease is professor and chairman of their US careers. varying coherence — it captures important the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook By the time Perimeter matured, five years parts of the man. University, New York 11794-3750, USA. He is the later, the divide between the quixotic first Cole charts the encroaching bureaucratiza- co-author of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life with hires and the new wave was painfully evident. tion of the Exploratorium, and the final weeks Abraham Pais. The openness of the early days was replaced of Frank’s life as he died of cancer. The touching e-mail: [email protected] by Princeton-style hush-hush and invitation- only meetings. The idealists openly confessed that they wished they could find another ben- efactor, to “start anew and this time do it right”. Something had gone wrong: the sought utopia Howard’s end at Perimeter had become a dystopia. Scientific originality has become big busi- First Principles: The Crazy Business of Physicists’ ring hilariously true. But there ness: being anti-establishment sounds great. Doing Serious Science was also a fatal flaw in Perimeter’s concept — Yet few want to take the risks necessary to by Howard Burton scientists tend to define ‘originality’ as what achieve it. Originality is encouraged in public Key Porter Books: 2009. 288 pp. they personally do. Soon the institute’s quest pronouncements only to be punished when Can$24.95 for novelty became hijacked by the agendas of practical decisions are made. Perhaps Perim- the field’s usual culprits, and Burton himself eter’s tale proves that there is no recipe for came under attack from them. original science: it happens anarchically and The goal of First Principles is good: Howard “You don’t go into the woods to find a lum- by accident, in spite of, rather than because of, Burton, founding director of the Perimeter berjack to run a scientific institute,” one sen- scientific institutions. Institute for Theoretical Physics, relates the ior Canadian physicist jibed, commenting on Burton had his heart in the right place at the setting up of the institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Burton’s past as a ‘failed’ physicist. “Why did outset and we should have some sympathy for Canada, following a donation exceeding he hire all those losers?” asked another when him. And Perimeter was a success on many Can$100 million by Mike Lazaridis, creator faced with Burton’s first batch of appointments. fronts: the building is gorgeous, its bistro is of the BlackBerry, in 1999. But the book’s self- In some circles Perimeter became known as the outstanding, the administrative staff enlight- congratulatory tone is a major snag. As real- ‘institute of lost causes’ in response to Burton’s ened. But the institute has failed to attract good ity increasingly conflicts with hype, Burton’s promotion of off-the-beaten-track research, students; its outreach activities have become account evolves into a sad tale.