sort of love the game. so -- >> host: which ones? >> guest: my oldest son, tag, and my number three son, josh. so i think i feel pretty safe with my oldest son, tag, because he lives in massachusetts. it's pretty hard as a republican in massachusetts to do anything. but my son, josh, yeah, i could see him doing something down the line. >> host: and finally, shadow mountain is your publisher. what is shadow mountain? >> guest: shadow mountain has been fantastic. they will be representing me and helping me get book out, and and, you know, they are the ones my son went to and said do you, you know, i've got this idea, and thaw jumped on it, thought it was a fantastic idea, and they're helping represent this book for me now. and i think thest going to be -- i hope to think it's going to be a pretty big success. >> host: what's your favorite recipe in there? >> guest: i think it might be, it might be mitt's dinner. i mean, it's not that it's my favorite, it's mitt's favorite, and it's my favorite to cook because i love, obviously, the fact of giving joy and bringing family together. so this is a meat and potato

cookbook. it's meatloaf. this is mitt's favorite food which is meatloaf. and that might be a surprise to people. they might think he's a fancier guy tan that, but he's not. he is a meat and potato guy. and homemade rolls, his sweet potatoes that he loves. so this is a basic cookback for home cooking. it's not a fancy cookbook. >> host: and where was this picture taken? >> guest: that was my kitchen in la jolla. we have a, you know, a kitchen in la jolla, and it was mitt's birthday that we celebrated rather late. that was last spring. it wasn't actually on his birthday, but i do remember the first chance i had to actually get the family together and be off the trail for a day or two, the first thing that i did was make mitt's favorite dinner. >>st the romney family table is the name of the book. it comes out in full of 2013. ann romney, thank you for being on booktv. >> guest: thanks so much. >> next, ray monk talks about the life and career of robert

oppenheimer, the son of german-jewish immigrants who led the effort to develop a nuclear bomb. this event was held at the institute for advanced study in princeton, new jersey, where oppenheimer was director from 1947 to 966. >> thank you, robert, and thank you all for coming. i was delighted to get the invitation from robert to come here, dloighted and honor -- delighted and honored. there can surely be no more appropriate place to give a talk on oppenheimer to mark the publication of my book than this institution. i'm very pleased to be here. i'm not a physicist. as robert made clear, my background is in philosophy, and i wrote biographies, so maybe i should start by saying how did i get to write a biography of

oppenheimer, why did it even occur to me to do that? it began about 12 years ago when i was asked by the observer newspaper to review a collection of his correspondence, and up until that point i knew about oppenheimer only what everybody knows about oppenheimer, that he directed the los alamos laboratory, that he had his security clearance taken away from him, that he was director of the institute at princeton. that's really all i knew. i didn't know that he wrote poetry or short stories, that he was an expert in french literature, that he was, he taught himself sanskrit, that he was deeply interested in hinduism. and that he taught himself sanskrit in order to read the hindu classics in their original language. neither did i know about his political activities in any detail in the 1930s or his relations with his friends and students and family members. and all of which i found absolutely fascinating.

and i said in the review there is a really interesting boig if to be written of oppenheimer. and after this was published, publishers got in touch with me saying, well, why don't you do it? and so i did. it took me 11 years. it's an incredibly rich and absorbing and fascinating life. there wasn't a single day in those 11 years when i lost interest in my subject. he continues to -- i continue to find out new things about him. and he is, i guess, like most complicated, complex people you never feel as if you've exhausted the subject. which brings me on to my subtitle, "a life inside the center." why inside the center? the phrase conjures up a number of things that come together in the life and personality of j. robert oppenheimer. the most obvious of which, i guess, is that his work as a

physicist, much of it was to do with understanding the forces that happen inside the center of an atomic nucleus and that his great importance historically and politically is in directing the laboratory that made use of those forces to construct an explosive of previously unimagined power. so that's one reason. the other thing that, another ting that the phrase -- thing that the phrase inside the center conjures up that is to do with oppenheimer is to do with his background and his sense, and i'll talk more about this in a moment, but he grew up in manhattan a member of, in some sense, an elite but also with a conscious awareness that from a jewish family he wasn't quite accepted by the establishment of america. and much of what he did throughout his life, i think, was determine canned by his --

determined by his desire to get inside the center of american intellectual and political life. and also in science he wanted to be at the center if not inside the center of what was happening at all stages in his career, and that, too, i think, had a great influence on various decisions that he made throughout his life. he chose to do one thing rather than another because it would place him inside the center, so to speak. and then the final thought that the phrase inside the center conjures up relevant to my efforts in writing the biography is that i wanted to, so to speak, get inside oppenheimer's mind. i wanted to write a biography that tried to draw all these things i found in the correspondence be, the interest in literature, the short story writing, the political involvement, the challenges to bring all that together and describe, as it were, you know,

what was motivating oppenheimer the way he saw himself and the world. right. so in a way no wonder it took me 11 years. [laughter] to begin at the beginning, this is oppenheim. this is the town in germany. it's in the wine-growing area by the rhine. in 1808 when napoleon decreed that all jewish families must take a surname -- previously to that they hadn't had traditional surnames, it wasn't part of their culture -- many jewish families took the name of their employer. my previous subject came from a jewish family. his great grandfather had worked for the vicken stein family. many of the jews who lived in oppenheim chose the name oppenheimer, so the name immediately identifies you as a jew and as descended from people who lived in oppenheim as j.

