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192-595: J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; / ˈ ɒ p ən h aɪ m ər / OP -ən-hy-mər ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project 's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II . He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb " for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons. Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained

384-503: A Bachelor of Arts , summa cum laude , after only three years of study. After being accepted at Christ's College, Cambridge , in 1924, Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Rutherford requesting permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory , though Bridgman's letter of recommendation said that Oppenheimer's clumsiness in the laboratory suggested that theoretical, rather than experimental, physics would be his forte. Rutherford

576-701: A hollow known as Garage Village, was to be raised. The city's proposal to widen Riverside Drive required the acquisition of land, including a portion of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center 's site along the Hudson River. The city also acquired land in Inwood Hill Park for a further northward extension into the Bronx, and there were suggestions to extend the road to Westchester County, New York , or

768-435: A mathematical theory , in the sense that the word "theory" has a different meaning in mathematical terms. R i c = k g {\displaystyle \mathrm {Ric} =kg} The equations for an Einstein manifold , used in general relativity to describe the curvature of spacetime A physical theory involves one or more relationships between various measurable quantities. Archimedes realized that

960-533: A nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union , and opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb , partly on ethical grounds. During the second Red Scare , these stances, together with his past associations with the Communist Party USA , led to an AEC security hearing in 1954 and the revocation of his security clearance . He continued to lecture, write, and work in physics, and in 1963 was given

1152-478: A water main break, and the section of Riverside Drive in Hamilton Heights was partially closed for repairs. In addition, when a condominium building was completed at 222 Riverside Drive in 1988, it was the first apartment building to be erected on the avenue in 35 years. In 1991, the city government proposed rebuilding the section of the avenue north of 135th Street. Local residents initially opposed

1344-599: A working hypothesis . Riverside Drive (Manhattan) Riverside Drive is a north–south avenue in the New York City borough of Manhattan . The road runs on the west side of Upper Manhattan , generally paralleling the Hudson River and Riverside Park between 72nd Street and the vicinity of the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street . North of 96th Street , Riverside Drive

1536-611: A $ 7 million upgrade to the existing section of Riverside Drive between St. Clair Place (at the southern end of the Manhattan Valley Viaduct) and Dyckman Street. The portion of the parkway north of Dyckman Street opened in December 1936, and the portion south of the George Washington Bridge opened the next year, relieving traffic on much of Riverside Drive. The section of Riverside Drive between

1728-422: A 60-foot-wide (18 m) roadway with six lanes of traffic. The viaduct's construction required 11.6 million pounds (5.3 kt) of steel, 108,000 square feet (10,000 m ) of asphalt pavement, 120,000 square feet (11,000 m ) of masonry, and 810,000 cubic feet (23,000 m ) of concrete. The structure is carried upon a steel-beam framework, which is encased in granite cladding. The roadway itself

1920-494: A DOT official had rated the viaduct as severely deteriorated, and trucks and buses were banned from the viaduct due to the poor conditions. Funding for repairs to the Manhattan Valley Viaduct and the 155th–161st streets viaduct were included in a $ 1.25 billion bond issue that was proposed in 1983, and New York state voters approved the bond issue that November. The same year, workers began replacing some of

2112-415: A centralized, secret research laboratory in a remote location. Theoretical physics The advancement of science generally depends on the interplay between experimental studies and theory . In some cases, theoretical physics adheres to standards of mathematical rigour while giving little weight to experiments and observations. For example, while developing special relativity , Albert Einstein

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2304-404: A certain economy and elegance (compare to mathematical beauty ), a notion sometimes called " Occam's razor " after the 13th-century English philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham), in which the simpler of two theories that describe the same matter just as adequately is preferred (but conceptual simplicity may mean mathematical complexity). They are also more likely to be accepted if they connect

2496-497: A claim that many local residents and architects denied. Conversely, the developer Charles V. Paterno predicted that the avenue would again become an upscale residential corridor because of its location and the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway and George Washington Bridge. Many row houses on Riverside Drive had been replaced with apartments by the 1930s. Manhattan borough president Hugo Rogers claimed in

2688-481: A close friendship with Linus Pauling ; they planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond , a field in which Pauling was a pioneer, with Oppenheimer supplying the mathematics and Pauling interpreting the results. The collaboration, and their friendship, ended after Oppenheimer invited Pauling's wife, Ava Helen Pauling , to join him on a tryst in Mexico. Oppenheimer later invited Pauling to be head of

2880-432: A cost of $ 7 million. The next year, borough president Julius Miller submitted plans to build a road, known as Riverside Drive West, between 155th and 177th streets for $ 2.791 million; this would serve as a bypass of the existing roadway. The project would require the construction of several high retaining walls west of Riverside Drive West. In addition, the land east of Riverside Drive West between 155th and 161st streets,

3072-560: A degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born . After research at other institutions, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley , where he was made a full professor in 1936. Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics , including

3264-636: A divorce and he agreed to it. On November 1, 1940, she obtained a quick divorce in Reno, Nevada , and married Oppenheimer. Their first child, Peter, was born in May 1941, and their second, Katherine ("Toni"), was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico , on December 7, 1944. During his marriage, Oppenheimer rekindled his affair with Tatlock. Later, their continued contact became an issue in his security clearance hearings because of Tatlock's communist associations. Throughout

3456-624: A file on Oppenheimer in March 1941. It recorded that he attended a meeting in December 1940 at Chevalier's home that was also attended by the Communist Party's California state secretary, William Schneiderman , and its treasurer, Isaac Folkoff . The FBI noted that Oppenheimer was on the executive committee of the American Civil Liberties Union , which it considered a communist front organization. Shortly thereafter,

3648-500: A form of protoscience and others are a form of pseudoscience . The falsification of the original theory sometimes leads to reformulation of the theory. "Thought" experiments are situations created in one's mind, asking a question akin to "suppose you are in this situation, assuming such is true, what would follow?". They are usually created to investigate phenomena that are not readily experienced in every-day situations. Famous examples of such thought experiments are Schrödinger's cat ,

3840-481: A former Communist Party member. Kitty's first marriage had lasted only a few months. Her second, common-law , husband from 1934 to 1937 was Joe Dallet , an active member of the Communist Party killed in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War . Kitty returned from Europe to the U.S., where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in botany from the University of Pennsylvania . In 1938 she married Richard Harrison,

4032-403: A further extension of Riverside Drive in 1908, saying the city lacked money. John F. Ahearn , Manhattan's borough president, began requesting bids for the construction of Riverside Drive from 158th Street to Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx , in March 1909. Amid disagreements over the extension's cost, a state judge placed an injunction to prevent Ahearn from awarding contracts for the extension. After

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4224-464: A future Nobel laureate. According to Oppenheimer's friend Francis Fergusson , Oppenheimer once confessed to leaving a poisoned apple on Blackett's desk, and Oppenheimer's parents convinced the university authorities not to expel him. There are no records of either a poisoning incident or probation, but Oppenheimer had regular sessions with a psychiatrist in Harley Street , London. Oppenheimer was

4416-403: A generation of physicists who admired him for his intellectual virtuosity and broad interests. His students and colleagues saw him as mesmerizing: hypnotic in private interaction, but often frigid in more public settings. His associates fell into two camps: one saw him as an aloof and impressive genius and aesthete, the other as a pretentious and insecure poseur. His students almost always fell into

4608-766: A good example. For instance: " phenomenologists " might employ ( semi- ) empirical formulas and heuristics to agree with experimental results, often without deep physical understanding . "Modelers" (also called "model-builders") often appear much like phenomenologists, but try to model speculative theories that have certain desirable features (rather than on experimental data), or apply the techniques of mathematical modeling to physics problems. Some attempt to create approximate theories, called effective theories , because fully developed theories may be regarded as unsolvable or too complicated . Other theorists may try to unify , formalise, reinterpret or generalise extant theories, or create completely new ones altogether. Sometimes

4800-526: A later Nobelist who, as a visiting scientist, worked with him at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1951, offered this opinion: He didn't have Sitzfleisch , "sitting flesh," when you sit on a chair. As far as I know, he never wrote a long paper or did a long calculation, anything of that kind. He didn't have patience for that; his own work consisted of little aperçus , but quite brilliant ones. But he inspired other people to do things, and his influence

4992-409: A median. A pedestrian path and a horse path would run alongside the avenue, and trees would provide shade along the route. A section of the avenue from 104th to 123rd Street would serve as a shaded promenade , and there would be a carriage turnaround at 123rd Street. Over the following years, work proceeded on Riverside Drive, with various ramps and stairs to the park, as well as a bridle path (which

