Frank Oppenheimer
Frank Oppenheimer · Science & Medicine
Manhattan Project physicist, blacklisted under McCarthyism, who founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco — the museum that taught the world to touch science.
14 August 1912, New York, United States — 3 February 1985, United States
San Francisco, California, United States
Frank Oppenheimer is recognized among Jewish contributors to Science & Medicine — Manhattan Project physicist, blacklisted under McCarthyism, who founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco — the museum that taught the world to touch science.
Younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer and born into the same non-observant Jewish family, Frank Oppenheimer was a particle physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was at Trinity for the first test. Then McCarthyism took his career: he was blacklisted from every physics post in the country and spent a decade as a cattle rancher in Colorado, allowed back only to teach high school in 1957. Out of that exile came his masterpiece — the Exploratorium, opened in San Francisco in 1969, where nothing is behind glass and everything is meant to be touched.
It became the model for hands-on science museums worldwide: the physicist barred from teaching ended up teaching everyone.
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oppenheimer
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Manhattan Project physicist, blacklisted under McCarthyism, who founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco — the museum that taught the world to touch science.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oppenheimer
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