robert oppenheimer's ancestors did. and you can see from this photograph it's changed remarkably little. this is 1847, the present day still very much recognizably the same place. why would you move from that lovely place if -- place? well, the jewish families, the jewish culture in germany tried very hard to ais simulate into -- assimilate into german society throughout the late 18th and early 19th century. there was a movement which is the german-jewish version of the enlightenment that tried to overcome the barriers that separated them from the rest of german society. so instead of hebrew being their language of worship, they adopted german. they didn't have separate education. they tried all the things that they could to overcome those barriers. and what they found was that they still weren't accepted. there were still laws relating

specifically to the jews in germany saying what kind of jobs they could do, saying who they could marry, where they could live and so on. thus began a movement away from germany looking towards the united states as a place where they could be free from the restrictions they were facing in germany. and this poem by gerter to the united states expresses those hopes. america, thou haas it better than our ancient hemispheres. their children, they know not their youthful prime to mark. nor ineffective war. fortune weight on thy glorious spring, and may some good genius guard them all from baron, robber, knight and ghost traditional. so the thought here is that the united states is a sheet of blank paper, as it were, free-for-all the, you know, the traces of the past, the robbers,

the barons, free from from all of the european traditions that are holding them back. a sheet of blank paper on which they could write their own destiny. those were the hopes that motivated the move of many jewish people from germany to the united states. that became to historians, to jewish historians, it's become known as the second migration. the first jewish community in the united states, a result of the first migration, were mainly jews who had been expelled from spain and portugal in the 17th century. they came to manhattan, they came to other parts of the united states. by 1840 there were 15,000 jews in the states, the vast majority of whom were these jews. then came the second migration on a much larger scale. families like the oppenheimers, the goldmans, the sachs. and as those names indicate, you know, many of those families,

their hopes were realized. they came to germany. some of them penniless. within a generation they were some of the richest men in the united states and certainly didn't feel held back by their germanness or their jewishness. and those, the german jews by 1880s amounted to 280,000. far, far larger than -- and the other jews were ambivalent about this because now suddenly the german jews were the acknowledged leaders of the jews in new york city as well as the rest of america. then came the third migration. this is a different kind of thing. this was polish and russian jews not looking for a blank sheet of paper, not looking for a fresh start, but literally fleeing for their lives. vast hordes of them, the huddled massed, as it were. between 1880 and 1920. and the numbers there are on a different order entirely, two and a half million.

now, oppenheimer grew up at a time when the jewish community in the united states generally and in new york city particularly was undergoing a kind of split between the rather impoverished russian, mostly impoverished russian and polish j well, s, eastern european jews, the center of their polarity was the lower east side. oppenheimer was from the more established german jewish family, and by the end of the 19th century, a lot of those families had become very wealthy. they'd moved up to the upper west side which is where oppenheimer grew up. and some of the tensions are shown in the descriptions of oppenheimer that you get from some of his friends, his jewish friends. one came from an eastern european jewish family. and ravi, you know, started life in the lower east side and then moved out. but ravi said about oppenheimer

that he lacked an identity. because, ravi says, he was constantly trying to pretend to be something that he budget. and the reason for that, ravi said, was because of his ambivalent relationship with his jewishness. ravi said when he looked at a synagogue, he could say these are my people. oppenheimer couldn't, and neither could many of the german jewish families. j. robert oppenheimer's father was julius oppenheimer who, like many people of his generation, came to the united states as a young man. he'd been preceded by his uncles, solomon and sigmund, who had been here for about 20 years and had already established a very successful business be in manhattan, a clothing business. rothfelt, stern and company. and they were established. they'd already moved up to the upper west side.

they were part of the -- the german jewish families had this phrase, "our crowd," which meant that the families that intermingled with each other, they intermarried, they were a consciously cohesive group of people who recognized, you know, with quite determinant membership. and solomon and sigmund were part of our crowd centered in the upper west side. and julius oppenheimer, by the time he arrived in new york, could just slot in and, you know, he was given a job in the clothing firm. he worked husband way up. he became -- he worked his way up. he became director of the company and a very wealthy man himself. wealthy enough to buy the whole 11th floor of this incredibly valuable piece of reality, 155 riverside drive, which is where oppenheimer grew with up. his parents, as i say, bought the 11th floor. 155 riverside drive, for those of you who know manhattan, you

know, it overlooks the hudson river, and it was very much at the heart of this community i was talking about, the our crowd community, you know, the neighbors would have included guggenheims and shifts and so on. it's now -- that particular dress is now -- address is now famous to those of a certain generation because it was the home, it was the setting for the sitcom will and grace. they also lived on 155 riverside drive on the ninth floor. one of the important determining factors in shaping oppenheimer's outlook was theth call culture society which grew out of our crowd. it grew out of that german jewish community based on the upper west side of manhattan, and it was the brain child of this man, felix adler, who was the son of the rabbi of the temple emanuel which was the synagogue where the german jewish families went. and he set up the ethical

culture society with a particular aim. the aim was to preserve what he thought was best in the jewish tradition while leaving behind any beliefs that had no rational justification. so as part of that enlightenment tradition, it was a religion, he said, of deed not of creed. it was a way of life that was defined by ethical precepts, by adopting obligations to helping the society in which one grew up and the people around one rather than being defined in terms of what you did or did not believe. and this ethical culture society grew very quickly after it had been set up. following felix adler's sermon, the judeo cannism of the future, in 1873. and it attracted to it many of the people that i've been mentioning, the sell lickmans, the schiffs, the guggenheims and solomon and sigmund

oppenheimer -- rothfelt. they became fervent members of the ethical culture society. so did julius oppenheimer and, therefore, that was the society in which oppenheimer, robert oppenheimer, grew up. he went to the ethical culture school, and he, and it shaped the way he felt an obligation to american life particularly. because part of this outlook that was spread by the ethical culture society including by it school was a certain conception of america as the land of the free, the hand that, you know, the preserve -- that preserves individual liberties. and oppenheimer grew up believing he never once abandoned that belief. and it was was central to the ethical culture society. that it was an american that one could be what one was supposed to be, one could fulfill one's potential.

so oppenheimer grew up in an incredibly wealthy family, also very cultured. his mother was an artist with very great taste in art, and she acquired paintings which subsequently became immensely valuable. she bought renoirs, she bought a picasso, she brought van goghs, and these were what was on the wall of oppenheimer's childhood home. when his brother, frank oppenheimer, later in life lost his job because he was a communist, frank had only to sell one of these paintings to provide for himself and his family in great style for the rest of his life. so it was a very cultured family, very wealthy family. they lacked for nothing, you know, whenever oppenheimer showed an in anything, if he showed an interest in painting, his parents would go out and buy him the best paints and the best easel, and he developed an interest in building blocks.