5184-424: A member of the Communist Party but identified himself as a fellow traveler , which he defined as someone who agrees with many of communism's goals but is not willing to blindly follow orders from any Communist Party apparatus. According to biographer Ray Monk : "He was, in a very practical and real sense, a supporter of the Communist Party. Moreover, in terms of the time, effort and money spent on party activities, he

5376-498: A new branch of mathematics: infinite, orthogonal series . Modern theoretical physics attempts to unify theories and explain phenomena in further attempts to understand the Universe , from the cosmological to the elementary particle scale. Where experimentation cannot be done, theoretical physics still tries to advance through the use of mathematical models. Mainstream theories (sometimes referred to as central theories ) are

5568-902: A passage from the Gita at the memorial service of President Franklin Roosevelt in Los Alamos. He nicknamed his car Garuda , the mount bird of the Hindu god Vishnu . Oppenheimer never became a Hindu in the traditional sense; he did not join any temple nor pray to any god. He "was really taken by the charm and the general wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita," his brother said. It is speculated that Oppenheimer's interest in Hindu thought started during his earlier association with Niels Bohr . Both Bohr and Oppenheimer had been very analytical and critical about

5760-402: A pedestrian was killed near Grant's Tomb that year, the two-way roadways on either side of the monument were both converted to one-way traffic. Meanwhile, after the opening of the city's first subway line , the northern section of Riverside Drive was quickly developed with six-to-twelve-story apartment blocks. Numerous multi-story apartment buildings had been developed along Riverside Drive in

5952-575: A physician and medical researcher, and in June 1939 moved with him to Pasadena, California , where he became chief of radiology at a local hospital and she enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles . She and Oppenheimer created a minor scandal by sleeping together after one of Tolman's parties, and in the summer of 1940 she stayed with Oppenheimer at his ranch in New Mexico. When she became pregnant, Kitty asked Harrison for

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6144-856: A physicist. Their father was born in Hanau , when it was still part of the Hesse-Nassau province of the Kingdom of Prussia , and as a teenager made his way to the United States in 1888, without money, higher education, or even English. He was hired by a textile company and within a decade was an executive there, eventually becoming wealthy. In 1912, the family moved to an apartment on Riverside Drive near West 88th Street, Hudson Heights, New York , an area known for luxurious mansions and townhouses. Their art collection included works by Pablo Picasso , Édouard Vuillard , and Vincent van Gogh . Oppenheimer

6336-527: A position at Berkeley but was blocked by Birge, who felt that " one Jew in the department was enough ". Oppenheimer did important research in theoretical astronomy (especially as related to general relativity and nuclear theory), nuclear physics , spectroscopy , and quantum field theory , including its extension into quantum electrodynamics . The formal mathematics of relativistic quantum mechanics also attracted his attention, although he doubted its validity. His work predicted many later finds, including

6528-481: A property owner had successfully requested that a state judge place an injunction on the project. A few blocks north, families with plots in Trinity Church Cemetery complained that the new road was obstructing views of the Hudson River from their plots. The extension of Riverside Drive resulted in the development of upper-class apartment houses there. To pay for the construction of the extension,

6720-506: A psychologist and the wife of his friend Richard Tolman. The affair ended after Oppenheimer returned east to become director of the Institute for Advanced Study but, after Richard's death in August 1948, they reconnected and saw each other occasionally until Ruth's death in 1957. Few of their letters survive, but those that do reflect a close and affectionate relationship, with Oppenheimer calling her "My Love". Oppenheimer worked very hard [in

6912-567: A ramp from the bridge to the Henry Hudson Parkway opened in 1953. An alternate-side parking rule was implemented on the avenue in 1956; in conjunction with this change, 119 bus stops on Riverside Drive were relocated as well. Although alternate-side parking had already been implemented on other nearby streets, Riverside Drive was maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation , rather than

7104-706: A series of papers. In the first of these, "On the Stability of Stellar Neutron Cores" (1938), co-written with Serber, Oppenheimer explored the properties of white dwarfs . This was followed by a paper co-written with one of his students, George Volkoff , "On Massive Neutron Cores," which demonstrated that there was a limit, known as the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit , to the mass of stars beyond which they would not remain stable as neutron stars and would undergo gravitational collapse . In 1939, Oppenheimer and another of his students, Hartland Snyder , produced

7296-498: A ship floats by displacing its mass of water, Pythagoras understood the relation between the length of a vibrating string and the musical tone it produces. Other examples include entropy as a measure of the uncertainty regarding the positions and motions of unseen particles and the quantum mechanical idea that ( action and) energy are not continuously variable. Theoretical physics consists of several different approaches. In this regard, theoretical particle physics forms

7488-499: A short section of 72nd Street. By 2003, Riverside Boulevard ran from 66th to 72nd streets. The northbound lanes of the West Side Highway from 59th to 72nd streets were still planned to be relocated into a tunnel under Riverside Boulevard. In June 2006, Riverside South's developer began construction of the northbound tunnel. The first phase of the tunnel measured 45 feet (14 m) wide and 250 feet (76 m) long and

7680-435: A similar bill was proposed with a lower cost. The revised bill called for the avenue to be narrowed in the vicinity of Trinity Cemetery at 153rd Street. The governor of New York signed both bills in May 1897, but work on the viaduct was delayed for several months. That November, the city's Board of Street Opening and Improvement agreed to lengthen the viaduct slightly so that it ran from 122nd to 135th Street. The extension

7872-606: A solution, and he communicated his concern to the group. In its heyday, there were about eight or ten graduate students in his group and about six Post-doctoral Fellows. He met this group once a day in his office and discussed with one after another the status of the student's research problem. He was interested in everything, and in one afternoon they might discuss quantum electrodynamics, cosmic rays, electron pair production and nuclear physics. Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel Prize -winning experimental physicist Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping them understand

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8064-426: A southern extension of Riverside Drive as far south as 59th Street . Paul Willen, who had led one of the civic groups that opposed the original plan, had suggested extending Riverside Drive "to make such an abandoned lump of a place feel like New York again". The extension would also relieve traffic congestion on West End Avenue one block east. Trump's plans for the southern extension of Riverside Drive called for

8256-401: A tall, thin chain smoker , who often neglected to eat during periods of intense concentration. Many friends said he could be self-destructive. Fergusson once tried to distract Oppenheimer from apparent depression by telling him about his girlfriend, Frances Keeley, and how he had proposed to her. Oppenheimer did not take the news well. He jumped on Fergusson and tried to strangle him. Oppenheimer

8448-599: A task Oppenheimer threw himself into with full vigor. He was given the title "Coordinator of Rapid Rupture"; "rapid rupture" is a technical term that refers to the propagation of a fast neutron chain reaction in an atomic bomb. One of his first acts was to host a summer school for atomic bomb theory in Berkeley. The mix of European physicists and his own students—a group including Serber, Emil Konopinski , Felix Bloch , Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller—kept themselves busy by calculating what needed to be done, and in what order, to make

8640-469: A wide range of phenomena. Testing the consequences of a theory is part of the scientific method . Physical theories can be grouped into three categories: mainstream theories , proposed theories and fringe theories . Theoretical physics began at least 2,300 years ago, under the Pre-socratic philosophy , and continued by Plato and Aristotle , whose views held sway for a millennium. During

8832-644: A willingness to share him with Caltech. Before he began his Berkeley professorship, Oppenheimer was diagnosed with a mild case of tuberculosis and spent some weeks with his brother Frank at a New Mexico ranch, which he leased and eventually purchased. When he heard the ranch was available for lease, he exclaimed, "Hot dog!", and he later called it Perro Caliente ("hot dog" in Spanish). Later, he used to say that "physics and desert country" were his "two great loves". He recovered from tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley, where he prospered as an advisor and collaborator to

9024-427: Is 262 feet (80 m) long, while the southern approach is 218 feet (66 m) long. The approaches are of rock-faced Mohawk Valley limestone with Maine granite trimmings, the face work being made up of courses of ashlar . The southern approach consists of a semicircular wall with stone staircases on either side. This was intended to give a broad plaza effect, which was intended to impart deliberate grandeur to

9216-488: Is 5 feet (1.5 m) deep. The main span above 125th Street is supported by two plate girders measuring 130 by 10 by 8 feet (39.6 by 3.0 by 2.4 m) across, which were described as the world's largest steel girders at the time of the viaduct's completion. In total, about 400 girders are used to support the roadway. Including the approaches to the south and north, the viaduct has a total length of 2,044 feet (623 m) or 2,074 feet (632 m). The northern approach

