Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–8GOODSTEIN: He himself was treated at the facility?OPPENHEIMER: Yes.GOODSTEIN: Well, someone like Willy, when he came, didn’t receive any graduate stipend inmoney. He received it in services. So he had to do some work on the cancer therapy project.Then he received his room and board in the Athenaeum. Now you were different from him inthat sense.OPPENHEIMER: Yes. Because I didn’t have to pay any tuition, but I used family money to liveon.GOODSTEIN: They gave you a tuition scholarship, and then you used your own money. Yes,well, they were very short on cash in those days.OPPENHEIMER: Yes. I finally made some money there. I made a huge, eight-channel coincidenceamplifier. You could measure anything you wanted. You could put some in anti-coincidence, andsome in coincidence. The biologists used it; Borsook, for example.GOODSTEIN: Henry Borsook, the biochemist, he used it?OPPENHEIMER: Yes, I think so. And paid me for making it.GOODSTEIN: So that raises the question of what your contacts were with other people at Caltech.OPPENHEIMER: Well, quite general in a way. Through my brother, probably in part. But I got toknow the Tolmans very well. Ruth [Tolman] and I played piano and flute over at RuthValentine’s house almost every Friday. The first year Jackie and I were married, the Tolmanscame to dinner at our house.http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F