Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius (review)

While this volume is largely comprised of revised versions of previously published material, it is hardly a heterogeneous assortment of occasional papers. Taken together, the chapters of Einstein and Oppenheimer form a comparative psychological and social study of two leading physicists after they reached the pinnacle of their careers. Silvan Schweber examines how Albert Einstein’s and Robert Oppenheimer’s personae as preeminent scientists played out in their immediate social and broader political environments. The book’s focus is not so much the meaning of genius, but its uses. Schweber is evidently fascinated by the “off-scale” cognitive abilities of his protagonists; for example, he ranks Oppenheimer’s talents against a scale of the founders of quantum mechanics. But such passages are asides in a broader discussion of how these two idiosyncratic personalities functioned as public intellectuals. Ultimately, the limitations of genius appear here in almost a tragic mode.

The first essay deals with Einstein’s relation to the problem of nuclear weapons. A common version of the story is that Einstein’s role in nuclear weapons policy was limited to signing (not composing) a 1939 letter to Franklin Roosevelt. As Schweber demonstrates, Einstein played a more active role both in the approach to Roosevelt and as an informal monitor and advisor of the research that ensued. For the postwar period, Schweber stresses Einstein’s conviction that the only rational solution to the nuclear crisis was the creation of world government, and his consequent dismissiveness toward less radical approaches to securing world peace.

In his second chapter Schweber investigates Einstein’s participation in the founding of Brandeis University, in fund-raising and advising about academic planning. He soon clashed with other organizers over the choice of leaders and over perceived compromises to the academic independence and Jewish identity of the institution. Einstein appears here as supremely confident in his own convictions, and with little patience for working with anyone who disagreed.

In the third chapter Schweber turns to Oppenheimer, who worked more collaboratively than Einstein, but, like him, also sought effective compromise in the political sphere. Ironically, Schweber concludes, many of Oppenheimer’s ideas about physics were “ahead of his time” (p. 151) and hence intractable for group effort; politically, as is well known, his advocacy of moderation in the nuclear arms race proved untenable in the postwar American political climate. In the next chapter, Schweber situates Oppenheimer’s philosophical ideas in the context of pragmatism, operationalism, and Bohrian complementarity, and he describes Oppenheimer’s efforts to put these ideas into practice as director of the Institute for Advanced Study, as a member of the visiting committee for Harvard University’s philosophy department, and in his 1957 William James Lectures.

The last two chapters and the conclusion are the most explicitly comparative. Schweber contrasts Einstein’s and Oppenheimer’s approach to the unification and extension of physics and returns, finally, to the theme of their respective relationship to community. Einstein’s drive for unification ranged far beyond his physics despite his self-conception as a “loner” (p. 268); Oppenheimer’s wide-ranging curiosity appears as a quest for community that was never quite fulfilled.

Through such comparisons, several ironies emerge. It was the self-consciously individualistic Einstein, who had hardly any students and who often related indifferently if not antagonistically within formal institutional and political structures, who maintained a greater sense of rootedness and who frequently inspired affection even among his scientific antagonists. Oppenheimer was much more successful as a teacher, more engaged in the political and institutional arena, and more frequently involved in collective scientific work. Schweber suggests that this was analogous to a great orchestra conductor. Yet it was Oppenheimer who exhibited a lifelong sense of rootlessness and inspired more respect than affection among his colleagues. For Einstein and Oppenheimer, as depicted by Schweber, their record as institution builders, political figures, and public intellectuals shows both the power and the limitations of their respective personae. In the sensitive comparative analysis...