9408-497: Is a model of physical events. It is judged by the extent to which its predictions agree with empirical observations. The quality of a physical theory is also judged on its ability to make new predictions which can be verified by new observations. A physical theory differs from a mathematical theorem in that while both are based on some form of axioms , judgment of mathematical applicability is not based on agreement with any experimental results. A physical theory similarly differs from

9600-518: Is a wide divided roadway. At several locations, a serpentine service road diverges from the main road, providing access to the residential buildings. Several viaducts connect the various segments of Riverside Drive, including the 2,047-foot (624 m) Manhattan Valley Viaduct between Tiemann Place and 135th Street. A disconnected section of Riverside Drive exists in Inwood, Manhattan . The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated

9792-457: Is curved because its original designer, Frederick Law Olmsted , did not like sharp corners. A narrow service road diverges from Riverside Drive at several points, creating traffic islands. For a short stretch near 122nd Street, the avenue splits into two roadways, one each to the west and east of Grant's Tomb ; the western roadway carries southbound traffic, while the eastern roadway carries northbound traffic. There are several viaducts along

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9984-472: Is divided into 26 bays , each comprising a single span. Twenty-two of the spans are 65 feet (20 m) long; one of the spans, crossing 125th Street, is 128 feet (39 m) long; and the three northernmost spans are of irregular length. Each arch is composed of latticed plate girders measuring 3 feet (0.91 m) long. Under the roadway are 60-foot-wide (18 m) transverse steel girders, which were built in several pieces and riveted together; each girder

10176-413: Is made of concrete slabs, paved over with asphalt. The arches under the roadway are infilled with granite or paneled concrete and are topped by metal-framed windows. The roadway itself has granite balustrades with ornamental lampposts. There is about 77,000 square feet (7,200 m ) of storage space under the viaduct. In the mid-20th century, the space was used to store thousands of plaster casts owned by

10368-546: Is part of a New York City historic district, and the buildings on these blocks date from before World War II. The eastern side of Riverside Drive originally included luxuriously finished rowhouses interspersed with free-standing mansions , though few of the mansions remain. Many of Riverside Drive's apartment buildings date from between the 1900s and the 1930s, with curving facades along the avenue; some of these buildings are designated as city landmarks. Along Riverside Drive, there are also numerous monuments such as Grant's Tomb and

10560-523: Is the Manhattan Valley Viaduct, which carries Riverside Drive above 12th Avenue. Built in 1901, it is variously called the 125th Street Viaduct or Riverside Drive Viaduct. Murray Roe designed the Manhattan Valley Viaduct, while Francis Stuart Williamson was the chief engineer. Despite the structure's utilitarian role as a highway, it was also a strong symbol of civic pride, inspired by America's late 19th-century City Beautiful movement . The viaduct's original roadway, wide pedestrian walks and overall design

10752-524: The A train serves the disconnected northern section of Riverside Drive in Inwood. The 191 acres (0.77 km ) of land in what is now Riverside Park between 72nd and 125th streets were originally inhabited by the Lenape people, but by the 18th century were used for farms by the descendants of European colonists. A small number of buildings were constructed nearby in the mid-19th century, including

10944-648: The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike , he and some of his students, including Melba Phillips and Serber, attended a longshoremen 's rally. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Oppenheimer hosted fundraisers for the Spanish Republican cause. In 1939, he joined the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, which campaigned against the persecution of Jewish scientists in Nazi Germany. Like most liberal groups of

11136-531: The Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions ; work on the theory of positrons , quantum electrodynamics , and quantum field theory ; and the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion . With his students, he also made major contributions to astrophysics , including the theory of cosmic ray showers, and the theory of neutron stars and black holes . In 1942, Oppenheimer

11328-495: The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), but Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev state that he "was, in fact, a concealed member of the CPUSA in the late 1930s". From 1937 to 1942, Oppenheimer was a member at Berkeley of what he called a "discussion group", which fellow members Haakon Chevalier and Gordon Griffiths later said was a "closed" (secret) unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened

11520-539: The EPR thought experiment , simple illustrations of time dilation , and so on. These usually lead to real experiments designed to verify that the conclusion (and therefore the assumptions) of the thought experiments are correct. The EPR thought experiment led to the Bell inequalities , which were then tested to various degrees of rigor , leading to the acceptance of the current formulation of quantum mechanics and probabilism as

11712-497: The Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation . In 2022, the U.S. government vacated the 1954 revocation of his security clearance. Oppenheimer was born Julius Robert Oppenheimer into a non-observant Jewish family in New York City on April 22, 1904, to Ella (née Friedman), a painter, and Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer, a successful textile importer. Robert had a younger brother, Frank , who also became

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11904-502: The Gita as one of the books that most shaped his philosophy of life. He wrote to his brother that the Gita was "very easy and quite marvelous". He later called it "the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue", and gave copies of it as presents to his friends and kept a personal, worn-out copy on the bookshelf by his desk. He kept referring to it while directing the Los Alamos Laboratory, and quoted

12096-443: The Henry Hudson Parkway ; as such, there is a gap in the road between 181st Street and Dyckman Street . A disconnected section of Riverside Drive begins at the Henry Hudson Parkway's Dyckman Street exit in Inwood , ending at Broadway . South of 72nd Street, Riverside Drive continues as Riverside Boulevard, which extends south to 59th Street . A small bridge carries Riverside Drive over 96th Street. The bridge, also known as

12288-472: The Hudson River to the west, often drifted across to Riverside Drive. In January 1897, state lawmakers proposed extending Riverside Drive northward to the Boulevard Lafayette, with a viaduct above Manhattan Valley from 122nd to 134th Street. The original plans, which were to cost $ 10 million and included four viaducts, were quickly downsized to $ 2 million and one viaduct. Shortly afterward,

12480-563: The K-edge . His calculations accorded with observations of the X-ray absorption of the Sun, but not helium. Years later, it was realized that the Sun was largely composed of hydrogen and that his calculations were correct. Oppenheimer made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers. He also worked on the problem of field electron emission . This work contributed to the development of

12672-566: The Lamb shift , for which Lamb was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1955. With Melba Phillips , the first graduate student to begin her PhD under Oppenheimer's supervision, Oppenheimer worked on calculations of artificial radioactivity under bombardment by deuterons . When Ernest Lawrence and Edwin McMillan bombarded nuclei with deuterons they found the results agreed closely with

12864-589: The Metropolitan Museum of Art . Riverside Drive is served by several bus routes. New York City Bus 's M5 route covers Riverside Drive south of 135th Street, while the M11 serves the avenue from 135th to 145th Street. The Bx6 and Bx6 SBS serve Riverside Drive East and Riverside Drive West, terminating at 158th Street. The westbound M72 runs on Riverside Boulevard from 70th to 66th streets; eastbound buses use Freedom Place. Because Riverside Drive and

13056-461: The New York City Department of Sanitation , and had been exempt from the rule. The city government began reconstructing the viaduct from 153rd to 155th streets in March 1959; the project involved increasing the roadway's width from 45 to 59 feet (14 to 18 m), replacing the steel frame, and constructing new sidewalks. Reconstruction was supposed to have been completed in September 1959, but

13248-787: The New York Orphan Asylum between 73rd and 74th streets. In 1846, the Hudson River Railroad (later the West Side Line and Hudson Line ) was built along the waterfront, connecting New York City to Albany. As late as the 1860s, the adjacent section of the Upper West Side was still sparsely populated, even though there was residential development on the Upper East Side. In 1865, Central Park commissioner William R. Martin put forth

13440-572: The Scientific Revolution gathered pace, the concepts of matter , energy, space, time and causality slowly began to acquire the form we know today, and other sciences spun off from the rubric of natural philosophy . Thus began the modern era of theory with the Copernican paradigm shift in astronomy, soon followed by Johannes Kepler 's expressions for planetary orbits, which summarized the meticulous observations of Tycho Brahe ;

13632-730: The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument , in addition to other structures such as Riverside Church . Riverside Drive has received commentary for its landscape features and architecture, and it has been depicted in works of popular media. Starting at 72nd Street , Riverside Drive passes through the Manhattan neighborhoods of the Upper West Side , Morningside Heights , Manhattanville , Hamilton Heights , and Washington Heights . Commercial vehicles are banned from parts of Riverside Drive. Unlike other avenues in Manhattan, Riverside Drive

13824-589: The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum . Oppenheimer respected and liked Pauli and may have emulated his personal style as well as his critical approach to problems. On returning to the United States, Oppenheimer accepted an associate professorship from the University of California, Berkeley , where Raymond T. Birge wanted him so badly that he expressed

