Oppenheimer Couldn’t Run a Hamburger Stand. How Did He Run a Secret Lab?


奥本海默原本是一位没有任何管理经验的理论物理学家，却在决定世界命运的紧要关头，成为有史以来最卓有成效的领导者之一。



当罗伯特·奥本海默(J. Robert Oppenheimer)被提名担任曼哈顿计划的洛斯阿拉莫斯实验室(Los Alamos Laboratory)主任时，在许多人看来，让他来承担这一美国最重要的工作简直是匪夷所思。 6park.com
When he was named the director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer was an improbable choice for the most important job in America.  6park.com
    
当时，38岁的奥本海默是一名理论物理学家，也就管理过十几个研究生，除此以外并没有什么像样的管理经验，更不用说管理一项事关世界命运的行动了。聘用他的陆军将军莱斯利·格罗夫斯(Leslie Groves)说，这项决定“没有人支持，只有反对”。一位后来获得诺贝尔奖的密友说，让奥本海默来管理一个要制造原子弹的秘密实验室，“绝对是最不合常理的选择”。 6park.com
At the time, he was a 38-year-old theoretical physicist who had never managed anything more than a dozen graduate students, much less an operation with the fate of the world at stake. Leslie Groves, the Army general who hired him, said he received “no support, only opposition” for his decision. One close friend who would later win a Nobel Prize called Oppenheimer “absolutely the most unlikely choice” to run a secret lab that would build the atomic bomb.   6park.com
   
“他连怎么经营卖汉堡包的小摊都不会，”另一位同事说。 6park.com
“He couldn’t run a hamburger stand,” said another colleague.  6park.com
   
那么，他是如何变身为一名有史以来最卓有成效和最具影响意义的领导者的？ 6park.com
So how did he transform into one of the most effective and consequential leaders in history? 


希里安·墨菲(Cillian Murphy)在电影《奥本海默》中饰演罗伯特·奥本海默。这部电影获得了13项奥斯卡提名。

本周末，电影《奥本海默》预计将横扫奥斯卡。（注：本文英文版最早发表于3月8日，截至中文版发稿，这部电影已在奥斯卡斩获多个奖项）。但即使花上三个小时观看克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)这种对细节极尽考究的大师精心拍摄的电影，也还是不足以了解奥本海默成功的源泉。如果你真想走进奥本海默的内心世界，务必要读一读两本荣获普利策奖的书籍，一本是凯·伯德(Kai Bird)和已故历史学家马丁·舍温(Martin J. Sherwin)撰写的《奥本海默传》(American Prometheus)，另一本是理查德·罗兹(Richard Rhodes)撰写的《横空出世》(The Making of the Atomic Bomb)。 6park.com
This weekend, “Oppenheimer” is expected to dominate the Oscars. But even watching a three-hour movie from a painstakingly meticulous auteur like Christopher Nolan isn’t enough to understand what made Oppenheimer tick. If you really want to get inside his mind, you have to read two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin and “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes. 6park.com
    
最近，我与这两本书的作者通了电话，以探寻奥本海默的管理之道。 6park.com
I recently called the authors to find out more about Oppenheimer the manager.  6park.com
   
在他们的帮助下，我领悟到奥本海默成功背后的四大要素，这些要素适用于任何类型的项目——而不仅仅限于原子弹项目。 6park.com
They helped me understand four elements of his success that apply to any sort of project—even the ones that don’t involve gigantic explosions. 

作为招募者的奥本海默

在制造原子弹之前，奥本海默必须先建立一支团队。团队若是不给力，不等原子弹爆炸成功，他的脸恐怕就先给打爆了。 6park.com
Before he could build the bomb, Oppenheimer had to build something else with the potential to blow up in his face: a team.  6park.com
   
奥本海默开始物色人才时，洛斯阿拉莫斯还未被选定为秘密实验室的所在地。他一旦挑好科学家并决定聘用他们，就会想方设法把他们揽至麾下。例如，当物理学家理查德·费曼(Richard Feynman)因为妻子患有肺结核而拒绝他时，奥本海默找到一家离洛斯阿拉莫斯很近的疗养院，这样费曼就可以每周末去探望妻子。 6park.com
Los Alamos hadn’t yet been selected as the site of his secret lab when Oppenheimer began hunting for talent. Once he identified scientists and decided to hire them, he did whatever it took to get them. When the physicist Richard Feynman turned him down because his wife was sick with tuberculosis, for example, Oppenheimer found a sanatorium close enough to Los Alamos that he could visit on the weekends.  6park.com
   
