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Physics tonight

JUL 01, 1956
An address presented before the American Institute of Physics as part of the AIP’s 25th Anniversary Session on the general topic “Anticipations”, held February 2, 1956, in New York City.
J. Robert Oppenheimer

Physicists are involved in a wonderfully diverse and varied set of enterprises, not simply and necessarily related. Your speaker is not distinguished by the development of his imagination; almost everything that happens amazes him. I shall not try to give a general landscape of all that physicists are up to. It ranges from the magnetohydrodynamics of interstellar matter to nuclear alignment at low temperatures; it ranges from the giant rocket to transistors, and to instruments for detecting valuable minerals in the ground; it ranges from automation to the coding problem of genetics; it ranges from teaching doctors and engineers and soldiers, and even ordinary men, to advising the heads of state.

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More about the authors

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 9, Number 7

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