October 20, 2009

Frank Oppenheimer By Chrissy Astbury

Frank Oppenheimer believed the most effective learning is achieved through personal discovery and play explained science writer and journalism professor K. C. Cole who spoke to a fully engaged

audience in the Chemistry building auditorium.Cole’s latest book, “Something Incredibly

Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up,” focuses on Oppenheimer’s life as a teacher, innovator, humanitarian, and his founding of the Exploratorium: a museum uniquely centered on the idea of acquiring knowledge through play.

Cole spoke candidly about Oppenheimer without the assistance of a microphone or visual aide Monday Oct. 19. She began by asking a relatively small crowd of around 50 to move down to the front of the spacious auditorium and shared many revealing and entertaining anecdotes, often quoting Oppenheimer verbatim.

“Understanding is a lot like sex, it has a practical purpose but it’s usually not our point,” she quoted, drawing laughter from the audience. From a privileged upbringing to the encouraged chaos of the Exploratorium, Oppenheimer engaged in a constant search for knowledge and through these unique experiences, he acquired rare and valuable insight into science, politics, learning, and life generally.

“Instead of being a society based on persuasion, we are a society based on coercion,” Cole said of Oppenheimer’s viewpoint. While Frank Oppenheimer contributed significantly to brother J. R. Oppenheimer’s discovery of the atom bomb, he came to believe in power derived from knowledge instead of threat.

Both Frank and J. R. Oppenheimer were blackballed from the science world during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Both denounced the use of the atom bomb they created and were considered communist

according to K.C. Cole

sympathizers as a result Cole said. With few options, Frank Oppenheimer purchased a ranch in rural Colorado and began teaching science at the local high school.

It was during this period that the idea of the Exploratorium took form as Oppenheimer sought ways to spur curiosity and understanding in his pupils. His ultimate goal was to create “learning addicts,” said Cole.

As the Red Scare blew over, Oppenheimer found work at the University of Colorado and eventually moved to San Francisco and set up his “museum of human awareness” in 1969.

Cole, a self-proclaimed “learning addict,” recalled her first experience at the Exploratorium where the interactive exhibits hover between science and art. She dropped a quarter in a donation bin and 300,000 volts of electricity shot up a pole in an extraordinary show of purple lightning. She promptly dropped in another quarter.

Cole drew on the experience of Physicist Alan Friedman, who said of his first Exploratorium visit, “My prior museum-going experience was that the people who worked in the museum’s job was to keep you from having a good time.” The Exploratorium operates on the exact opposite premise said Cole.

Oppenheimer once said and Cole quoted, “Misbehavior is as important in the study of nature as in people.” The Exploratorium sought to provoke play and thus knowledge in its visitors through interactive sightseeing experiences. “Individual sights combine to form patterns which constitute a simple form of understanding,” he said.

Cole said a colleague once attempted to get Oppenheimer to realize “real world limitations.” He legendarily responded, “It’s not the real world. It’s a world we made up.”

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19851985: Oppenheimer dies on Feb. 3 at the age of 72. He served as the Exploratorium museum director up until his death.

1933: Graduates from Johns Hopkins with a degree in Physics.

1937-1939: Becomes a member of the American Communist Party against his brother’s wishes.

1947: HUAC begins investigating Frank Oppenheimer, code named Frank Folsom by the FBI, for his former communist a�liation.

1948: Now blackballed from the science world, the physicist starts over again as a cattle farmer in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

“...His kindness, his insatiable curiosity, his love of junk and art, his passionate distaste for dishonestly his bottomless appetite for everything the human and

physical world had to offer - all were transparently tied to his previous experience. And the more I learned, the

more it seemed as if everything he'd done had led inexorably (if somewhat erratically and eccentrically) to

the Exploratorium.” -K.C. Cole

1957: The Red Scare dies down enough that Oppenheimer is permitted to teach science at Pagosa Springs High School.

1959: Oppenheimer takes a position teaching physics at the University of Colorado and begins to take an interest in improving science education techniques, founding the Library of Experiments.

1969: Oppenheimer opens the Exploratorium: a revolutionary interactive museum committed to learning through play and fun.

1945: US ends WWII by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. Both Frank and J.R., the so-called “father of the atomic bomb”, eventually denounce its use.

THE CAREER OF

FRANK OPPENHEIMER

1941-1945: Assists his brother, J.R. Oppenheimer, with the Manhattan Project: the Allied e�ort to produce the �rst atomic weapon.

A colleague once attempted to get

Oppenheimer to realize “real

world limitations.” He legendarily responded, “It’s

not the real world. It’s a world we

made up.”

October 20, 2009

Cole explained the Exploratorium as the world Oppenheimer made for himself, a world about discovery without rules since Oppenheimer abided by none.

Cole shared the story of an earthquake striking the Palace of Fine Arts, which was built in 1915 and has housed the

Exploratorium since its inception. While everyone intuitively fled the swaying structure, Oppenheimer ran inside to witness the effects firsthand.

The question-and-answer session featured no questions, only compliments from the audience and Cole said how

incredibly lucky she is to have known Oppenheimer so personally.

She then said the Exploratorium is Oppenheimer’s legacy and to visit and play there is to personally visit, play, and learn in the brain of Frank Oppenheimer himself.

Q & a with k.C. COLe

The following Q&A has been adapted from Ira Flatlow’s

interview with K.C. Cole on NPR Radio,

Aug. 7, 2009.

Cole and Frank Oppenheimer reflect onto one another in this early 1980’s photo.The two became friends in the early 1970’s.

K.C., it looks like Oppenheimer did like to travel the - road less taken.

COLe: Oh yeah, absolutely, and you know, we were

talking about art before. I remember one time I went to the Whitney Museum in New York with Frank. There was an exhibit of Duane Hanson work. You know, he does those very lifelike sculptures of people.

I thought museums were places you had to take seriously. Well, I lost Frank, and I realized he was posing as a sculpture to see

if anyone would poke him because he had poked a guard who, it turned out, was very much alive. So he wanted to - so he was that way with everything, extremely playful and - but very serious, as well. I mean…

Serious about being funny, serious about being educational.

COLe: Serious about really - it sounds crazy but really

about the fact that you cannot give the world a weapon like this and just leave it. You have to come up with radically new kinds of ways

of thinking and solutions and that a lot of those come straight out of science.

So that’s where he thought the connection was. There are ideas, you know, like symmetry, which is extremely important even in string theory or every place in physics. But it’s also a way of saying the Golden Rule, right? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, these very deep ideas that come from - or just evolution, you know, the fact that we’re all related to each other in some way.

Maybe that’s a way to change the way people - but then, of course, you have really bad people like the Taliban, so in addition to that, you have to figure out, okay, how do we deal with people who really have to be stopped? And he considered everything from, seriously, dropping Jell-O on your enemies just to paralyze them so they can’t do anything bad, but you won’t kill too many people. But he thought you really had to think outrageously or we were never going to solve this problem.

How did you come up with that title: “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens”?

COLe: I actually didn’t. An assistant at my

publisher did, but I can tell you where it comes from. Frank is talking about the importance of being playful, messing around with no particular aim in mind as being very important and very difficult for most adults because it involves risk-taking. And it’s the only time you actually really invent anything new. So in the process, you waste a lot of time, but sometimes, something incredibly wonderful happens.

The a-ha moment.

COLe: Yeah, exactly. It’s that amazing moment

where you finally understand things. And that was really the whole point of what he was trying to do at the Exploratorium was give people the confidence that they could understand so they just didn’t have to give up and listen to the biggest lie…