14016-549: The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , to date the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the new United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He lobbied for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and

14208-404: The neutron , meson and neutron star . Initially, his major interest was the theory of the continuous spectrum. His first published paper, in 1926, concerned the quantum theory of molecular band spectra. He developed a method to carry out calculations of its transition probabilities . He calculated the photoelectric effect for hydrogen and X-rays , obtaining the absorption coefficient at

14400-513: The positron . This was after a paper by Dirac proposed that electrons could have both a positive charge and negative energy. Dirac's paper introduced an equation, later known as the Dirac equation , that unified quantum mechanics, special relativity and the then-new concept of electron spin , to explain the Zeeman effect . Drawing on the body of experimental evidence, Oppenheimer rejected the idea that

14592-461: The two-fluid theory of electricity are two cases in this point. However, an exception to all the above is the wave–particle duality , a theory combining aspects of different, opposing models via the Bohr complementarity principle . Physical theories become accepted if they are able to make correct predictions and no (or few) incorrect ones. The theory should have, at least as a secondary objective,

14784-665: The 1920s, Oppenheimer remained uninformed on world affairs. He claimed that he did not read newspapers or popular magazines and only learned of the Wall Street crash of 1929 while he was on a walk with Ernest Lawrence six months after the crash occurred. He once remarked that he never cast a vote until the 1936 presidential election . From 1934 on, he became increasingly concerned about politics and international affairs. In 1934, he earmarked three percent of his annual salary—about $ 100 (equivalent to $ 2,300 in 2023)—for two years to support German physicists fleeing Nazi Germany . During

14976-633: The 1920s. For instance, city controller Charles L. Craig wanted the Board of Estimate to build a parallel roadway above the West Side Line, and one local organization requested that the avenue's sparsely-used bridle path be converted into a children's play area. The Manhattan Valley Viaduct was closed for repairs in 1923. In addition, to increase traffic flow on Riverside Drive, the city government retimed some traffic lights in 1928, allowing motorists to pass through several green lights at once . Near

15168-438: The 1930s. The city's police commissioner began allowing motorists to turn left on red at several intersections along Riverside Drive in 1937. In addition, concrete curbs were installed along the Manhattan Valley Viaduct in the late 1930s to reduce the probability of motorists falling off the viaduct. By this decade, the architect Henry Wright had claimed that the buildings around Riverside Drive were "slums or potential slums",

15360-422: The 1940s that some of the Manhattan Valley Viaduct's steel plates needed to be replaced. The section of Riverside Drive from 72nd to 79th streets was temporarily converted into a northbound-only road in 1951, and parking between 72nd and 96th streets was restricted, due to repairs on the Henry Hudson Parkway. In addition, to eliminate a longstanding bottleneck along Riverside Drive near the George Washington Bridge,

15552-429: The 19th century. Another important event in the 19th century was the discovery of electromagnetic theory , unifying the previously separate phenomena of electricity, magnetism and light. The pillars of modern physics , and perhaps the most revolutionary theories in the history of physics, have been relativity theory and quantum mechanics . Newtonian mechanics was subsumed under special relativity and Newton's gravity

15744-423: The Boulevard Lafayette to be renamed Riverside Drive. The city planned to acquire land to widen the section of the Boulevard Lafayette (then renamed Riverside Drive) between 158th and 165th streets in 1907, but the city's controller objected to the $ 1 million valuation placed on the land. By mid-1908, Riverside Drive was complete to 155th Street, except for a single city block between 151st and 152nd streets, where

15936-473: The Boulevard Lafayette. By August 1901, plans for section 1 had been completed, with that section estimated to cost $ 1.7 million. The extension would consist of a 60-foot-wide (18 m) roadway, a 20-foot-wide (6.1 m) bridle path, two sidewalks, and grass planting strips. There were also to be four bridges carrying the avenue between 135th and 156th streets. Along with the Boulevard Lafayette (which already extended northwest from Broadway and 156th Street to

16128-623: The Chemistry Division of the Manhattan Project , but Pauling refused, saying he was a pacifist. In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited Paul Ehrenfest 's institute at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he impressed by giving lectures in Dutch, despite having little experience with the language. There, he was given the nickname of Opje , later anglicized by his students as "Oppie". From Leiden, he continued on to

16320-476: The Dutchmen Snell and Huygens. In the 18th and 19th centuries Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Leonhard Euler and William Rowan Hamilton would extend the theory of classical mechanics considerably. They picked up the interactive intertwining of mathematics and physics begun two millennia earlier by Pythagoras. Among the great conceptual achievements of the 19th and 20th centuries were the consolidation of

16512-587: The Earth ) or may be an alternative model that provides answers that are more accurate or that can be more widely applied. In the latter case, a correspondence principle will be required to recover the previously known result . Sometimes though, advances may proceed along different paths. For example, an essentially correct theory may need some conceptual or factual revisions; atomic theory , first postulated millennia ago (by several thinkers in Greece and India ) and

16704-546: The English gardening ideal, creating the appearance that the park was an extension of the Hudson River Valley. A parapet was built on the western side of the road, separating it from Riverside Park and the West Side Line. The northernmost section of Riverside Drive, north of 158th Street, was originally known as the Boulevard Lafayette. The southern terminus of the Boulevard Lafayette was near 155th Street ;

16896-624: The FBI added Oppenheimer to its Custodial Detention Index , for arrest in case of national emergency. When he joined the Manhattan Project in 1942, Oppenheimer wrote on his personal security questionnaire that he had been "a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast ." Years later, he claimed that he did not remember writing this, that it was not true, and that if he had written anything along those lines, it

17088-455: The George Washington Bridge and Dyckman Street was incorporated into the northbound roadway of Henry Hudson Parkway. A parallel southbound roadway for the Henry Hudson Parkway was built between these two points. When it opened in January 1938, the section of Riverside Drive between these two points was converted to a northbound-only road. Other changes along Riverside Drive took place during

17280-407: The Hindu classics and the more esoteric Western writers. Pauli once remarked to me that Oppenheimer seemed to treat physics as an avocation and psychoanalysis as a vocation. — Isidor Isaac Rabi Oppenheimer's diverse interests sometimes interrupted his focus on science. He liked things that were difficult and since much of the scientific work appeared easy for him, he developed an interest in

17472-557: The Inwood neighborhood ), the Riverside Drive extension would form part of a 20-mile (32 km) parkway that would connect with Harlem River Drive . Construction did not start for over two years after the city acquired land for the Riverside Drive extension. In the meantime, dirt from the excavation of the city's first subway line was dumped on the path of the extension. A state judge ruled in April 1903 that construction of

17664-456: The Manhattan Valley Viaduct and partially reopening it. The project involved replacing most of the viaduct's superstructure , in addition to replacing the existing deck with a lightweight concrete deck. The Manhattan Valley Viaduct fully reopened in July 1987, having cost $ 36 million in total to renovate. Further north, portions of Riverside Drive in Hamilton Heights collapsed in 1986 following

17856-480: The Manhattan Valley Viaduct in mid-1899, and three commissioners were appointed to condemn the land the next year. The city acquired the land in September 1900. Most of the condemned sites had been small plots, except for a tract between 142nd and 144th streets that had belonged to the Hoguet family. The project was split into two phases, section 1 between 135th and 153rd streets, and section 2 between 153rd Street and

18048-415: The P. T. Cox Construction Co. was hired to provide 5,000 short tons (4,500 long tons; 4,500 t) of structural steel for the viaduct. Later that year, a state judge determined that it would cost $ 3.3 million to acquire land for a northward extension of Riverside Drive. The viaduct was opened on November 28, 1928, having cost $ 2.36 million. Other improvements along Riverside Drive were also undertaken in

18240-583: The Riverside Bridge, was designed by Carrère and Hastings . When this overpass was built, it was described as a viaduct with buttresses and stone terraces leading down to Riverside Park and the Hudson River. Semicircular shelters were also built next to the viaduct on either side of 96th Street. Although the overpass is clad with stone, its superstructure is made of steel. As built, it had four elaborate electric lampposts, each measuring 15 feet (4.6 m) high. Between Tiemann Place and 135th Street

18432-455: The Riverside Drive and Parkway Commission proposed charging local residents $ 1.5 million, though the high cost was controversial. The section between 145th and 158th streets formally opened in February 1911. John C. Rodgers, who helped build the section from 145th to 158th streets, later sued the city for delaying the road's completion by four years; the suit was not resolved until 1930. By

