Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–13Caltech.GOODSTEIN: I think there was less bureaucracy at that time than today.OPPENHEIMER: The same thing was true with going to Johns Hopkins. I had a friend whosuggested I go there, and I probably wrote a letter and got one back. And that had nothing to dowith my brother or my friend either.GOODSTEIN: Overall, in the time that you spent in Florence, did you find that the other physicistswere politically minded?OPPENHEIMER: Some of them. Occhialini especially. Bernardini less so. I don’t know about[Julio] Racah. There was another man there, Emil Capo da Lista, who later on came to Pasadenawhile I was there.GOODSTEIN: I don’t know that name. What kind of a physicist was he?OPPENHEIMER: He was a nuclear physicist, I think, because he went from there up to Berkeleyand worked there.GOODSTEIN: Did he go back to Italy?OPPENHEIMER: He died very young. And whether that was in Italy—I don’t think so. I think hewas in this country when he died.GOODSTEIN: Did he spend a long time at Caltech, or was it a brief visit?OPPENHEIMER: He was there, I think, when I left, and he’d been there about a year. So when hewent to Berkeley, I’m not sure. Then, he was in Berkeley when Bob Wilson was doing nuclearphysics there, which was before the war. So he probably didn’t stay at Caltech very long,because there wasn’t much time.http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F