he developed a passionate interest in rocks, collecting rocks. and he joined the mineral logical society in new york and actually arranged to give a paper at the grand old age of 12. he was 12 years old when he delivered a paper to thissociy . one thing he didn't have much of as ahi, though, fun. [laughter] he had very few playmates. and he went to school rather late. he, you know, is 12 when he went to school. he was already intellectually precocious and an overly serious child. without really any idea of how to make friends. his fellow students, they all came from the same background, by the way. he went to the ethical culture school. they all lived on the upper west side. they were all, you know, from german jewish families and be so on. but he found it rather hard to

fit in. i think main hi because of the strategies he adopted to fit in. one girl remembers him saying to her ask me a question in latin, and i'll answer you in greek. [laughter] which is enormously impressive but not the way to win school friends. [laughter] so it was a fairly isolated childhood marked by intellectual distinction and ethical seriousness. one of the few friends, the only close friend he made at school was the glaring exception to the uniformity of their backgrounds which was a boy and then later -- francis ferguson. francis ferguson didn't come from new york, wasn't from a jewish family, wasn't from a german family. francis ferguson had grown up in the west. he'd grown up in new mexico. his family was very distinguished, but in a very different way from the bankers and the clothiers and so on in

manhattan. the fergusons were a pioneering family. they'd gone out to, you know, when it was the romantic thing to do to move to new mexico, and his, his father, francis ferguson's father, was the first representative in the house of representatives of the newly-formed state of new mexico. and they lived in a very grand -- well, it wasn't all that grand, but it was the oldest house in albuquerque and a very, you know, rather beautiful house. and be to they were part of that scene. and when oppenheimer finished at theth call culture school, he was invited to ferguson's house in new mexico, and he immediately fell in love with new mexico, and it became quite an important part of his life and his outlook. new mexico was, for him, the eye. so when much later in life, you know, he was asked to take, to become the director of the

atomic bomb laboratory, you know, he persuaded that it had to be in a row mote place. and he said, oh, by the way, i think i know exactly the place. and it was here which he discovered through his connection with francis ferguson. also with francis ferguson he formed a close friendship, and ferguson had a friend called paul hogan who also grew up in new mexico. the three of them formed what they called a troika. what they shared was an interest in writing. francis ferguson came from a family that wrote and particularly what they wrote about was the southwest, the romance and the history of the southwest. his brother became a famous novelist, his sister wrote about the food of the southwest. the rituals of the hopi indians and is on. francis ferguson wrote stories. paul hogan wrote stories, and this time j. robert oppenheimer

also wrote stories. and they formed a sort of closely knit group of three young men,ial of whom -- all of whom aspired to be writers. oppenheimer should have started in harvard in 1921. that's when his friend francis ferguson started at harvard. they both applied to do chemistry. oppenheimer, however, in the summer of '21 went to europe, ad he returned very ill and so had to spend the year convalescing, part of which he spent in new mexico. but it meant that he was a year behind ferguson, and he arrived in harvard in 1922 which was a senate moment for harvard. i mean, quite shocking for me in a way researching the he'sly of this, i hadn't realized that

institutional prejudice against jews was so fierce at such a late, you know, it's not that long ago, 1932. but what we find is the president of harvard wanting to encourage, wanting to persuade his colleagues to adopt quotas for the number of jews that they were, that this could admit to harvard. because he'd been alarmed to discover what had happened at columbia university in new york where the proportion of jews had crept up, you know, beyond 40%, and they were determined that shouldn't happen at harvard. and it caused a national controversy. it was debated at harvard, and then it was debated in the national press, and it was talked about even where. what's remarkable for me is when you look at oppenheimer's corps swons in that summer, the summer before he started harvard, not a mention of this controversy. it's as if he, he didn't want to

identify himself as having anything to do with it. and he went to harvard. and you've always got this split in oppenheimer between how he sees himself and how he's seen by the world. by the world particularly, brown, at this moment in time he's seen as a german jews. he's quite emphatic in almost everything that he ever wrote that he didn't see himself as german or jewish. as far as he was concerned, he was american. and yet when he went to harvard because he was from a german jewish family, he couldn't join the best clubs, he couldn't no matter how wealthy he was, and he was, you know, as wealthy as in of them. he continue move into the more fashionable student halls. and so despite his best intentions, his circle of friends at harvard was very strong small and restricted to people like him.

one of his friends was william boyd who was also studying chemistry, became in life a very eminent chemist. and his other frame was bern heym who was also brought up on riverside drive. he also attended the ethical culture society, and he was also -- his family were german jews from that part of manhattan. and really those two were the only friends oppenheimer made at harvard in addition to francis ferguson who was already there. so it wasn't a great time for him socially. but it was intellectually. it was tremendously exciting for him intellectually. he took far more courses than he needed to take and a far wider variety of courses. he enrolled at harvard as a chemistry student, but he took courses in french literature, in british history, in all sorts of things. and he became very interested in physics.

his first scientific love was chemistry. it really excited him to, you know, to understand the molecular structure of elements. but then he, then he started reading independently about what was then called quantum physics, sometimes now called old quantum physics of einstein and max plank and then the work that was being done by rutherford in understanding the structure of the nucleus. so he read about rutherford's new picture of the atom where the positively-charged nucleus is surrounded by negatively-charged neutrons. and oppenheimer became very excited by developments in physics. and he was then just a first-year student at harvard, undergraduate first-year student, but he made the very unusual request to the physics department that he should be

allowed to take graduate level courses in physics. because he wanted to acquire a mastery of the newry-developed subject of -- newly-developed subject of quantum physics. so he wrote saying, you know, can i take physics course blah blah blah, and he listed a whole bunch of books that he'd read. he was always a bit of a show-off, oppenheimer, about what he'd read, particularly linguistically. robert was talking about, you know, his experience in holland. one of the most -- see, i'm rather hopeless at acquiring new languages. oppenheimer was dismayingly brilliant at it. he'd only been in holland for a month or so before he started reckturing in dutch. [laughter] lecturing in dutch. and when he was lecturing in california, he persuaded a student of his to take over his course, and the student said, okay, but what's the curriculum? and oppenheimer said, don't worry, it's all in the book. so he went away, and the student found that the book was actually

in dutch. [laughter] and when oppenheimer came back, the student remmen violated with him -- rem monostraited with him, but oppenheimer said, yes, but it's such easy dutch. [laughter] and so, you know, he was like this. he's enormously brilliant. but he didn't have the background that you would expect a graduate student to have. the physics department at harvard allowed him to take graduate courses in physics even though he was, you know, he hadn't had that background. and i think that partially accounts for one of the oddities of oppenheimer's physics. it was once said about oppenheimer that his physics is always brilliant, but his calculations are always wrong. [laughter] and i think one of the reasons for that is that he didn't have the background that you'd expect a physicist to have. you know, he went straight from undergraduate chemistry to graduate-level physics and sort of missed, you know, all the background that should be in

place. and so his education was always a curious mixture of knowing a great deal that you wouldn't expect him to know and not knowing a lot of stuff that you would expect him to know. anyway, from the second year onwards he concentrated on physics, and because he perceived the cavendish laboratory in cambridge to be the center of developments in physics, he applied to the cavendish. there's one thing about that, though, which is that the cavendish laboratory is a laboratory, and it's a place where experimental physics is going on. and as his physics teacher at harvard, percy bridgeman, wrote to rutherford in cambridge, you know, oppenheimer's a very nice, very clever young man, but not particularly good in the laboratory. ..

