Interview with Frank Oppenheimer - Caltech Oral Histories

Oppenheimer–30OPPENHEIMER: That’s right, and that was a very good thing. I remember doing that quite often,and all of us did. But it wasn’t for the whole physics department, I don’t think. I think it waspretty much a nuclear physics or maybe a nuclear physics and cosmic ray journal club.GOODSTEIN: That was informal, with the professors and the grad students?OPPENHEIMER: Yes.GOODSTEIN: Did the undergraduates ever partake of that?OPPENHEIMER: I wasn’t aware of it if they did. They may have. But that was a very fine affair.Then, when I went to Minnesota, I started one up there. And after several months, the FBI camearound to ask what we were discussing. [Laughter]GOODSTEIN: Do you keep up with any of the people that you knew from those days at Caltech?OPPENHEIMER: Not too many. Willy Fowler I like to see. Delsasso isn’t alive. Stevie died.Bonner died. I go to see Sigrid. Tommy died. It’s a pretty dismal picture.GOODSTEIN: Well, it’s true. Tommy died young.OPPENHEIMER: Yes, it’s terrible. God, he was wonderful at these journal meetings. He neverdrank at all in those days. But he would keep up; his mood would change with everybody else’s,and he would get more and more outrageous as everybody else did.GOODSTEIN: Without the benefit of the alcohol?OPPENHEIMER: Yes, that’s right.GOODSTEIN: Was there ever any problem with a son going into the same field as the father?http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Oppenheimer_F