这件事很有启发意义，因为费曼并不是大明星，而是个无名小卒：这位未来的诺贝尔奖得主当时还只是一名研究生，用他自己的话说，“根本不是什么名人”，但奥本海默仍然不遗余力。 6park.com
It’s a revealing story not because Feynman was a star but the opposite: The future Nobel winner was still merely a graduate student, “not anybody famous at all,” as he put it, and yet Oppenheimer still went above and beyond. 


在新墨西哥州试验第一颗原子弹的科研大本营。

他深知，招聘对于团队的成功至关重要，因此从一开始就把招贤纳士作为首要任务，他告诉一位同事，应该采取一种“绝对不择手段的方针，把我们能找着的人都给招进来”。 6park.com
He understood that hiring was essential to his team’s success and made it a priority from the very beginning, when he told a colleague they should adopt a “policy of absolutely unscrupulous recruiting of anyone we can lay hands on.”  6park.com
   
这种政策绝对是奏效了。无论在这之前还是之后，都从未有这么多全美国最杰出的科学家如此长时间地汇集在同一个地方。 6park.com
And it absolutely worked. Never before or since have so many of the nation’s most brilliant scientists been concentrated in the same place for such a long time.  6park.com
   
他看中的许多科学家并不想离开熟悉的生活圈，搬到茫茫沙漠中的一个军事基地，更何况还不知要待上多久。但面对他真心想要招揽的人才，他会一边不懈争取，一边耐心等待，有些人他会劝说几个月之久，还有些人他会依靠共同的朋友来说服，他甚至会研究当地的医疗设施。 6park.com
Many of his brainy recruits didn’t love the idea of uprooting their lives and moving to a military post in the desert for who knows how long. But he could be as patient as he was relentless when he really wanted someone, pursuing some for months, leaning on mutual friends to persuade others and even researching the local medical facilities.

作为沟通者的奥本海默

奥本海默懂得如何让他招来的这些科学家做出最好的工作成果。查尔斯·杜希格(Charles Duhigg)在他的新书中提到 “超级沟通者”，这些人“能够准确说出正确的东西，突破几乎任何人的心防，即便是在最不可能的情况下，也知道如何与人建立联结”。事实证明，奥本海默就是一位超级沟通者。 6park.com
Once he got them, Oppenheimer knew how to get the best work out of his scientists. In his new book, Charles Duhigg writes about “supercommunicators,” people who are “capable of saying exactly the right thing, breaking through to almost anyone, figuring out how to connect in even the most unlikely circumstances.” Oppenheimer, as it turns out, was a supercommunicator.  6park.com
   
洛斯阿拉莫斯有比他更优秀的物理学家、化学家和工程师。但有一件事他能够比洛斯阿拉莫斯的其他人做得更好，甚至可能比地球上的任何人都做得更好，这就是把观点各异的科学家召集起来，让他们达成共识。 6park.com
Others in Los Alamos were better physicists, chemists and engineers. But what he could do better than anybody there—and maybe better than anybody on the planet—was take scientists with different perspectives and bring them to a consensus.  6park.com
   
“大家争论时，他会站在会议室后面倾听，”伯德说。“然后，他会在适当的时候走上前去，总结每个人谈话的要点，找出共同点，指出推进的方向。” 6park.com
“He would stand at the back of the room and listen as everyone argued,” Bird said. “Then he would step forward at just the right moment, summarize the salient points that everyone had been making that were in common and point the way forward.”  6park.com
   
"他会走进来，迅速抓住问题所在，几乎总能提出一些解决问题的线索，”罗兹说。 6park.com
“He would walk in, quickly grasp what the problem was and almost always suggest some leads to a solution,” Rhodes said.  6park.com
    
伯德告诉我，奥本海默是洛斯阿拉莫斯的“主管加独裁者”，但他是一种特殊的独裁者：他认为发号施令行不通。 6park.com
Bird told me that Oppenheimer was both the “director and dictator” of Los Alamos, but he was a peculiar sort of authoritarian: He didn’t believe in giving orders. 


