Poet, physicist and father of the bomb:
Already regarded as a genius (he had learned Sanskrit at Harvard), the young Oppenheimer was also a struggling poet. This led to a famous reproof from the British physicist Paul Dirac, who chided him for the time he wasted writing verse. "How can you do both poetry and physics? In physics we try to tell people things in such a way that they understand something that nobody knew before. Whereas in poetry . . ."
(By the way: why is having learned Sanskrit at Harvard evidence of genius?)
This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy
on Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 11:59 AM.
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