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A comment on Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppenheimer?. Parent comment

Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by civilitty on Thursday July 20, 2023 @08:45PM (#36808725)
> Oppenheimer was dragged through the mud during the red scare and his name is still tarnished because of that. It is ironic and a little sad that he was awarded the Fermi medal once his name was finally cleared because Fermi worked for him during the Manhattan Project.

It's ironic to me that this is the first time I'm hearing that he was caught up in the red scare. I mean I'm no historian but apparently didn't tarnish his name all that much! :-)

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by JohnBooty on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:02PM (#36808834)
Generally speaking, I don't believe anybody's name was permanently tarnished by the red scare, because it turned out to be such an utter farce of a witch hunt.

But, at the time, it of course did derail careers and destroy lives.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by nelox on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:32PM (#36809038)
I'm glad communists are in the good books now
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by civilitty on Thursday July 20, 2023 @10:15PM (#36809262)
Marvel and LucasArts need to justify their acquisition cost.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by OO000oo on Thursday July 20, 2023 @10:18PM (#36809275)
The red scare ruined countless families' lives. It was an absolute atrocity and continues to undermine the interests of working Americans to this day.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by nerpderp82 on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:46AM (#36810097)
It is the reason union busting is "ok" and get such a bad rap.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by duped on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:44AM (#36810090)
Joseph McCarthy's name is thoroughly tarnished.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by hinkley on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:55AM (#36811196)
Completely disgraced is too good for him.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by shellac on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:59AM (#36811232)
And it remains a stain on Elia Kazan's reputation.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by ImHereToVote on Friday July 21, 2023 @01:37AM (#36810349)
Yes bit people accused of being Russian spies now are obviously spies. No evidence needed.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Georgelemental on Friday July 21, 2023 @01:56AM (#36810456)
Some people caught up in the Red Scare were guilty. The true positive rate was much smaller than it should have been, but it wasn't zero.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Closi on Friday July 21, 2023 @02:20AM (#36810591)
Also worth noting the impact/risk of leaking nuclear secrets would mean that if you thought there was a 1% chance someone was a spy you can’t ignore that.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by KeplerBoy on Friday July 21, 2023 @02:11AM (#36810546)
Guilty of being socialists?
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by dr_dshiv on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:09AM (#36810866)
Went through your list. I didn’t get the sense of deep belief in communism nor antiamericanism. There seemed to be other incentives. Is there a good example?
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by SideburnsOfDoom on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:21AM (#36810969)
Wikipedia isn't the right source for "the sense of deep belief", it's far too dry and factual for that.

The Rosenbergs were known as believers in Communism.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by mablopoule on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:43AM (#36811104)
Not OP, but I would recommend on this subject a podcast I've talked about in a previous comment [1], about the life or Hoover and the red scare in light of declassified knowledge of soviet spies in the US.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257604

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by lifeonlars on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:08AM (#36812046)
I don't think you studied either Klaus Fuchs or the Rosenbergs in much detail then. Whatever the merits of their actions or the cases against them, they were certainly dedicated Communists who did their best for a cause they believed in fervently.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by dr_dshiv on Friday July 21, 2023 @01:02PM (#36816407)
I should have been clear — those were the 3
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by rurban on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:46AM (#36811136)
Even more they believed that the fascist had to be tamed. First the German fascists, but then the root of it all, the US fascists with their Hitler support and their genocidal anti-socialist world-domination program, bringing fascism to the whole world. I wouldn't call that betrayal, you could rather argue that the US fascists betrayed the oldest democracy.

Even Oppenheimer, who was a stance Anti-Stalinist and the liberal under the fascist security clique, had the very same view and motivation. Just from the far right.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... names many more.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by duped on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:45AM (#36812245)
Afaict none of those spies were caught during the first or second Red Scare
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Fricken on Friday July 21, 2023 @10:02AM (#36813876)
Does the China Initiative count as a Red scare? It was recent. Didn't round up any spies either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by nemo44x on Friday July 21, 2023 @07:51AM (#36812750)
It’s amazing how many people don’t bother to take a critical eye towards the “red scare” and just accept what their teachers, the media, and Hollywood have to say about. Each of those institutions has no shortage of communist sympathizers. Ignoring the fact that there were Soviet sympathizers all over. Sometimes the disease is so bad you need to use harsh therapies to rid the organism of its morbidity.

To this day it is in our best interests to root out and discourage communists and adjacent from participating in our republic. Anything less undermines our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by thordenmark on Friday July 21, 2023 @02:03AM (#36810492)
Except that we now know McCarthy underestimated the degree of communist infiltration in the US govt, military, and media. The only farce was how he was vilified.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Beldin on Friday July 21, 2023 @05:02AM (#36811636)
That's a simplistic outlook. Oppenheimer was a celebrated leader of the team that invented the bomb that ended the war... and then, very publicly, had his security clearance revoked and was basically dragged through the mud by the government that benefitted from his work and elevated him over others.

I would more equate it with someone being very publicly arrested for a horrible crime, only for the verdict to result in "not guilty" or the case dropped before going to court. You know, like OJ or MJ.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Loughla on Thursday July 20, 2023 @08:52PM (#36808776)
It absolutely did, for decades. I would argue that, until the movie, more people knew the name Fermi.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by lolinder on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:05PM (#36808854)
Google trends would disagree with you there [0].