戴帽子的奥本海默与同事们在新墨西哥州阿拉莫戈多附近的核试验场。

奥本海默是一位富有魅力的物理学家，有着闪闪发光的蓝眼睛和如磁石般吸引人的气场，他从不发号施令，而是轻轻把科学家们推向正确的方向，他说话的声音轻柔，“你得身体前倾，才能确保听清所有内容，”伯德说。伯德写的传记是《奥本海默》这部大片的灵感来源。奥本海默成为管理这一庞大计划的理想人选，不仅因为他精通物理，而且因为他可以本能地洞悉人的心理。在来到洛斯阿拉莫斯工作的一万人当中，奥本海默与其中数百人有着密切的私人关系。即使是不认识奥本海默的人，也觉得他了解他们。这使得他们愿意更加努力地为他工作。 6park.com
Instead, the charismatic physicist with sparkling blue eyes and a magnetic presence gently nudged the scientists in the right direction, speaking in a voice so quiet that “you had to lean forward to make sure you caught everything,” said Bird, whose biography inspired the blockbuster movie. What made him the ideal manager of this sprawling operation was not just his knowledge of physics but his intuitive grasp of human psychology. Oppenheimer had close personal relationships with hundreds of the 10,000 people who came to work at Los Alamos. Even the ones that didn’t know him felt like he knew them. That made them want to work harder for him.  6park.com
   
“大家都很确信，奥本海默关心每一个人在做什么，”曼哈顿计划的理论物理部门负责人汉斯·贝特(Hans Bethe)告诉罗兹。“他让这个人清楚地感觉到，自己的工作对整个计划的成功非常重要”。 6park.com
“Everybody certainly had the impression that Oppenheimer cared what each particular person was doing,” Hans Bethe, the head of the project’s theoretical-physics division, told Rhodes. “He made it clear that that person’s work was important for the success of the whole project.”  6park.com
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奥本海默被选为曼哈顿计划的科学负责人之所以令人吃惊，不仅因为他毫无管理复杂组织的经验，而且因为他有几项劣势：他没有获得过诺贝尔奖，他与共产党有关联，还总有本事弄坏他走过的设备。 6park.com
There were several reasons besides his complete inexperience running complex organizations that Oppenheimer was an astonishing selection as the Manhattan Project’s scientific director: his lack of Nobel Prize, his links to the Communist Party, his knack for breaking every piece of equipment he walked past.  6park.com
     
但奥本海默拥有与洛斯阿拉莫斯其他天才不同的特质，他知识渊博、兴趣广泛，这使他能够在不同学科之间建立联系，看到会议室里其他人看不到的东西。他们都是专家，而他是通才。他们只专注于自己狭窄的研究领域。而他对哲学、文学、诗歌和印度教的《薄伽梵歌》充满好奇。“他能成为一位优秀的科学家，恰恰是因为他也精通人文领域，”伯德说。 6park.com
But what set him apart from the other geniuses at Los Alamos was his broad knowledge and breadth of interests, which allowed him to make connections across disciplines and see what others in the room couldn’t. They were specialists. He was a generalist. They were singularly focused on their narrow fields of research. He was curious about philosophy, literature, poetry and the Bhagavad Gita. “He was a good scientist precisely because he was also a humanist,” Bird says. 6park.com
    
格罗夫斯对奥本海默兴趣之广泛印象深刻，他曾宣称：“奥本海默无所不知。”奥本海默还能把他知道的一切解释给别人听，而不带半分优越感，这一特质也让他脱颖而出，击败了应聘这一职位的其他资质优异的科学家。 6park.com
Groves was so impressed by Oppenheimer’s range of interests that he once declared: “Oppenheimer knows everything.” He also could explain everything he knew without condescending, another trait that distinguished him from other eminently qualified scientists who interviewed for the job.  6park.com
   
“他能够用通俗易懂的语言说话，”伯德说。 6park.com
“He was able to speak in plain English,” Bird said. 