his real name was to be a research physicist. to begin with, though, they made fun of him, to repair the holes in his ability in the laboratory, and they appointed one of rutherford's bright young things. patrick blackette, to teach oppenheimer the ware0s experimental physics and the ways of laboratory. and this was the most unhappy

period of oppenheimer's life. he couldn't master that. he had his first taste of rejection. now his first taste of failure, and for the first time in this life he couldn't do the things the was expected to do. he just wasn't very good at it. and it induced a kind of nervous breakdown. towards the end of 1925. he was undergoing episodes you have to call psychotic. people at laboratory remember him standing in front of a blackboard, supposed to be giving a presentation of his work. and he stood in front of the blackboard with a piece of chalk in his handrepeating over and over again, the point is, the point is, the point is, until eventually somebody ushered him away. obviously deeply unhappy and deeply distressed.

now, there's some very odd things reported about oppenheimer during the -- particularly the first sick months he was at cambridge in england, and it's very difficult to know how much credence to give these reports. to start with, one of the odd ones that i think there isn't much doubt about, at the end of his first term at cambridge, before the christmas vacation, he went to europe and paris and was joined by francis, who he tried to kill. he -- pen ferguson was in his room, oppenheimer produced a leather strap from a trunk, wound it around ferguson's neck and tried to strangle him. ferguson was bigger and stronger and was able to shake him off. oppenheimer's letter to ferguson apologized for it. so i don't think there's much

doubt that happened. there's another even odder thing, which is, according to some accounts, including oppenheimer's own account, he tried to kill patrick blackette, and he detroit to murder blackette by leaving a poisoned apple on his desk. this is charged with symbolic significance. whether he did that -- i'm inclined to think he did but there's noen controvertible evidence he did that. how, there is very definite evidence that the authorities at cambridge university became very alarmed at what was happening to him. his parents came over from america to vest him and to -- to visit him and discuss his situation with the authorities a cambridge. they allowed him to condition as a student on the condition he got psychiatric help. one of the most miraculous

things here is by the spring of 1926, on oppenheimer seems to have shaken off all the anxiety and psychosis and seems to be flourishing. it that because of the psychiatric help? i'm inclined to think at it actually because he tornado -- turned his attention from experimental physics, which was bad at, and to theoretical physic. it was a period when very young men were making fundamental additions to our understanding f the physical word and the development0. quantum mechanics by highsenberg and by paul derac, who was at cambridge at the same time as oppenheimer.

derack gave the very first set of lectures on the newly developed subject of quantum maybe cabbics -- mechanics. and on enhomer game involved and discussed it with paul at the rack, and when max thorn -- what am i doing? sorry. when max thorn, who is seated here, came to cambridge to give a talk, he was introduced by rutherford to oppenheimer. and the two began to discuss bourne's interpretation of quantum mechanics, and oppenheimer was so impressive during that meeting with bourne that bourne said to him, you know, exceptionally, why don't you come to -- finish your ph.d at the university of getting where max bourne was a professor. in that time oppenheimer met

nils borne, who had already done pioneering work. older than paul derack. already done fundamentally important work in the defining the mod of the nucleus, but he game the man before everybody who oppenheimer admired. nils borne was as a scientist and a man, on enhomer's ideal. that's who he most looked up and most wanted to be. but in the summer of 1926, he left cambridge and went to getting, and flourished. at cambridge he had been floundering. at getting he was confident, swath, on top of things and intimidated max bourne himself who had no reason to be bill

intimidated. max bourne has made fundamental contributions to physics himself. but anyway bourne was not just impressed but intimidated by oppenheimer. oppenheimer completed his ph.d within a few months of being at gettingham and also began to collaborate with max bourne. so in the space of less than a year he has gone to somebody who is the in the depths of a deep depression to member who is collaborating with one of the leading scientists in the word, and they made a famous contribution to physics. the bourne-oppenheimer approximation, and if you look at a textbook on quan quantum textbook is still part of -- still alive today. so, the lasting contribution to

the discipline that he made i want few months of being at gettingham. now, everybody knew that exciting things were happening in physics in europe at that time, and a great demand in america for people trained by the leading physicists in germany, particularly, but in europe generally. and so by the time he'd finished at gettingham in the summer of 1927, oppenheimer was suddenly in great demand, and had job offers coming his way. he decided to hold off on accepting a job until he had done a bit more studying himself. so he spent 27 to 28 -- 1927 to 1928 back in america, as a post doctoral fellow. he did some work at harvard. then he went to cal tech. all the time he is working feverishly, produced a lot of papers during that period.

contributing to the cutting edge of theoretical physics. and then after spending time at cal tech he decided he needed to go back to europe. and it's a feature of oppenheimer reside life during this period he fines himself in -- finds him in the right place at the right time, in this place zurich. he went back to europe and -- started at hiden, and he didn't feel he was at the center of cutting edge events and so he toyed with the idea of studying with highingberg but decided to good to zurich and there's a wonderful photograph taken by another student. at it on a boat, on the lake. i love this picture.

