I accidentally came to know about this film about Oppenheimer on American Experience on PBS yesterday. It was a 2 hour piece, a docu-drama, with David Strathairn playing Oppenheimer during his infamous trial. The trial was an opportunity for Oppenheimer to recapitulate his life, and this is what the docu-drama does. It would undoubtedly be repeated and I would strongly encourage those unfamiliar with the man and the period in this country's history to watch it. It shows the rise of a truly brilliant and iconic character, followed by his fall that was orchestrated by a vindictive and self-serving government.
Given my long interest in Oppenheimer, there wasn't much in the film that was new for me. It was highly informative, poignant and fortunately well-grounded in facts and consensus. Interviewed among others were historians Richard Rhodes, Martin Sherwin, Priscilla McMillan and veteran scientists Harold Agnew, Herbert York, Nobel Laureate Roy Glauber and Marvin Goldberger. Prudently, the film does not speculate on Gregg Herken's belief that Oppenheimer was a member of the communist party; to my knowledge only Herken holds this opinion, and to be honest it does not even matter. But as the record shows, 30 years of constant investigation by the FBI turned up nothing that indicated party membership, and that says a lot.
The disturbing thing about the trial of course is that it is a poster boy case for how disagreement and dissent are equated with disloyalty by the government, a tale for our times even as its essential unlawful scare tactics have been repeated in numerous administrations, and most recently in the Bush administration when opposition to the Iraq war was often deemed "unpatriotic". The Oppenheimer story, one of the most shameful episodes in this country's history in my opinion, is a cautionary tale that should always be remembered as an example of how we need to be constantly alert and aware in a democracy and watch out for abuse of power by the government. The film does a good job of demonstrating this.
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
-
-
A meditation on the year to come1 week ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
Some thoughts on "broader impact" statements for scientific papers4 weeks ago in The Curious Wavefunction
-
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?3 months ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
Daily routine10 months ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China1 year ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM2 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey3 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV4 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!4 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!5 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez5 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens6 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl8 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House9 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs9 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby9 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files

No comments:
Post a Comment
Markup Key:
- <b>bold</b> = bold
- <i>italic</i> = italic
- <a href="http://www.fieldofscience.com/">FoS</a> = FoS