18624-412: The Riverside Drive extension had to start as soon as possible, and a groundbreaking ceremony for the extension occurred on December 12, 1903. The section from 135th to 145th Street was awarded to Ryan & Parker, while the section from 145th to 155th Street was awarded to John C. Rodgers; work on both sections began in May 1904. The section of Riverside Drive north of 150th Street was much higher than

18816-638: The United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb . On October 21, Ernest Lawrence brought Oppenheimer into what became the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was assigned to take over the project's specific bomb-design research by Arthur Compton at the Metallurgical Laboratory . On May 18, 1942, National Defense Research Committee Chairman James B. Conant , who had been one of Oppenheimer's lecturers at Harvard, asked Oppenheimer to take over work on fast neutron calculations,

19008-451: The Upper West Side by the early 1910s, and even more apartment buildings were built on the avenue after World War I, replacing lower-density development. By 1917, the city government had tentatively agreed to rebuild Riverside Park west of Riverside Drive. Local residents had opposed earlier proposals for the park, saying that noise and disruptions from the construction project would compel many Riverside Drive residents to relocate. In 1919,

19200-504: The West Side Highway was deferred due to political opposition. The approved plans called for Riverside Drive's extension to be built atop a viaduct, but in October 1997, several civic groups sued Trump after he reneged on the viaduct plans. By 1999, the Riverside Drive extension was known as Riverside Boulevard . Due to a lack of available space, Riverside Boulevard and Riverside Drive are not directly linked; they are instead connected by

19392-862: The ancient Hindu mythological stories and the metaphysics embedded in them. In one conversation with David Hawkins before the war, while talking about the literature of ancient Greece , Oppenheimer remarked, "I have read the Greeks; I find the Hindus deeper." During the 1930s, while teaching at Berkeley, Oppenheimer became part of a group in the Bay Area that psychologist Siegfried Bernfeld convened to discuss psychoanalysis . His close confidant and colleague Isidor Isaac Rabi , who had seen Oppenheimer throughout his Berkeley, Los Alamos, and Princeton years, wondering "why men of Oppenheimer's gifts do not discover everything worth discovering", reflected that: Oppenheimer

19584-399: The apartment buildings on Riverside Drive started to deteriorate and were changed to single-room occupancy structures. White residents moved out of these buildings, and black and Hispanic residents moved in. The road was also frequently used as an alternate route to the Henry Hudson Parkway after that highway was completed. As part of a pilot program in 1930, the city government retimed

19776-419: The applications of relativity to problems in astronomy and cosmology respectively . All of these achievements depended on the theoretical physics as a moving force both to suggest experiments and to consolidate results — often by ingenious application of existing mathematics, or, as in the case of Descartes and Newton (with Leibniz ), by inventing new mathematics. Fourier's studies of heat conduction led to

19968-409: The avenue to run down the middle of the development. The 1991 plan also called for office and apartment buildings on the newly extended avenue, similar in height to the existing buildings on Riverside Drive, although these buildings were later increased in size. The boulevard would run above a relocated West Side Highway , functioning as a service road to that expressway; the proposal to relocate

20160-619: The avenue's bridle path was usable. The wealthy came to settle on Riverside Drive soon after its completion. The Phillips Elite Directory of 1882–1883 did not list any members of the social elite as living on the Avenue, but the 1887 version of the same directory listed 18 families as living on the avenue. The avenue largely attracted the nouveau riche ; the city's wealthiest residents continued to live on Fifth Avenue, while old money families tended to live further downtown. Charles M. Schwab , who built his mansion between 73rd and 74th streets,

20352-514: The body of knowledge of both factual and scientific views and possess a usual scientific quality of the tests of repeatability, consistency with existing well-established science and experimentation. There do exist mainstream theories that are generally accepted theories based solely upon their effects explaining a wide variety of data, although the detection, explanation, and possible composition are subjects of debate. The proposed theories of physics are usually relatively new theories which deal with

20544-632: The bomb. In June 1942, the U.S. Army established the Manhattan Engineer District to handle its part in the atom bomb project, beginning the process of transferring responsibility from the Office of Scientific Research and Development to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. , was appointed director of what became known as the Manhattan Project. By October 12, 1942, Groves and Oppenheimer had decided that for security and cohesion, they needed to establish

20736-510: The city agreed to spend only $ 250,000 on the extension in 1909, the Board of Estimate began requesting bids that May for the construction of Riverside Drive between 158th and 181st streets. The Municipal Art Commission approved designs for the extension that July. Josiah A. Briggs, the chief engineer for the Bronx , proposed extending Riverside Drive all the way to Van Cortlandt Park in Riverdale, Bronx . Due to high amounts of traffic over

20928-467: The city controller proposed extending Riverside Drive south to 57th Street by building a roadway above the West Side Line. The roadway between 135th and 158th streets was replaced with a permanent pavement in 1920. The New York City Board of Estimate voted down a resolution in 1921 to build a parallel roadway to Riverside Drive between 155th and 175th streets, within Hamilton Heights , at

21120-403: The city of Troy . The section of Riverside Drive between 165th and Dyckman streets was renovated for $ 1.25 million starting in 1924, and the road reopened in May 1925. Workers installed new plantings and repaved the road. The roadway was also widened by 18 feet (5.5 m), requiring the construction of retaining walls as much as 150 feet (46 m) tall, and a wide sidewalk was built on

21312-501: The concept of quantum tunneling . In 1931, he co-wrote a paper, "Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect," with his student Harvey Hall, in which, based on empirical evidence, he correctly disputed Paul Dirac's assertion that two of the energy levels of the hydrogen atom have the same energy. Subsequently, one of his doctoral students, Willis Lamb , determined that this was a consequence of what became known as

21504-432: The contractor was taking too long. The Manhattan Valley Viaduct was completed in mid-1902. The construction of the 96th Street overpass and Manhattan Valley Viaduct caused real-estate prices along Riverside Drive to increase in the 1900s. Arc lamps were installed on the Manhattan Valley Viaduct in 1903, soon after it opened. The city's corporation council began condemning land for the extension of Riverside Drive north of

21696-425: The cost; the city's comptroller opposed the change. The next month, the city authorized $ 86,500 in bonds to finance an overpass above 96th Street and $ 500,000 in bonds for the Manhattan Valley Viaduct. The city's park commissioners began soliciting bids for the 96th Street overpass in June 1900 and awarded a contract the next month to A. C. Gildersleeve for $ 200,000. Work on the 96th Street overpass began later

21888-513: The data that their machines were producing at Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory, which eventually developed into today's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory . In 1936, Berkeley promoted him to full professor at an annual salary of $ 3,300 (equivalent to $ 72,000 in 2023). In return, he was asked to curtail his teaching at Caltech, so a compromise was reached whereby Berkeley released him for six weeks each year, enough to teach one term at Caltech. Oppenheimer repeatedly attempted to get Robert Serber

22080-432: The decade. In the 1980s, the developer Donald Trump , who owned 57 acres (230,000 m ) of a Penn Central freight rail yard south of Riverside Park, proposed a large real estate development project. Following financial difficulties and opposition from local civic groups, Trump announced a modified plan in 1991. Under the agreed-upon plan, Trump would expand Riverside Park by 23 acres (93,000 m ) and construct

22272-450: The delay caused by his illness, he took six courses each term instead of the usual four. He was admitted to the undergraduate honor society Phi Beta Kappa and was granted graduate standing in physics on the basis of independent study, allowing him to bypass basic courses in favor of advanced ones. He was attracted to experimental physics by a course on thermodynamics taught by Percy Bridgman . Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925 with

22464-427: The designers of Riverside Park followed, and in 1873 the commissioners selected Frederick Law Olmsted , a park commissioner who had also designed Central Park. Initially, Riverside Drive had been planned to run in a straight line, which would have required a retaining wall and extensive fill. By then, the difficult topography of the area had come to the attention of the Manhattan park commissioners, and in 1873 Olmsted

22656-514: The development of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was under investigation by both the FBI and the Manhattan Project's internal security arm for his past left-wing associations. He was followed by Army security agents during a trip to California in June 1943 to visit Tatlock, who was suffering from depression . Oppenheimer spent the night in her apartment. Tatlock killed herself on January 4, 1944, leaving Oppenheimer deeply grieved. At Los Alamos , Oppenheimer began an emotional affair with Ruth Tolman ,

22848-406: The east. Olmsted and Arnold W. Brunner recommended in 1913 that Riverside Drive be extended north to the Bronx , with a new viaduct connecting 155th Street and the Boulevard Lafayette. Work north of 155th Street had not started. Workers began adding a permanent pavement to the avenue between 72nd and 110th streets in 1913, and upgrades to the section from 110th to 128th street began in 1915. After