it's so characteristic of all of them. oppenheimer, his trademark hat and cigarette, and isadora looking puzzled and the last man you'd want in charge of your boat. and both glaring mall live lent -- into the camera. you can see the demonic grin here. he was good with a putdown and didn't spare his tongue with oppenheimer, but he was doing fundamentally important work, he was working with heistingberg on the subject that became quantum electrodynamics and oppenheimer learn about the work, contributed to it, and three joint papers so that by the time

he finished there in zurich, he could go back to america and, armed with all the latest developments in theoretical physics. he and robby had a similar experience in europe. on the one hand they were terribly excited by the physics they were learning. on the other hand, really annoyed the condescension shown to americans and they came back to make america a world center to challenge and eventually surpass the centers of zurich and gettingham and so on. and in fact that's what they did in the 1930s. oppenheimer, because he was in such demand, was able to dictate his terms, and the terms he dictated were unusual. what he secured was a position where he spent six months of the year in berkeley, in northern

california, and then moved down the state to pasadena, and spend the other six months of the year at cal tech. and his reason for that was cal tech was an established center of physics, and so he wanted to be at cal tech to be discussing physics with the leading physicists in the united states. but he also wanted at berkeley, as it was a clean sheet to build his own school of theoretical physics and that's what he did. he succeeded in his ambitious in the 1930s. berkeley had been fairly undistinguished center of theoretical physics. within ten years, by the end of 1930s, oppenheimer had built it up into one of the lead, if not the leading schools of theoretical physics in the united states, and in the process, made the united states a far bigger player on the world stage. he did that by -- with his

charisma, intelligence. he went to summer schools, met the best graduates, persuaded them to come to berkeley, and so within a few years, some of the best graduate students in physics were gravitating to berkeley to do their ph.d with onen home and robert serber, who became a close friend, as did many of his students. and one thing that really helped is that at the same time at berkeley was earnest lawrence, not a great theoretical physicist but won a nobel prize for a very important invehicles, cycletron, and lawrence attracted big funding to berkeley, to build ever bicker cycletrons and it was the beginning of the period of big science. but what that allowed at

berkeley was a kind of arrangement where lawrence was -- had his own laboratory, very well-funded, attracting good students and good money to do experimental work, oppenheimer setting up an important center in his work and they were close friends during this time in the 30s, and they collaborated with each other, with the result the experimental work and the theoretical work could feed off each other. so wouldn't be unusual for lawrence's students to present a problem they're having in interpreting their results, experimental results to onen homer and his students, who would then report become on what they thought was going on. likewise, onen homer and his students -- we formed this hypothesis on the basis this or that theory and then lawrence and his students could devise experiments to move the thing forward. so, a fruitful collaboration of lawrence and oppenheimer of

experiment and theory. during that time, oppenheimer kept up his love of new mexico. he bought this wooden house, it has absolutely splendid view, and when oppenheimer was first brought there by somebody who was interested in negotiating a deal, the first thing oppenheimer said when he saw the cottage was, hot dog. so, the agent said, in spanish. and so that was -- and he used to invite students there, they had a great time. wouldn't eat very much. everybody who went there said there wasn't much to eat and what was there was unbearably

spice and washed down with a lot of liquor but it came a center where oppenheimer could take his students, lawrence was a frequent visitor there, and it became a refuge for oppenheimer and his circle. talking about his circle, his relationship with his students that got oppenheimer into politics. prior to that he had shown no interest in politics whatsoever. didn't even know that the crash happened 1929. lawrence mentioned and it was amazed oppenheimer knew nothing about it. he began to take notice of political events when he began to see his students were affected by the economy. i mean, he was surprised to find his students weren't getting good jobs. if they were getting good jobs at all, they were low-paid, blue collar jobs. they reacted by becoming left wing in their politics, and that

drew oppenheimer into left-wing political activity on the west coast. and that tendency was strengthened by the fact that his first serious lover, jean, was also part of the left-wing scene in california, a member of the communist party and drew oppenheimer further into that, as did one of his colleagues at berkeley, who taught french literature, was also a member of the communist party. so a mixture of his lover, his friends and his students, got oppenheimer not into the communist party, in the formally a member of the communist party but he said he joined every communist front organization on the west coast. so he would go to fundraising parties, he would attend meetings to discuss ideas. he would take part in demonstrations. all of which were dominated by

members of the communist party. now, these four people in the middle here, joe wineberg, david, max freedman. all students of oppenheimer's, all members of the communist party, and this photograph was to have a deep and unhappy influence on all of their lives. the photograph was taken by a street photographer. they were all young physic graduate students, all friends together, and they just come out of campus at berkeley and saw this photographer, thought it would be a nice idea to have their picture taken, and they took their picture, they got a copy of it. went -- what they didn't know is one was being followed everywhere he went by the fbi because they discovered that he was involved in communist party activities, including the possible supplying to the soviet consulate in san francisco with secret material, and so he was followed everywhere so the fbi

guy, when this photographer took this picture, went up to the street photographer and said i'll have that film, thank you very much. so this picture was put on the file of all of these people. they knew who -- this picture enabled them to identify joe wineberg, david brohm and max freedman, and consequently all four of them found it impossible to find secure employment. they would be puzzled by the fact they would be offered a job and then it would be withdrawn a few months later, and it was because they had been marked by the fbi as potential subversives. as by this time was oppenheimer himself. the fbi started their own file on oppenheimer during this period, which became absolutely massive. one of the thing us spent a lot of time doing in my research on the book was going through the fbi file, which you can have access to now through the library of congress.

it's really huge. the fbi at various times bugged his home phone, his office phone, microphones on the walls of his house, they followed him everywhere at various times. and what they created was an immensely useful biographical result, and -- [laughter] -- of no particular interest to national security. and on enhomer knew this was happening. there's a transcript of him with his wife., kitty, who also a member of the communist party. so, sometime in the '40s, he is phoning home and kitty says, what is that noise? a noise on the line and on enhomer says, that would be the fbi hanging up. and this is written into the transcript, which is -- despite

all of that, oppenheimer was the choice of general grove to head the laboratory that produced the first atomic bomb. okay, so what happened in the '30s was fission had been discovered. nils bore realized in order to get a workable bomb you had to separate uranium, and when bosh realized that, he said no one will ever build a bomb because nobody knows how to separate enough of this isotope 235. and bore said in order to do it you have to turn the whole united states into a factory. well, such was general grove's devine will, he was prepared to do that. another aspect of his will was that oppenheimer was made directly of -- director of the

laboratory. it's hard to stress enough what an unlikely choice that was. oppenheimer was not an experimental physicist. he was notoriously bad in the laboratory, and therefore, he had never done any laboratory work, and he certainly had never run a laboratory. somebody said about oppenheimer, never run anything. never run a hamburger store, let alone a laboratory, and in addition to all that, groves was pleaded with by j. edgar hoover, the head of the fbi, to say, don't choose this man to be head of the project. he is a communist and might provide the seek celts to the soviet union. despite all that groves appointed oppenheimer. the question is, why? well, groves had been given the job of pushing this thing forward. it had been established more or

