Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–27GOODSTEIN: Was it easier in those days to become friends with professors?OPPENHEIMER: I found it so. But I’d done that at Hopkins. As an undergraduate, I knew theprofessors very well.GOODSTEIN: When you became friends with them, would you go on a first-name basis?OPPENHEIMER: I suppose. Certainly with Charlie and with Richard Tolman, and with Houston. Idon’t think with Epstein or Zwicky.GOODSTEIN: Did you have any mathematics courses with [Harry] Bateman or E. T. Bell?OPPENHEIMER: Maybe Bell, yes. And then somebody, who was learning it at the same time,taught group theory using Hermann Weyle’s book. And it wasn’t too satisfactory a course, but itwas all right.GOODSTEIN: So you took your major course work in physics. Did you take any engineering atall?OPPENHEIMER: No.GOODSTEIN: And some courses in math.OPPENHEIMER: I had some in math, yes.GOODSTEIN: So, you must have had either Bell or Bateman, because they were the two bignames.OPPENHEIMER: I think it was Bell.GOODSTEIN: What was Tolman like as a person and teacher?http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F