This chapter explores the difficulties faced by biographers in researching and writing about scientists, including the challenges of explaining complex scientific concepts in layman's terms. The guest also shares their personal experience of taking a course in physics for poets and the funding available for scientific biographies. The chapter briefly touches on the delay in a film adaptation of a biography and references the uncertainty principle humorously.
If someone else led the Manhattan Project, would it have gone differently? Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s film, and the creation of the atomic bomb with biographer Kai Bird.
For more information about the new book: https://startalkmedia.com/books
NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/oppenheimer-birth-of-the-atomic-age-with-kai-bird/
Thanks to our Patrons Jimmy Dunn, Liviu Dimulescu, Keely Stults, Ralph Viator, Daniel Brophy, and Diana Gutman for supporting us this week.
Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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