Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the World War II push to develop a nuclear bomb called “The Manhattan Project” receive an unusual accolade next week, when the Metropolitan Opera puts John Adams’s contemporary operatic masterpiece “Doctor Atomic” into rotation. Doctor Atomic addresses the daily life and the ethical dilemmas of applied science, and attempts to put into context the rush towards building the bomb, and muses on the conflicting constructive and destructive urges in human nature. A review will appear on the Physics Today web site this Monday.

This weekend there are a series of symposium’s scheduled to look at the issues behind the opera.

Doctor Atomic Symposia

The Graduate Center, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008365 Fifth Avenue@34th Street

Session 1: Proshansky Auditorium, 1:00 to 3:00 PM

Session Title: The History, Science and Scientists of the Bomb

Moderated by Matthew Goldstein

Chancellor, The City University of New York

•Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Talk: The Making of the Atomic Bomb• Norman Ramsey, Nobel Laureate

Professor Emeritus, Physics, Harvard University

Talk: Eyewitness to the Manhattan Project

Edward Gerjuoy

Professor Emeritus, Physics, University of Pittsburgh

Talk: Recollections of J. Robert Oppenheimer• Robert S. Norris Senior Research Associate, Natural Resources Defense Council

Talk: The 1,000 Days to Trinity

Session 2: Proshansky Auditorium 4:30 to 6:30 PM

Session Title: The Making of the Opera Doctor Atomic

Moderated by Peter Gelb

General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera

John Adams, Composer• Penny Woolcock, Director• Julian Crouch, Set Designer

Gerald Finley, Baritone, J. Robert OppenheimerDoctor Atomic Symposium

The Graduate Center, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008365 Fifth Avenue @ 34th Street

Room - Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 PM

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Man, the Manager, the Physicist

Moderated by Ben Bederson

Emeritus Professor of Physics, New York University

David Cassidy, historian and author

Professor, Hofstra University

BOOK TITLE: “J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century”

Talk: Oppenheimer and his Physics

Robert Crease, philosopher and author

Professor, State University of New York, Stony Brook

BoOK TITLE: “Oppenheimer: A Life” (by Abraham Pais and Robert Crease)

Talk: Oppenheimer: A Tragic Hero?

Jeremy Bernstein, physicist and author

New Yorker contributor and Professor Emeritus, Stevens Institute of Technology

BoOK TITLE: “Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma”

Talk: Personal Reflections on Oppenheimer Doctor Atomic Symposia

The Graduate Center, Friday, Oct. 17, 2008365 Fifth Avenue@34th Street(Approximately 10 scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project will be in attendance

For sessions 1 and 2 and will contribute to the discussion.)

Session 1: Proshansky Auditorium, 3:00 to 5:00 PM

Session Title: The Manhattan Project: Places, People and Power

Moderated by Brian Schwartz

Professor of Physics and Vice President, Research & Sponsored Programs,

The Graduate Center of CUNY

Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra

Photographers

Talk: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project• Harold Agnew

Former Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Talk: Chicago, Los Alamos, Tinian Island and the Atomic Bomb• Manhattan Project Veterans

Session 2: Proshansky Auditorium, 6:30 to 8:30 PM

Session Title: Wartime Decisions and the Atomic Age

Moderated by Gerald Holton

Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and

Research Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Professor of History, George Mason University

Talk: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb• Harry Lustig

Provost Emeritus, Professor of Physics, CCNY

Talk: Did the Allies Know That The Germans Were Not Building an Atomic Bomb?• Gar Alperovitz

Bauman Professor of Political Economy, University of Maryland,

Talk: The Decision to Use the Atomic BombDoctor Atomic Events

The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.@34th St.

Monday, October 20, 2008, 6:30 pm, C-201

Ruth Howes, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Marquette University

Book and Talk Title:

Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project

Ruth Howes discusses the various scientific problems the women of the Manhattan project helped to solve as well as the discrimination they faced in their work. Their abrupt recruitment for the war effort and anecdotes of everyday life in the clandestine, improvised communities, what happened to the women after the war, and their present attitudes towards the work they did on the bomb are also discussed.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 6:30pm, Skylight Room, Room 9000

Joseph Kanon, Novelist, New York

Book and Talk Title:

Los Alamos

In a dusty, remote community of secretly constructed buildings and awesome possibility, the world’s most brilliant minds have come together. Their mission: to split the atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer’s “enchanted campus” of foreign born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man, an unraveler of human secrets - a man in search of a killer.

Monday, November 10, 2008, 6:30pm, Elebash Hall

Uranium + Peaches

A Play in One Act by Peter Cook & William LanouetteStaged Reading by Break-A-Leg Productions, www.breakalegproductions.com

The scientist behind the bomb wants to stop it...

The politician behind the president wants to drop it...

In the dramatic and fateful confrontation between Einstein’s protégé, Leo Szilard, and Truman’s mentor, Jimmy Byrnes, science battles politics in the timeless struggle against the corruption of human ingenuity.

See www.uraniumandpeaches.com