less that it was theoretically bob to build a powerful process. didn't have to build a bomb yet but seemed possible it could be done. so groves was given the job of getting done. now, he met with some of the leading scientists who were involved in this kind of work. hall and enrico and lawrence, and he was dismayed. these meetings did not fill him with joy at all. for two reasons. one is he couldn't understand a word they've said. and, two, they didn't seem to him much like people who were concerned with getting the job done. however, when he went to berkeley to meet with ernest lawrence, lawrence introduced him to oppenheimer, and oppenheimer it would become apparent, oppenheimer was

brilliant at explaining things s and gave droves a little course on fission and isotope separation and all of that, and groves in felt he understood it. in addition to that, oppenheimer was burning with the amibition to get the job done because oppenheimer was haunted by the thought that the germans would get there first. highsenberg was still in germany. a lot of scientists did leave and important ones left and other ones important to the story of the bomb left germany to work in either britain or america, including otto frisch and rudolph, and they spelled out more or less exactly how an atomic bomb could be built. and i think it was fish and piles that churchill had in mind help said the reason we won the war is our germans were better than their germans. i think he hat -- had in mine

what otto and rudolph. so oppenheimer was haunted by the idea that the germans would get there first, and goes, we have to get this thing done quickly and it's no good having a bunch of scientists in chicago and some in columbia and some in berkeley. you have get them install one place in a single laboratory, working with each other, and also because this is such a sensitive job, it needs to be in a remote place like new mexico. and groves was so impressed by that, none of the other considerations -- the fact that oppenheimer was a experimentalist, the fact he wasn't as distinguished. people said, look, enrico has a nobel prize, lawrence does, oppenheimer doesn't. groves was not worried about that and laid down the law. very few people could lay down the law to j.edded -- edgar

hooverrer and he said gave the order. and i couldn't -- i'm going on a bit. i couldn't resist including this photograph because a lot of people, when they think of manhattan project, think of the laboratory at los alamos but that was a bunch of scientists working on the problem, of course terribly important, but most of the 200,000 or so people who worked for the manhattan project, were not scientists working in los alamos. most of them were women working in these kind of conditions. groves solved the problem of isotope separation -- nobody had any idea how to do it there's a possibility you can do if with centrifugal forces or electronic acceleration. groves builds a plant for each of those possibilities, and so he bought this piece of real

estate in oakridge, tennessee, built these isotope separation plants. most of the people working in the manhattan project were working in places like this without the least idea what they were doing. and these women were told, if you see this, you need to turn the dial, and they had no idea that what they were doing was creating material for an atomic bomb. the uranium bomb, the scientists were so convinced they not thief's sick right, -- they got the physics right, they never tested it. and they tested the plutonium bomb in 1945 and it was an up forgettable experience for everybody involved. oppenheimer later said the words that came to his mind, now i become death, the destroyer of

worlds. and they built two bombs, the fat man bomb over nag goo saki, and little boy bomb, over nagasaki, and when a semi popular journal was started called physics today, it wanted to cover to represent the world of physics at that moment, and a hat on a cyclotron, so famous his hat was enough to say, robert oppenheimer. so famous you didn't need to have him on the picture of him. he moved from california to princeton here, to take the directorship of his student -- an ideal job for him. one of his main reasons for take the job is it moved him from the west coast to the east coast, and what he concentrated on after the second world war was

politics, not physics, and he was advising the u.s. government on atomic policy. made some enemies by opposing the development over the hydrogen bomb. so, the hydrogen bomb is potentially a thousand -- thousands of times more powerful than the hiroshima bomb. one argument he used to the u.s. government, you don't need to develop this, you can't imagine using a bomb that powerful. so why would you ever want to build it? and also, the other argument was, nobody knew how to build it at that stage. then the breakthrough there was the design of the bomb, after which oppenheimer regretably said, okay, it's technically sweet and was prepared to see it being developed. but by that time, he had made very influential enemies, the faux most was edward teller who

had made it his life's work to see the hydrogen bomb being developed and made, and the head of the atomic energy commission, louis strauss, and they grew suspicious of oppenheimer, and actually they ended up hating him, as did many of the most important people in the u.s. military establishment, including people in the air force and so on. the result of which was the famous 1954 hearing in which oppenheimer, who a few years earlier had been the most celebrated scientist in the united states, had his past scrutinized in great detail, and his character -- the hearing concluded he was not a fit man to be the bearer of secrets, military secrets, and so he had his security clearance taken away from him. and after that he was a broken

man. he kept his -- i mean, the institute of princeton, to its credit, refused pressure to get rid of oppenheimer. he stayed here in princeton, as the director, and fairly quickly a process of reconciliation between him and the american people began. the first and perhaps most important element of which was his appearance on the television program, ed murrow, the famous journalist decided to make a program about the whole institute here, but on his way back to new york, he realized the only usable footage he had was of oppenheimer so he decided to make a program just about onen home are and it was an enormous discuss. overnight oppenheimer's image was transformed from somebody who would a potential security threat to the united states to somebody who had an engaging personality, who was very good

in front of the camera, and who was very good at explaining very difficult physics to a popular audience. the other part of reconciliation he was invited to japan inch this photograph remark include, 56 years old. looks more like 86. you can see the toll of the events. primarily the security hearing aged him 20 years. here he is in japan with kitty. he was asked over and over again, did he regret developing the bomb that destroyed hiroshima and then nagasaki, and on every occasion he refused the invitation to say he regretted it. of course, got misgivings about it but he would never say he regret it. i think for several reasons. one is he generally believed it brought a quick end. the hiroshima bong -- the

nagasaki bomb no scientist thought was necessary, but the hiroshima bomb brought an abrupt end to the war, and they said you need to see the terrible power of this weapon in order to not -- in order to get everybody to agree that what is required is world cooperation on the handling of this material, so that this never happens again. the final reconciliation was when he was awarded the prize for outstanding physicist. he was due to receive the award from jfk, but after jfk's assassination, it was given by president johnson, and the famous photograph of him being congratulated by edward teller, great reconciliation after the security hearing of 1954, and

you can see oppenheimer looking rather gracious in response to teller's gesture, and kitty looking rather less so. i'll finish with these word. oppenheimer in his last tenneers of his life gives lectures: and the tone of his lectureses interesting. he started talking in a more personal way to not just -- well, sometimes to large audiences. on this occasion, summer of 19 1960, a rather smaller audience but i'll finish with the words he said. if i cannot be -- to let you know in the back of our theater it is because i'm too much jew, much too much christian, much too much european, far too much american, for i believe in the meaningness of human history and our role in it and above all our

responsibility to it. a fairly decent way to end. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much, ray, for doing something basically impossible, come pressing 11 years in a beautiful book into one hour. think it's a close to nuclear implosion. we have some time for some questions and answers. i uwant to warn you that this is all being taped by c-span. so, if you want to be audible, please wait before you get the microphone to ask your question. >> do you have any questions? anybody? >> yes, somebody over there.