23040-419: The era, the committee was later branded a communist front. Many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Kitty, Jean Tatlock , his landlady Mary Ellen Washburn, and several of his graduate students at Berkeley. Whether Oppenheimer was a party member has been debated. Cassidy states that he never openly joined

23232-486: The first proposal for a riverside park along the Hudson River . An act providing for such was presented to the Legislature by commissioner Andrew Haswell Green in 1866 and approved the next year. The first segment of Riverside Park was acquired through condemnation in 1872. The park also included the construction of Riverside Drive, a tree-lined drive curving around the valleys and rock outcroppings, overlooking

23424-403: The former category, adopting his walk, speech, and other mannerisms, and even his inclination for reading entire texts in their original languages. Hans Bethe said of him: Probably the most important ingredient he brought to his teaching was his exquisite taste. He always knew what were the important problems, as shown by his choice of subjects. He truly lived with those problems, struggling for

23616-446: The future park and the waterfront. The road was originally known as Riverside Avenue, although the entire avenue was renamed Riverside Drive by the 1900s. The avenue was laid out in 1868 and was 100 feet (30 m) wide for its entire length. The plans for Riverside Park and Avenue brought the attention of William M. Tweed , who bought several lots adjacent to the park in anticipation of its construction. A selection process for

23808-416: The highest order, writing Principia Mathematica . In it contained a grand synthesis of the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler; as well as Newton's theories of mechanics and gravitation, which held sway as worldviews until the early 20th century. Simultaneously, progress was also made in optics (in particular colour theory and the ancient science of geometrical optics ), courtesy of Newton, Descartes and

24000-455: The idea of energy (as well as its global conservation) by the inclusion of heat , electricity and magnetism , and then light . The laws of thermodynamics , and most importantly the introduction of the singular concept of entropy began to provide a macroscopic explanation for the properties of matter. Statistical mechanics (followed by statistical physics and Quantum statistical mechanics ) emerged as an offshoot of thermodynamics late in

24192-468: The increases in traffic on the avenue, prompted several residents to form an organization to protest congestion on Riverside Drive. In response, the adjacent section of Henry Hudson Parkway was partly reopened as a reversible lane in September 1974, but this failed to decrease congestion on Riverside Drive. In addition, double-decker buses began running on the M5 route along Riverside Drive in 1976, requiring

24384-675: The late 1920s. In the aftermath of World War 2, more progress brought much renewed interest in QFT, which had since the early efforts, stagnated. The same period also saw fresh attacks on the problems of superconductivity and phase transitions, as well as the first applications of QFT in the area of theoretical condensed matter. The 1960s and 70s saw the formulation of the Standard model of particle physics using QFT and progress in condensed matter physics (theoretical foundations of superconductivity and critical phenomena , among others ), in parallel to

24576-424: The late 19th and early 20th century. By the end of the 19th century, nearly every lot on the eastern side of Riverside Drive had been developed with private mansions and apartment buildings. By comparison, there had been fewer than 10 houses between 72nd and 125th streets on the shoreline before construction of the avenue began. One publication described Riverside Drive as "one of the most beautiful and picturesque in

24768-560: The mathematical treatment of molecules, allowing nuclear motion to be neglected to simplify calculations. It remains his most cited work. Oppenheimer was awarded a United States National Research Council fellowship to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in September 1927. Bridgman also wanted him at Harvard, so a compromise was reached whereby he split his fellowship for the 1927–28 academic year between Harvard in 1927 and Caltech in 1928. At Caltech, he struck up

24960-481: The mid-1900s, engineers were considering extending Riverside Drive further north from 158th Street to the proposed Henry Hudson Bridge , as well as southeast from 72nd Street to West End Avenue . The New York Times estimated that the northward extension would cost $ 4.8 million, and the New-York Tribune estimated the total cost of Riverside Drive at $ 25.2 million. The Board of Estimate declined to fund

25152-476: The mystical and the cryptic. After going to Harvard, he began to acquaint himself with the classical Hindu texts through their English translations. He also had an interest in learning languages and learned Sanskrit , under Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley in 1933. He eventually read literary works such as the Bhagavad Gita and Meghaduta in the original Sanskrit, and deeply pondered them. He later cited

25344-405: The natural terminus of much of Riverside Drive's traffic as well as to give full advantage to the vista overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey Palisades to the west. There is also a single masonry arch with a glazed-brick vault next to the southern approach. Another viaduct carries Riverside Drive between 155th and 161st streets. This viaduct is 0.25 miles (0.40 km) long and carries

25536-444: The neighboring Riverside Park are designated as a New York City scenic landmark from 72nd to 125th streets, the western sidewalk between these streets does not have any bus stop shelters . There is no New York City Subway service along Riverside Drive, though the 1 , ​ 2 , and ​ 3 trains run on the parallel Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line for much of the avenue's length. The Dyckman Street station on

25728-418: The northern end of the avenue, there were proposals for ramps to and from the then-new George Washington Bridge ; these ramps opened along with the bridge in 1931. Many luxury apartments continued to be developed on Riverside Drive in the 1920s and 1930s; however, upper-class residents were also starting to move away, and lower- and middle-class renters began to move in. During the mid-20th century, many of

25920-474: The oral exam, James Franck , the professor administering it, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me ." Oppenheimer published more than a dozen papers while in Europe, including many important contributions to the new field of quantum mechanics. He and Born published a famous paper on the Born–Oppenheimer approximation , which separates nuclear motion from electronic motion in

26112-535: The original section of Riverside Drive, between 72nd and 125th streets, as part of a scenic landmark that also includes Riverside Park. Riverside Drive was proposed as part of Riverside Park, which was established by land condemnation in 1872. Originally known as Riverside Avenue, the road opened in 1880 and originally ran between 72nd Street and the current site of Grant's Tomb . The park and avenue were originally designed by architects and horticulturalists such as Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons . Riverside Drive

26304-471: The paper " On Continued Gravitational Contraction ", which predicted the existence of what later became termed black holes . After the Born–Oppenheimer approximation paper, these papers remain his most cited, and were key factors in the rejuvenation of astrophysical research in the United States in the 1950s, mainly by John A. Wheeler . Oppenheimer's papers were considered difficult to understand even by

26496-516: The predicted positively charged electrons were protons . He argued that they would have to have the same mass as an electron, whereas experiments showed that protons were much heavier than electrons. Two years later, Carl David Anderson discovered the positron, for which he received the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the late 1930s, Oppenheimer became interested in astrophysics , most likely through his friendship with Richard Tolman , resulting in

26688-401: The predictions of George Gamow , but when higher energies and heavier nuclei were involved, the results did not conform to the predictions. In 1935, Oppenheimer and Phillips worked out a theory—subsequently known as the Oppenheimer–Phillips process —to explain the results. This theory is still in use today. As early as 1930, Oppenheimer wrote a paper that essentially predicted the existence of

26880-419: The process of becoming established and some proposed theories. It can include speculative sciences. This includes physics fields and physical theories presented in accordance with known evidence, and a body of associated predictions have been made according to that theory. Some fringe theories go on to become a widely accepted part of physics. Other fringe theories end up being disproven. Some fringe theories are

27072-580: The project because it would require the removal of trees in the median, so the DOT decided instead to retain all but eight of the trees. Work began in 1992. The sidewalks from 135th to 153rd streets were also rebuilt. to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA); at the time, some of the sidewalks had a slope of 6%, three times the maximum slope allowed under the ADA. As a result, 20 buildings along

27264-498: The qualities of the born leader who seems to have reserves of uncommitted strength. In spite of this, observers such as physicists Luis Alvarez and Jeremy Bernstein have suggested that if Oppenheimer had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, he might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse , concerning neutron stars and black holes. In retrospect, some physicists and historians consider this his most important contribution, though it

27456-529: The relocation of several traffic lights and wires, as well as the removal of tree limbs. In February 1980, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the portion of Riverside Park and Drive south of 125th Street as a New York City scenic landmark . Another renovation project for the Manhattan Valley Viaduct was scheduled in 1981, at which point the project was to cost $ 27 million. By then,

27648-405: The renovation was completed. When the George Washington Bridge's lower level opened in 1962, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) considered retiming the avenue's traffic lights to allow for smoother traffic flow. A progressive-traffic-signal system was implemented in October 1962. During the morning, the traffic lights were timed for southbound traffic, while during the evening,

