Einstein and Our World (Control of Nature Series) Book

I have a theory about books with "and" in the title: one of the two words on either side of the "and" will be the foil for the real subject of the book. In this book, Oppenheimer is the real subject of attention and Einstein the foil.

Schweber's book provides an excellent depiction of Oppenheimer from the 1930's to his death in the 1960's, his capacity to enlist and develop colleagues and communities of purpose both successfully at Los Alamos and to a lesser degree at the Institute of Advanced Study.

At times the contrast feels like a business book comparing two types of leaders: innovators (Einstein) and collaborators (Oppenheimer). Oppenheimer comes off as the more sympathetic and the more effective (albeit flawed) leader, able to compromise, adapt and work with people as he carries out his vision of physics as a collective excercise of community.

This is opposed to Einstein who is, of course, the more talented and revolutionary physicist but is also limited in his influence of politics and physics in the years immediatly following WWII by a deep and idiosyncratic individualism. In the end, Schweber suggests that it is Einstein who is left behind. In his attempts to curb atomic weapons proliferation post WWII and his participation in the founding of Brandeis, Einstein was too much of a hedgehog, Scweber suggests. He was never able to move beyond the special and general theories of relativity; never willing to adjust his vision of a one world government to control nuclear proliferation; never able to accept the compromises necessary to found Brandeis. In Scweber's telling, Einstein could not adjust his vision to the underlying realities, whether of quantum physics; international politics and atomic weapons; or university education.

Oppenheimer, by contrast, remained a relevant and an essential figure in the world of physics until his death in the 1960's, even if only as a supporting player administering the world so others could excel. His tragedy came in a way quite different from Einstein's. Oppenheimer's tragedy was not that of the lone genius left behind, but of the teamplayer and ultimate insider ostracized and misunderstood, unable to found the community of intellectuals he invisioned in the post-Los Alamos age of academic specialization and stripped of the utlimate symbol of insider influence: his security clearance.

This is an excellent history, with a richness that exceeds some of the editorial choices Schweber makes and a work well worth reading.