>> did oppenheimer's view change towards the end of the world when it began to become clear that germ enough was not boating the u.s. to the bomb? >> thank you. a very interesting question. the short answer is, no, but let me give a slightly longer answer. it did become apparent -- and it seemed to me a really interesting question. it became apparent a long time before the trinity test that the germans didn't have even a serious atomic bomb process. and what is interesting is that only one scientist left the manhattan project when that became clear. that was joseph watler and he remembers being at los alamos, hearing the news, and also all the scientist had been drawn to los alamos by oppenheimer saying we have to build this before the germans do. and rockily remembers being at

los alamos and being at party, talking to general grove, and grove saying to him, nothing to do with germany or japan. it's to do with the soviet union to do with showing our military might to the soviets. and rockily was so shocked by that he left the project. none of in the other scientist left the project, even though they came there in competition of the germans, it was clear they had won the competition and net none of them left. and oppenheimer's views did nod change. he served on the target committee actually that chose the targets for the atomic bomb, and so was partly responsible for hiroshima being one of the targets. he, together with other people, d them to drop kyoto off the list because of i buddh

architecture and its significance to buddhism. but, no, he was -- his image of dirty hands -- president trumanan after the bombing, he said to truman, i feel i have blood on my hands, and he did indeed have blood on his hands. he had the opportunity to support the chicago petition, the scientists in chicago, drew up a petition, signed by scientists, urging the u.s. government not to use this bomb in the firstens on japanese civilians but to invite the japanese to a demonstration of its power which they thought would be enough. oppenheimer argued against that and his argument was, it might fizzle, and if it fizzles and doesn't work, then it's a circle demonstration that done more harm t in any case, no, his vies

didn't change. but i think -- how you deal with being responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people? that thought weighed heavily on him and i think that got a lot to do with the rapid aging that you can see in the photographs of oppenheimer between '45 and 1960. part of that was the heartbreak of the security hearing, but i think part also was carrying the burden on those deaths. but he always argued in public that he didn't regret it and that it had been necessary. i mean, what -- one could say, well, he had to believe that in order to stay sane, because how

otherwise you cope with the fact that you've been responsible for all those deaths. i don't know -- i'm inclined to think he did think that the her roche -- hiroshima bomb -- the fbi who kept an eye on him, reported as being overraught and distressed, and robert further has written about that robert wilson wrote about it. scientist at los alamos did not see the point of the nagasaki bombing and i think oppenheimer didn't either. but i think he did -- he went to his death defending the hiroshima bomb. >> sorry. i think a gentleman -- yes. >> you started with some comments diverse nature of this man's personality, and you didn't

spend too much time on that through the history but at the end of this, were those merely the languages and the writing, were those means to the end that he went to or were those things he could have become happily if he hadn't found the manhattan project? >> yeah. writing -- he took himself seriously as a writer as a young man. up until halfway through his studies at harvard, when he suddenly abandoned his short-story writing and concentrated on physics. his interest in hinduism name the 30s and a lot of time discussed hindu literature with charles writer, an expert on induism so he never dropped

that. so your question is, if he had not but all his interesting into the manhattan project, could we imagine him developing his interests in philosophy and literature and hinduism? i think the answeres, yes. one sees a bet of it in the directorship of the institute. what he did in the face or fairly fierce opposition bit the math me massachusetts particularses -- mathematicians was to insist the institute broaden itself a bit, and he named all the leading philosophers in the country and knew which historians to invite, which poets to invite. he was responsible for t.s. eliot to come here so hi directorship of the institute gave him some way of expressing his polimatic interests.

>> thank you very much. you ended your lecture by a good quotation from oppenheimer. are you suggesting in that case he was actually struggling with the dilemma of whether peace can be achieved through wars as a necessity, or whether peace should be achieved purely by peaceful means? i think he was struggling with that dile tghout his life. is that correct to say? >> i think it is fair to say, yeah. and i think there's another -- i think that's right but i think also at the forefront of the quotation is to some extent a reversal of a position he had adopted in the '30s. inspired by the hindu, the view

that one sees expressed in the become of that is that oppenheimer took from it was the view that one should do one's duty. whatever that duty is. so if one is a soldier, one has a duty to toe fight. i one is a politicianing un -- so he idea was you should do your duty and leave everything else to other people. i think what one sees in that quotation is oppenheimer saying, no, actually, in the end, too much of a christian, too much of an american to adopt that view, and to adopting views of saying, all this is money -- this is my responsibility, regardless. i think what he is saying that the responsibility he feels for the outcome, the general outcome, is not confined to him saying -- satisfying himself a at that time he has done his duty as a scientist or whatever. so i think that's -- that to me

is what that stands for. >> two related questions. why did einstein have such a minuscule role in the project? and in subsequent years what was the relationship between onen homer and einstein? i think their time here at the institute overlapped. >> yeah, okay. the first question first. i fine -- einstein didn't know a lot before fission. when he wrote the famous letter to president roosevelt, it wasn't written by einstein. and -- but still had the humility to realize nobody heard of him. whereas everybody heard of einstein. so he realize it it would carry more weight if signed by einstein. but he had to explain what was going on, and so siler and -- who went with him to -- whitner,

eugene whitner. went to einstein's house, i think on that occasion long island. they went to a summer place that einstein was staying at in long island, explain what was going on and then got einstein to sign the letter but einstein didn't want to pursue that work. he didn't have the background in that field of physics. and i think actually he wouldn't have been acceptable to the american establishment either. einstein was a bit, you know, dodgy. [laughter] >> the second part of your question was, onen homer and einstein. that's an interesting and troubled relationship. oppenheimer really admired the work that einstein had done in the first two decades of the 20th century. the famous works of 1905, oppenheimer, tremendous and -- oppenheimer, at various stages

in his life, had quite a deep interest in general relativity. based three papers on gravitational collapse but when einstein started out with nils bore and max bourne about quan tim theory and how quantum mechanics could not be in the end true. there had to be a deeper explanation of what was going on in quantum mechanics, and the famous debate oppenheimer took the side of bourne and bore and clearly thought einstein's days were finished, and he writes to his brother, frank, saying, you know, the institute is full of vision vision -- visionaries and

it's a madhouse and einstein is crazy. i think he continues to think -- he continues to think, einstein has just wasted himself. i think oppenheimer thought all the work einstein did from the time he came to the institute to his death was worthless. wasn't a popular view with einstein's family. >> this optimistic note, i want to thank you again for this question and answer and of course the beautiful lecture. before i want you to continue the discussion in the common room. thanks again for a wonderful lecture. [applause]