27840-607: The rise of medieval universities , the only acknowledged intellectual disciplines were the seven liberal arts of the Trivium like grammar , logic , and rhetoric and of the Quadrivium like arithmetic , geometry , music and astronomy . During the Middle Ages and Renaissance , the concept of experimental science, the counterpoint to theory, began with scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham and Francis Bacon . As

28032-407: The road ran along the coast of the Hudson River, running north to the intersection of Broadway (then known as Kingsbridge Road) and Dyckman Street . Originally known simply as "The Boulevard", the road was renamed the Boulevard Lafayette in 1870; work on that road began in 1873. Although a right-of-way measuring 100 feet (30 m) wide was provided for the Boulevard Lafayette, the roadway itself

28224-479: The route of Riverside Drive, including at 96th Street on the Upper West Side; between Tiemann Place and 135th Street in Manhattanville; and between 155th and 161st streets in Hamilton Heights. The street atop the viaduct in Hamilton Heights is officially named Riverside Drive West, while the original Riverside Drive curves inland. North of 181st Street, Riverside Drive merges with the northbound lanes of

28416-440: The same year. Meanwhile, the abutments for the Manhattan Valley Viaduct were finished by mid-1900. The chief engineer of the city's highways departments reported in April 1901 that the Manhattan Valley Viaduct was completed except for filling and electrical work. Work on the 96th Street overpass was delayed for two months due to difficulties in installing sewage pipes; the overpass opened in January 1902 following complaints that

28608-400: The spring of 1929] but had a gift of concealing his assiduous application with an air of easy nonchalance. Actually, he was engaged in a very difficult calculation of the opacity of surfaces of stars to their internal radiation, an important constant in the theoretical construction of stellar models. He spoke little of these problems and seemed to be much more interested in literature, especially

28800-480: The standards of the abstract topics he was expert in. He was fond of using elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles, though he was sometimes criticized for making mathematical mistakes, presumably out of haste. "His physics was good", said his student Snyder, "but his arithmetic awful." After World War II , Oppenheimer published only five scientific papers, one of them in biophysics, and none after 1950. Murray Gell-Mann ,

28992-493: The street had to build stairways to their entrances, and Manhattan Community Board 9 requested that the LPC protect the northern portion of the street. In the late 1990s, local groups restored two traffic islands on Riverside Drive, and the DOT hired a contractor to restore the viaduct in Hamilton Heights. By then, the values of apartments on the southern portion of Riverside Drive had increased significantly compared with earlier in

29184-517: The streets that it intersected, prompting residents of these cross-streets to complain that their vehicles could not access Riverside Drive. The plans also included widening the Boulevard Lafayette within the Washington Heights neighborhood and constructing a service road to the east of the existing boulevard. Because people frequently referred to the Boulevard Lafayette by several incorrect names, residents of Washington Heights also wanted

29376-484: The study of physics which include scientific approaches, means for determining the validity of models and new types of reasoning used to arrive at the theory. However, some proposed theories include theories that have been around for decades and have eluded methods of discovery and testing. Proposed theories can include fringe theories in the process of becoming established (and, sometimes, gaining wider acceptance). Proposed theories usually have not been tested. In addition to

29568-472: The theories like those listed below, there are also different interpretations of quantum mechanics , which may or may not be considered different theories since it is debatable whether they yield different predictions for physical experiments, even in principle. For example, AdS/CFT correspondence , Chern–Simons theory , graviton , magnetic monopole , string theory , theory of everything . Fringe theories include any new area of scientific endeavor in

29760-593: The traffic lights were timed for northbound traffic. The DOT also added radar antennas to traffic lights along the avenue, which collected data for a computerized traffic-signal control system. In 1964, the DOT implemented no-standing rules on Riverside Drive north of 154th Street during the mornings, and it began using a radio system to control the traffic lights between 72nd and 154th streets. The changes were meant to increase traffic capacity, but local residents opposed these changes, claiming that it would make Riverside Drive more congested. In addition, Riverside Drive

29952-433: The traffic signal at the intersection of 120th Street and Riverside Drive, adding a pedestrian clearance interval ; at the time, most of the city's traffic lights had no pedestrian clearance intervals. Also in 1930, a northward extension of Riverside Drive was again proposed in conjunction with the proposed Henry Hudson Bridge . The next year, workers began replacing the Manhattan Valley Viaduct's wood-block pavement, which

30144-459: The tunnel shafts. There were also proposals in the early 1970s to convert Riverside Drive to a one-way street during weekday rush hours, carrying southbound traffic in the morning and northbound traffic in the afternoon. When a section of the Henry Hudson Parkway was entirely closed for repairs in January 1974, drivers were detoured onto Riverside Drive, and a no-parking restriction was enacted between 72nd and 79th streets. These restrictions, and

30336-415: The viaduct did not reopen until that December. The same year, the city government began studying plans to improve lighting along the avenue. Also starting in 1959, the Manhattan Valley Viaduct was renovated at a cost of $ 1.4 million; workers added new roadways, replaced one-third of the viaduct, and added aluminum netting to discourage birds from nesting there. The viaduct was rededicated in April 1961 after

30528-416: The viaduct were drawn up within three weeks. At the end of that month, the firm of O'Brien, Sheehan, and McBean was hired to build the viaduct for $ 570,000; under the terms of the contract, the viaduct had to be completed in 400 days. Work on the viaduct began in March 1898. The viaduct's engineers requested in June 1898 that the approaches be made of granite rather than sandstone, which would add $ 80,000 to

30720-484: The viaduct's floor beams for $ 250,000. The Manhattan Valley Viaduct closed for renovations in 1984, and it reopened that November following emergency repairs. The New York State Department of Transportation closed the Manhattan Valley Viaduct again in May 1985 for emergency repairs. The deck had corroded significantly, prompting officials to spend another $ 9.5 million replacing girders. That December, city officials announced that they would spend $ 26 million rebuilding

30912-539: The vision provided by pure mathematical systems can provide clues to how a physical system might be modeled; e.g., the notion, due to Riemann and others, that space itself might be curved. Theoretical problems that need computational investigation are often the concern of computational physics . Theoretical advances may consist in setting aside old, incorrect paradigms (e.g., aether theory of light propagation, caloric theory of heat, burning consisting of evolving phlogiston , or astronomical bodies revolving around

31104-422: The wall was repaired. The wall was repaired and the roadway reopened in March 2008. By the 2010s, the intersection of Riverside Drive and 79th Street was among the most dangerous on the Upper West Side, prompting Manhattan Community Board 7 to request that the intersection be redesigned. The DOT proposed narrowing Riverside Drive to one lane in each direction from 116th to 135th streets in early 2015, but this

31296-415: The western side of the avenue, facing the river. Near 190th Street, a scenic overlook was built at Inspiration Point , where Riverside Drive curved outward toward the river. The Municipal Art Commission approved the construction of Riverside Drive West in 1926, and workers began constructing foundations for the viaduct the same year. The city began requesting bids from steel contractors in April 1927, and

31488-530: The works of these men (alongside Galileo's) can perhaps be considered to constitute the Scientific Revolution. The great push toward the modern concept of explanation started with Galileo , one of the few physicists who was both a consummate theoretician and a great experimentalist . The analytic geometry and mechanics of Descartes were incorporated into the calculus and mechanics of Isaac Newton , another theoretician/experimentalist of

31680-625: The world", and The New York Times wrote that the avenue's mansions "glittered like a wedding cake" by the 1890s. Tugboats along the Hudson River frequently made loud noises, prompting several Riverside Drive residents to create the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise in 1907. The effort ultimately led to federal legislation limiting noise from tugboats. In addition, until 1916, fumes from factories in North Jersey , across

31872-488: The years, the original road between 72nd and 125th streets had degraded extensively by the early 1910s. As such, in 1912, New York City park commissioner Charles B. Stover proposed replacing the pavement, and he sought $ 475,000 from the city government. Stover also wanted to build a highway around the northern tip of Manhattan, connecting the northern end of Riverside Drive with the Harlem River Speedway to

32064-540: Was "a half-jocular overstatement". He was a subscriber to the People's World , a Communist Party organ, and testified in 1954, "I was associated with the communist movement." In 1953, Oppenheimer was on the sponsoring committee for a conference on "Science and Freedom" organized by the Congress for Cultural Freedom , an anti-communist cultural organization. At his 1954 security clearance hearings, Oppenheimer denied being

32256-453: Was ... [he turned] away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.... In Oppenheimer the element of earthiness was feeble. Yet it was essentially this spiritual quality, this refinement as expressed in speech and manner, that was the basis of his charisma. He never expressed himself completely. He always left a feeling that there were depths of sensibility and insight not yet revealed. These may be

