The Man With the Atomic Bomb
Abraham Pais, born May 18, 1918, was born in Amsterdam to a Dutch-Jewish family. Both his parents were elementary school teachers, which may have only encouraged his love of reading and studying. Throughout grade school, he thoroughly excelled and consistently finished top of his class. Eventually, he graduated from the University of Amsterdam then proceeded to graduate school at the University of Utrecht in New York. He worked under many influential scientists of his time such as George Uhlenbeck, Niels Bohr, and even Albert Einstein. By 1947, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study where he worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer and studied a plethora of physics theories such as element particle theory and quantum field theory. In 1963, Pais switched jobs and became the head of the theoretical physics department at Rockefeller University. In sixteen years, he was awarded the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of physics. The author is most known for his biographies of Einstein and Bohr and his books on scientific history; however, his final work (which Pais did not even complete due to fatal heart failure) was “J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life”. It currently stands as the most complete biography of Oppenheimer.
“J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life” was written by Abraham Pais with…show more content… While there was no evidence he was actually a part of the organization, there was enough evidence of his sympathies. At the end of his case, his security clearance was stripped and he was no longer allowed to work on any project concerned atomic energy. Many of his fellow scientists came to his aid, but the anti-Communist feelings of the era truly put Oppenheimer’s titles on the chopping block. In 1967, on February 18, the legendary scientist died to throat cancer. Even after his death, some of his theories were proven such as the possibility of black
