Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppenheimer?

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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