32448-415: Was 30 feet (9.1 m) above sea level. The rest of the tunnel remains incomplete. The connection between Riverside Drive's southern terminus and Riverside Boulevard remained closed until November 2011. In 2005, the retaining wall of Castle Village collapsed onto the northern section of Riverside Drive and the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Part of Riverside Drive had to be closed while

32640-504: Was a very committed supporter." In 1936, Oppenheimer became involved with Jean Tatlock , the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor and a student at Stanford University School of Medicine . The two had similar political views; she wrote for the Western Worker , a Communist Party newspaper. In 1939, after a tempestuous relationship, Tatlock broke up with Oppenheimer. In August of that year, he met Katherine ("Kitty") Puening ,

32832-430: Was added in 1875). Olmsted was asked to create plans for the design of the avenue as an unpaved country drive, but it was eventually paved. In late 1876, bids were accepted for the paving of Riverside Drive. Olmsted was ousted as parks superintendent in December 1877. Architects and horticulturalists such as Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons laid out the stretch of park and road between 72nd and 125th streets according to

33024-629: Was also constructed as part of the West Side Improvement, and Riverside Park was greatly expanded as well. In March 1934, the New York State Legislature approved a northward extension of Riverside Drive from Dyckman Street to the Bronx; this extension was to be developed as part of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Work on the extension began in February 1935; the project was funded by a $ 3.1 million bond issue. The city government also submitted plans in mid-1936 for

33216-509: Was budgeted at $ 3.6 million, with the viaduct alone costing $ 840,000. At 153rd Street, Riverside Drive would be cantilevered over the New York Central Railroad 's (NYCRR) West Side Line railroad tracks to avoid Trinity Church Cemetery. The extension plans also involved demolishing several old mansions. The New York City Board of Estimate formally approved the Manhattan Valley Viaduct in December 1898, and plans for

33408-445: Was changed to two northbound and one southbound lanes following opposition from local residents. As part of a related project the same year, speed limits from 103rd to 165th streets were reduced from 30 to 25 miles per hour (48 to 40 km/h); the section of Riverside Drive south of 103rd Street was already restricted to 25 miles per hour. The city government awarded a $ 102 million construction contract in 2018 to Judlau Contracting for

33600-569: Was concerned with the Lorentz transformation which left Maxwell's equations invariant, but was apparently uninterested in the Michelson–Morley experiment on Earth 's drift through a luminiferous aether . Conversely, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect , previously an experimental result lacking a theoretical formulation. A physical theory

33792-618: Was delayed a year by an attack of colitis contracted while prospecting in Joachimstal during a family vacation in Czechoslovakia . He recovered in New Mexico , where he developed a love for horseback riding and the southwestern United States. Oppenheimer entered Harvard College in 1922 at age 18. He majored in chemistry; Harvard also required studies in history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. To compensate for

33984-483: Was designated as part of a citywide bike route in 1968. The city announced plans in 1967 to construct a sewage tunnel under Riverside Drive, which would divert sewage away from the Hudson River. City workers began excavating shafts for the tunnel in 1970, which required the construction of temporary footpaths, but local residents protested the project because it was too noisy. In response, the city government froze several tons of wet soil to reduce construction noise near

34176-444: Was enthusiastic in discussions to the point of sometimes taking them over. Maria Goeppert presented Born with a petition signed by herself and others threatening a boycott of the class unless he made Oppenheimer quiet down. Born left it out on his desk where Oppenheimer could read it, and it was effective without a word being said. Oppenheimer obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Born. After

34368-545: Was extended north to 155th Street in the 1900s, and a viaduct carrying Riverside Drive West between 155th and 161st streets was built in the 1920s. Traffic flow on Riverside Drive was modified several times throughout the years, and the viaducts have been renovated as well. A southern extension, known as Riverside Boulevard, was built starting in the 1990s when the Riverside South complex was developed. Between 72nd and 125th streets, nearly every block of Riverside Drive

34560-627: Was fantastic. Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, and he became closer to his father who, although still living in New York, became a frequent visitor in California. When his father died in 1937, leaving $ 392,602 (equivalent to $ 8.3 million in 2023) to be divided between Oppenheimer and his brother Frank, Oppenheimer immediately wrote out a will that left his estate to the University of California to be used for graduate scholarships. During

34752-422: Was given a kinematic explanation by general relativity . Quantum mechanics led to an understanding of blackbody radiation (which indeed, was an original motivation for the theory) and of anomalies in the specific heats of solids — and finally to an understanding of the internal structures of atoms and molecules . Quantum mechanics soon gave way to the formulation of quantum field theory (QFT), begun in

34944-433: Was given the authorization to redesign the grade of Riverside Drive. To accommodate this, Olmsted devised a new plan that would create a main road extending from 72nd to 123rd streets, with overpasses at 79th and 96th streets, as well as "carriage roads" to serve the nearby neighborhood. The grade of the road was not to exceed 1:27. Riverside Drive's main road would contain two roadways, one for each direction, separated by

35136-495: Was highly ornamented. The surrounding area is part of the Manhattanville valley, which contains a fault . As planned, the viaduct measured 1,564 feet (477 m) long, excluding the approaches. The viaduct carries a roadway measuring 60 feet (18 m) wide, as well as a 10-foot (3.0 m) wide sidewalk on either side of the viaduct. The viaduct measures 95 feet (29 m) above mean high water at 125th Street and 75 feet (23 m) above mean high water at 135th Street. It

35328-949: Was initially educated at Alcuin Preparatory School. In 1911, he entered the Ethical Culture Society School , founded by Felix Adler to promote training based on the Ethical Culture movement, whose motto was "Deed before Creed". Oppenheimer's father had been a member of the Society for many years, serving on its board of trustees. Oppenheimer was a versatile student, interested in English and French literature, and particularly mineralogy . He completed third and fourth grades in one year and skipped half of eighth grade. He took private music lessons by famous French flutist Georges Barrère . During his final year of school, Oppenheimer became interested in chemistry. He graduated in 1921, but his further education

35520-430: Was not taken up by other scientists in his lifetime. The physicist and historian Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer what he considered his most important scientific contributions—Oppenheimer cited his work on electrons and positrons, not his work on gravitational contraction. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics three times, in 1946, 1951 and 1967, but never won. On October 9, 1941, two months before

35712-424: Was one of the few extremely wealthy residents to relocate to the avenue. One of the first mansions to be built on Riverside Drive was a house belonging to the engineer Egbert Ludovicus Viele , who moved to the intersection with 88th Street. This was followed by additional structures along both the avenue and the side streets. Mansions, middle-class row houses, and upscale apartments were built on Riverside Drive in

35904-473: Was originally only 60 feet (18 m) wide. At several points, due to the steep topography, a retaining wall was built adjacent to the road. Riverside Drive was opened in 1880 and was well used by pedestrians, bikers, and drivers; it had cost nearly $ 10 million. Riverside Drive originally terminated at 122nd Street, near where Grant's Tomb was later built. City parks workers had to use 125,000 U.S. gallons (470,000 L) of water every day to ensure that

36096-417: Was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling for the mystery of the universe that surrounded him almost like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually

36288-468: Was plagued by periods of depression throughout his life, and once told his brother, "I need physics more than friends." In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born ; Göttingen was one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics. Oppenheimer made friends who went on to great success, including Werner Heisenberg , Pascual Jordan , Wolfgang Pauli , Paul Dirac , Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller . He

36480-411: Was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and in 1943 was appointed director of the project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico , tasked with developing the first nuclear weapons. His leadership and scientific expertise were instrumental in the project's success. On July 16, 1945, he was present at the first test of the atomic bomb, Trinity . In August 1945, the weapons were used against Japan in

36672-684: Was starting to deteriorate. The northern section of the West Side Elevated Highway , connecting to Riverside Drive's southern terminus, opened in 1932; this provided a link from Riverside Drive to the Holland Tunnel , which led to New Jersey. As part of the concurrent West Side Improvement project, the West Side railroad line was relocated into the Freedom Tunnel north of 72nd Street. The Henry Hudson Parkway

36864-456: Was unimpressed, but Oppenheimer went to Cambridge nonetheless; J. J. Thomson ultimately accepted him on the condition that he complete a basic laboratory course. Oppenheimer was very unhappy at Cambridge and wrote to a friend: "I am having a pretty bad time. The lab work is a terrible bore, and I am so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything." He developed an antagonistic relationship with his tutor, Patrick Blackett ,

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