Oppenheimer Excited me For This One Reason?—?And It Was Not Because He Knew How To Create a Bomb
It was because he believed in his?ideas
As a student during a lab session, he could not concentrate.
His teacher wondered what somebody was doing in a physics lab if he wasn’t interested in the topic.
He was wrong.
Oppenheimer was interested in physics at a deep level. The quantum level.
Quantum mechanics was a topic that eluded many scientists in America. It was the early days when it was gaining traction in the West. Within the same compound was a legendary physicist.
He was the reason Oppenheimer lost interest in experiments at that particular time.
Niels Bohr was giving a lecture. Who wouldn’t want to attend? Bohr was a paragon of wit and wisdom.
Oppenheimer made it to the lecture, late.
But he learned he was the only one who asked the question the lecturer liked the most. It was Bohr who gave him this feedback.
Being late to class does not mean you are not interested. It’s a point I would have wanted to give my lecturers but I doubt any of them read my work.
The reason I bring this up has to do with the fact that I love teaching.
When watching the movie, the one scene which brought me more joy than any other, was when Oppenheimer started his class with a single student.
One.
With many empty seats.
It was the scene I loved the most!
I owe it all to Malcolm?Gladwell
Gladwell’s Outliers was the first book from his classic collection that I devoured.
His ideas were different. His message was clear. And he was not talking about self-help.
He talked about the chance one gets to influence others and how their message can spread.
Messages spread when they go past the tipping point. He lists three characters. In that list, one trait he talks about is the stickiness of the message.
The stickiness of the message and the messenger affect the overall spread of an idea. It helps if the messenger has charisma.
Oppenheimer had charisma.
He could convince you that a tree was a bottle of beer wrapped in leaves and you would eventually believe it.
Trees can be bottles of beer. But let’s not get drunk with the idea.
More interesting is the person who thinks in this way than those who don’t. It is such thinking and charisma that had him leading the Manhattan Project and orchestrating the lynchpin of an idea that brought an end to the Second World War.
I needed to know more about him. But I never dedicated enough time.
Christopher Nolan had my back.
If you are ever going to produce a movie about a prominent figure, you need to do your homework. And if you’re going to make huge leaps in knowing a subject, you need to hand around people who have done their homework.
So I hung around the cinema for over 3 hours watching the rise and fall of Oppenheimer.
It was fantastic. I loved the switches between the coloured and the black-and-white scenes.
It took over three hours to see the artistry.
It took art to explain physics and history.
It took art to show me how I wanted my life to be.
I just have to teach?—?have to.
There’s a scene when Oppenheimer is greeted by an experimental physicist, who asks him about his classes.
Regarded as the father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was arguably the only person in the USA who was remotely interested in quantum physics. And he was going to teach it.
His class would start soon.
With a single student.
There was a time in high school when I hated?teaching
I only wanted to read.
However, students would often interrupt my reading asking for assistance in various subjects.
Silently, I would wonder what was difficult about their question. It would often seem dead-obvious to me. So when someone said they would not understand a topic, it would irritate me.
However, I would never show it.
Gradually, I started to like it. I switched my thinking. A complete 180-degree turn.
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I thought these moments were opportunities for revision.
The more people I helped, the more I revised. The more confident I’d also be when another person approached me, the more confident I would be before an examination paper.
I enjoyed it so much, right to the very end, before doing our Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).
While almost every other person was interested in finding leaked papers, I was interested in the questions every other person brought to me for assistance.
I’ll tell you that story, one day. For now, just know I loved teaching. This love blew up when I got to campus.
I then started teaching first-year students on?campus
I loved sessions in gross anatomy.
Maybe it helped that for a long time, I was surrounded by girls throughout my first year.
Maybe.
I was the only boy in my dissection table. The other two dropped the course.
Maybe that contributed.
But my other teacher was the cadaver itself. I called her Wednesday. She taught me more selflessly than any other person I have ever known.
Two years later I was granted a chance to teach first-year students human anatomy. I applied for the course to get into research, but I ended up loving teaching instead.
As I taught during every lab session, time would pass quickly without me knowing.
I’d have to check if my classmates were leaving to convince myself that I had to cut it short.
I just loved teaching.
Then I started teaching?research
Then I co-founded a research consortium.
The ambitious plan was to have as many published articles as possible through collaboration.
Still, what drove me to continue sustaining the idea was my love for teaching. There were times when our pioneer members were almost giving up.
Sessions needed instructors and the instructors needed morale boosters.
I would travel from home if need be, and walk from the CBD (Central Business District) to Kenyatta National Hospital if need be, just so we could not miss a session. They needed to see that I was invested in this and that their efforts weren’t going unrecognized.
Amid efforts to sustain this group, I discovered a love for evolutionary biology.
Now I have a theory.
The theory is Organismal Selection.
How does this relate to Oppenheimer? Glad you asked.
His first class had one student.
Even then, the student thought he was in the wrong class. The room was empty. It had several chairs, but only one student and one teacher.
The next set of scenes shows how the class grows. Gradually, Oppenheimer paces, explaining his concepts of quantum mechanics to an eager audience.
I
Loved
It!
In that scene, I saw myself. Not with a cigarette parsed between my lips. But with a passion to teach a subject I grow to love more and more every day.
Such drive fills students with enthusiasm for the subject. As much as interest lies with the student, sustenance lies with the teacher. I got that from seeing Feynman’s recorded classes.
Teachers can be with us, physically, giving lectures. They can be with us in spirit, teaching us long after they are gone, with their books and articles. I have learned more from Karl Popper through the sessions we had with him, page after page, and reading his works.
I was a single student. He was the teacher. Now I can’t stop speaking about him.
His impact, like that of Oppenheimer, will never be forgotten.
Now I have a theory . Make the mistake of asking me to talk to you about it. Please do.
I can go for hours.
Nas believed in his rhymes. As a result, he inspired many hip-hop artists.
He said that all he needed was one mic.
I believe in my ideas.
All I need is one willing student.