>> what are you reading this summer?

the chapter on capitalism i wrote because i was worried that people in business -- first of all, very few people in government have been in business. academics can leave and come back to their world. it's easy for a lawyer to go into government and then come out. it's very hard for a business person. if they're a small business person, its their business and they have to be there. if they're in a larger corporation, they get knocked off the ladder and they're out. and it's very hard to re-enter, and as a result you have people in business who don't -- who -- i'll admit it -- confession guess for the soul, my wife tells me.

if you're in government, looking at business, you understand it intellectually but it's one dimensionally. you don't have any idea what delay does if you're in government, what government delay does to business. you don't have any idea what uncertainty does to business. you don't really feel the impact of the regulations. and i send my taxes in every year and always add a letter to whom it may concern. here are my taxes. i want you to know i haven't the vaguest idea if they're accurate. [laughter] >> i went to college. i've got average intelligence. and my wife went to college and she won't read them. she knows she doesn't understand them. and i want you to know that's the case and i pay money to an

account and he helps me, and i hope they're right, and if you got a question, just give us a call. [laughter] >> but can you imagine this country with a lousy tax system like that? it's inexcusable. how many people here understand their taxes? let's see. i don't see many hands going up. but i wrote the chapter bus i felt that i was in business, and i know that a businessman has in a large company, shareholders, customers, and they have employees. and their shareholders, customers and employees are all across the spectrum in political views and ideas and parties. and therefore business people are very reluctant to challenge the government to criticize the government. they don't want to divide their stockholders or employees or their shareholders.

they also worry about the irs. they worry -- [laughter] >> if you don't understand your taxes, you ought to worry. i worry. i mean, i know i don't know. and they also -- if you're in the pharmaceutical business like i was you have the fed food and drug administration and the security and exchange commissions and all these alphabet regulatory organizations and to the extent someone criticizes the government or challenges their approach, they worry the government could be turned on them and that is in my view why this current irs thing is so critical, because american people don't want to feel that their government is -- it's their government -- could be turn on them in a way that targets people. if you can target one person, you can target someone else. doesn't matter if your liberal, conservative, republican, democrat. and that's why that is so

central. now, what i'd like to do is have sandy or somebody -- where are these people -- you have microphones? i think you do. there you are. i'd be happy to respond to questions as i say, and even answer some, and i'll do my best. and what you need to do, i suppose, is raise your hand and sandy will bring a mic. >> i always hate the first question. anyone who poupes with a jack-in-the-box with a first question scares me to death. those lights are bright. make it a good one. i'm going to embarrass you if you don't. >> here's what we'll do mr. secretary -- >> someone has to turn his mic on you. had the floor up here before,

sandy. >> who has the first question? okay. you have it. okay, anthony. is your mic on? >> mr. secretary, i do have two quick question. >> no, no i'm 81 in july. i do not need multipart questions. >> okay. >> it's 7:15 here, it's 10:15 in washington where i flew in from yesterday. >> single part question. >> feel free to go ahead. >> okay. first question is, will you -- >> no. no. you only get one. [laughter] >> turn off his mic. [laughter] >> will you write a book for republicans called, rumsfeld's clue to republicans that says, that will not tax, without doing a tax decrease.

thou will not raise expenses without some sort of cut in the middle. i mean, i remember when i watched your interview on the letterman show, you had suggested that there was a time at which our debt reached something like $100 billion or something like that and the world went crazy. >> i was there. in the presidency of lyndon baines johnson, i was a congressman and it was the first federal budget in our history that hit $100 billion. and everyone just gasped at the thought. but. >> but now it doesn't seem like -- >> now we have trillion dollar deficits. >> doesn't look like the republicans are helping us any. so will you write a become for system. >> well, let me say something about that. i think the republicans -- there are people all across the spectrum in both parties, but the -- i was asked -- i was

speaking about my other book, "known and unknown" at ft. leavenworth, the military base, not the prison. and there were, i think, 1490 majors from mostly our country but from around the world, too. it's a big school there. and someone asked me, what's the biggest problem that i worry about when guy to bed at night? and the answer was, american weakness. and why do i say that? i think the signal that is being sent out from this country is that basically, we're modeling american economy on europe, and it's a failed model. it doesn't work. and there's no way you can have the deficits we have had and have the debt we're incurring without sending out a signal to the world that this country's not going to be what it was in the past.

and there's no way you can do that. if you're not going to act responsibly, people take that message and they see it. and then you turn around and when i went to washington, eisenhower was president. i came out of the navy and then served there during kennedy, johnson, in the congress. we were spending 10% of gross domestic product on defense. today we're spending less than 4%. our allies in europe are spending less than 2%. and the signal that guess out to the world, now with this sequestration, is that we cut $493 billion out of the pentagon defense budget and we're about to cut another half a trillion, which brings it close to $950 billion. out of a ten-year budget. the signal that sends to the world is that the united states is not going to be in a position to contribute to a more peaceful

and stable world in the decade ahead. >> you can watch this and other programs online. >> up next on booktv, a panel discussion of the creation of the sixth floor museum at dealey plaza, in the former texas school book depository, which remembers the life, presidential tenure, and assassination of president john f. kennedy. this is an hour. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much for being here today. this is truly a remarkable audience. i have been with the museum now for 13 years and i can't think of another event, another program, where we have had an audience quite like this there are far too many people who require recognition for me to catch everyone's name so please forgive me i if i don't acknowledge you. want