“It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”

These words, from a speech given by J. Robert Oppenheimer, are quoted as the epigraph to the first part of Richard Rhodes’ magisterial Making of the Atomic Bomb. This epigraph offers a thread that leads the reader through a labyrinth full of places, events, institutions, people, and the ultimate constitutive material parts of our cosmos. Part biography of the scientists working at the advent of nuclear physics, part biography of the atom itself, Rhodes’ history also continually reflects on the interplay of scientific discovery, political and social institutions, and economic and military contexts.

This seminar will discuss the first part of Rhodes’ multifaceted tome. In tracking the birth of nuclear physics through the turn of the century, the First World War, and into the 1930s, fellows will be invited to think about the different demands of theoretical versus applied scientific work, the institutions and intellectual characters that are required for or inhibit scientific progress, the conversion of scientific discovery into practical technology, and the mutual influence of that technology and its geopolitical situation.

Image: Gary Sheahan’s oil painting of the scene at the first sustained nuclear chain-reaction, NARA

Prof. Coleman on liberal education

This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It takes place weekly on Wednesdays, via Zoom, from 6 PM to 8 PM ET. Fellows will receive a $150 Amazon Bookshelf voucher contingent upon participation in the course and completion of a brief response paper. All course materials will be provided.

Faculty

Patrick Coleman

Patrick Coleman is a Tutor at St. John’s College. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a dissertation on synchronization, and his B.S. in Physics from William & Mary College along with a minor in Philosophy. He is currently leading a research group on the integration of a Technology and Computation segment in St. John’s College’s Graduate Institute. Patrick has led seminars and reading groups for The Catherine Project, including a recent reading group on Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Computation, and is especially devoted to deepening scientific literacy.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

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