Anecdotally, I've only ever heard the name Fermi in the phrase Fermi Paradox. Oppenheimer I know much more about, and I only know there's a movie about him because it's all over HN this month.

I'm sure that the red scare did tarnish his name for decades, but it looks to me like those decades had ended by 2004 when Google's trends pick up.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by bigger_cheese on Friday July 21, 2023 @01:29AM (#36810312)
Other way around for me "Fermion" "Fermi-Dirac Statistics" "Fermi Energy Level" etc. There are a lot of things in physics named after Fermi not aware of anything named after Oppenheimer.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by tedsanders on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:59AM (#36811230)
Born-Oppenheimer approximation.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by regularfry on Friday July 21, 2023 @04:07AM (#36811291)
"Fermi estimation" has leaked out of physics into other areas too.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by hinkley on Friday July 21, 2023 @04:00AM (#36811236)
I lived just close enough to Fermilab that my exposure to both names was fairly even. Probably not true of most people though
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by antod on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:10PM (#36808889)
Surely not. Oppenhiemer "creating" the Atomic Bomb is pretty widespread general knowledge. Nobody outside physics geeks has heard of Fermi.

My context is from being outside of the US though.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by jjulius on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:41PM (#36809082)
>Nobody outside physics geeks has heard of Fermi.

Plenty of folks who aren't physics geeks have heard of the Fermi Paradox.

Source: Am not a physics geek.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by krapp on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:40PM (#36809078)
Oppenheimer has an Epic Rap Battle of History, Fermi doesn't.

Case closed.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by belowen on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:03AM (#36809858)
It clearly depends on where do you live. In Italy, Fermi is mostly known, instead of Oppenheimer, as one of the creator of the atomic bomb. It feels like another Marconi/Bell case.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Panisperna_boys

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by lifeonlars on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:12AM (#36812067)
I think this is actually evidence of what the poster above is referring to - the long-term effects of Oppenheimer being unfairly discredited. Fermi has streets, schools and subway stations named after him all over Italy. Oppenheimer doesn't (at least not to anywhere near the same extent), even in the US, because during the period when this might most likely have happened, towards the end of his life and shortly after his death, he was still widely regarded as being a traitor.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by None4U on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:21AM (#36809967)
Anyone who has ever pondered the existence of extraterrestrial life has heard of Fermi's paradox, while only history buffs interested in WWII or Japan or the Second Red Scare or alternatively science geeks interested in nuclear explosives have ever heard of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by andsoitis on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:43AM (#36810084)
Aren't there more people who are seriously interested in and studying WWII history than there are people who are seriously interested in and studying extraterrestrial life?

google trends seems to agree: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=world%20...

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by regularfry on Friday July 21, 2023 @04:40AM (#36811487)
Not necessarily the bit with Oppenheimer in it. He's not hugely relevant outside making things go bang in new and exciting ways.

Whereas Fermi (in the context of the Fermi paradox) is kinda foundational, if you're in the extraterrestrial life field.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by fomine3 on Friday July 21, 2023 @01:24AM (#36810290)
I'm a Japanese, Oppenhiemer isn't much famous name IMO, though he may be written in textbook. How Manhattan project succeeded great is a minor topic in general. It's somewhat famous that Einstein encouraged developing of nuke and finally against for bombing. Fermi is somewhat famous for Fermi estimate.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by regularfry on Friday July 21, 2023 @04:11AM (#36811317)
The way I was taught, it was "yes he created the bomb, but as a manager." Which is... not entirely unfair.
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by zoklet-enjoyer on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:10PM (#36808891)
The movie as in this new one? Are you serious?
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by rob74 on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:56AM (#36810149)
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?

Russians, Sting, 1985

-- so I would say Oppenheimer being the "inventor" of the atomic bomb was (literally) pop culture

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by musiciangames on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:21PM (#36815728)
“In the Soviet Union, a scientist is blinded by the resumption of nuclear testing, and he is reminded that Dr. Robert Oppenheimer’s optimism fell at the first hurdle.” ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’, Billy Bragg 1988
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by emmelaich on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:09AM (#36810869)
For me it was absolutely Fermi. And Feynman and Teller. But Oppenheimer definitely up there.

Oh also Leo fucking Szilard! From wikipedia ...

> He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea in 1936, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by Beldin on Friday July 21, 2023 @05:04AM (#36811649)
(Off topic) I thought Teller was the quiet one? ;-)
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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by cwillu on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:15PM (#36808930)
Political Officer: “And the seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a voice cried out from heaven, saying: "It is done." A man with your responsibilities reading about the end of the world. And what's this? "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."”

Captain Ramius: “It is an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.”

Political Officer: “An American?”

Captain Ramius: “Mmm. He invented the atomic bomb. And was later accused of being a communist.”

--The Hunt for Red October (1990 movie, not sure its in the book)

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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by askin4it on Thursday July 20, 2023 @09:26PM (#36809001)
Battling narratives....

Public interest in his politics was relevant. He probably was a fellow traveler so what?

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