20th century
A01=Charles Thorpe
american history
atomic bomb
Author_Charles Thorpe
biographical
biography
Category=DNBT
Category=PDX
Category=PH
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
ethical
ethics
government
historical
identity
intellectuals
j robert oppenheimer
los alamos laboratory
manhattan project
morality
nuclear weapons
physics
political influence
politics
power
representation
science
scientist
theoretical physicist
trinity test
united states of america
vocation
war
wartime
Product details
- ISBN 9780226798455
- Weight: 737g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2006
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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At a time when the Manhattan Project was synonymous with large-scale science, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) represented the new sociocultural power of the American intellectual. Catapulted to fame as director of the Los Alamos atomic weapons laboratory, Oppenheimer occupied a key position in the compact between science and the state that developed out of World War II. By tracing the making - and unmaking - of Oppenheimer's wartime and postwar scientific identity, Charles Thorpe illustrates the struggles over the role of the scientist in relation to nuclear weapons, the state, and culture.A stylish intellectual biography, Oppenheimer maps out changes in the roles of scientists and intellectuals in twentieth-century America, ultimately revealing transformations in Oppenheimer's persona that coincided with changing attitudes toward science in society.
Charles Thorpe is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.
