bird: and he could never finish the sentence. martin j. sherwin: and then another one of his friends went to his dorm room and heard this moaning inside and opened the door, and there was oppenheimer in a fetal position, rolling back and forth, groaning. he literally came close to committing suicide at that point. eisenbach: he saw a psychiatrist as a result of this, and the psychiatrist said that he s kind of living in his own world. rhodes: he was having an identity crisis, something we re clearer about these days than we were then. bird: his parents took him to paris, where he saw yet another psychologist, and in a very french way, prescribed a professional woman and red wine. (laughs) so. uh, we don t know if that happened. sherwin: he had always been the top of the class,
norris: everybody was on edge, and they had to calm down oppenheimer. he was a bundle of nerves. rhodes: he chain-smoked, which he pretty much always did anyway. groves: it was a situation where i did not want dr. oppenheimer to get nervous. there s a famous picture from that evening where oppenheimer himself crawls up the tower to the top where the bomb has been hoisted he s checking all the final plugs to make sure that everything is in order. he s clearly worried, trying to check every last little detail. wellerstein: oppenheimer doesn t know if this thing is gonna work at all. eisenbach: in fact, he had a bet with another one of the scientists that it wouldn t work ten dollars. oppenheimer: there were a hundred things that could be done wrong, any one of which could make the test a failure. nye: everybody had doubts.
certainly not with children his own age. he s had no experience. alex wellerstein: the real core psychological moment for oppenheimer appears to have been when he was in college. and he goes to study physics at cambridge, and he doesn t do very well. he ends up in a laboratory that s really about experimental physics, and he is not good at that. he doesn t really know how to d an experiment with his hands. and he has this sort of crisis of confidence. bird: this came to a head when he had a. what i think can only be described as a nervous breakdown. one of his friends stumbled upon him in an empty classroom where oppenheimer was standing at the blackboard. eisenbach: muttering to himself over and over again, the point is, the point is, the point is.
norris: everybody was on edge, and they had to calm down oppenheimer. he was a bundle of nerves. rhodes: he chain-smoked, which he pretty much always did anyway. groves: it was a situation where i did not want dr. oppenheimer to get nervous. there s a famous picture from that evening where oppenheimer himself crawls up the tower to the top where the bomb has been hoisted he s checking all the final plugs to make sure that everything is in order. he s clearly worried, trying to check every last little detail. wellerstein: oppenheimer doesn t know if this thing is gonna work at all. eisenbach: in fact, he had a bet with another one of the scientists that it wouldn t work ten dollars. oppenheimer: there were a hundred things that could be done wrong, any one of which could make the test a failure. nye: everybody had doubts.
for oppenheimer appears to have been when he was in college. and he goes to study physics at cambridge, and he doesn t do very well. he ends up in a laboratory that s really about experimental physics, and he is not good at that. he doesn t really know how to d an experiment with his hands. and he has this sort of crisis of confidence. bird: this came to a head when he had a. what i think can only be described as a nervous breakdown. one of his friends stumbled upon him in an empty classroom where oppenheimer was standing at the blackboard. eisenbach: muttering to himself over and over again, the point is, the point is, the point is. bird: and he could never finish the sentence. martin j. sherwin: and then another one of his friends went to his dorm room and heard this moaning inside