奥本海默（左）与聘用他的将军莱斯利·格罗夫斯。格罗夫斯说，这项决定“没有人支持，只有反对”。

作为协作者的奥本海默

当时，科学家愿意放下生活中的一切，在荒无人烟的地方昼夜工作。但他们不愿意穿军装。 6park.com
The scientists were willing to drop everything in their lives to work around the clock in the middle of nowhere. What they were not willing to do was wear a military uniform.  6park.com
   
奥本海默本人对等级制度非常反感，甚至反对制定基本的组织结构图。他有很强的意志，但平易近人，他要赢得尊敬，而不是命令别人尊敬他，奥本海默与陆军将领最大的不同在于他们对团队运作方式的认知。 6park.com
Oppenheimer himself was so allergic to hierarchy that he objected to making a basic organizational chart. He was intense but informal, someone who commanded respect without demanding it, and the biggest difference between Oppenheimer and Army generals was how they believed teams should operate.  6park.com
   
军队依靠森严的等级制度。他则坚持协作。 6park.com
The military relied on compartmentalization. He insisted on collaboration.  6park.com
   
奥本海默要求采用更加扁平的结构，这就好比问军方，洛斯阿拉莫斯的人是不是都可以剪个鲻鱼头。事实上，当格罗夫斯得知奥本海默主张把数百名科学家召集起来，每周举办一次座谈会时，他试图加以阻止。但奥本海默说服了他。他知道，把一个项目不同部门的人员聚集在同一个地方，鼓励他们讨论各自的工作并集思广益，是一件有价值的事情。 6park.com
By demanding a flatter structure, Oppenheimer might as well have asked the Army if everyone in Los Alamos could have a mullet. In fact, when Groves learned that Oppenheimer was in favor of instituting a weekly colloquium for hundreds of scientists, he tried to shut it down. Oppenheimer prevailed. He understood the value of gathering people from different parts of a project in the same place, encouraging them to discuss their work and combine their ideas. 6park.com
   
“在座谈会上讨论的问题常常会让实验室中完全不同部门的科学家感到好奇，”贝特有一次写到，“他会想出意想不到的解决方案。” 6park.com
“Very often a problem discussed in one of these meetings would intrigue a scientist in a completely different branch of the laboratory,” Bethe once wrote, “and he would come up with unexpected solutions.” 


科学家和其他工人将世界上第一颗原子弹架高到100英尺高的塔上。

这些座谈会还振奋了洛斯阿拉莫斯的士气，每周提醒人们，曼哈顿计划中的每个人都发挥了作用。奥本海默坚持举行会议是对的。 6park.com
The meetings also improved morale at Los Alamos, providing a weekly reminder that everyone on the Manhattan Project had a role to play. Oppenheimer was right to fight for their existence.  6park.com
    
“他赢得了围栏里这些人的忠心，”伯德说。“他们可以看到，他在保护他们，允许他们合作和自由讨论，这是该计划取得成功的必要条件。” 6park.com
“He won the loyalty of people inside the fence,” Bird says. “They could see that he was protecting them, allowing them to collaborate and talk freely, which was necessary to the success of the project.” 6park.com
   
科学家们每周工作六天，但奥本海默会确保他们在工作之余有丰富多彩的活动。在休息日，他们可以骑马、爬山、滑雪、徒步旅行、打篮球，这些篮球比赛恐怕是有史以来书呆子密度最高的比赛。当地一个剧团表演《毒药与老妇》(Arsenic and Old Lace)时，奥本海默出人意料地客串了一具尸体，让全场掌声雷动。奥本海默的派对尤其出名，他用杜松子马丁尼烈酒搭配他最喜欢的祝酒词：“愿我们的敌人不知所措！” 6park.com
They worked six days a week, but Oppenheimer made sure they weren’t only working. On their off days, there was horseback riding, mountain climbing, skiing, hiking and some of the geekiest basketball games of all time. When a local theater group staged a performance of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Oppenheimer brought the house down with his surprise cameo as a corpse. And he was especially famous for his parties, where Oppenheimer paired his deadly gin martinis with his favorite toast: “To the confusion of our enemies!” 


“他决定要成为有史以来最好的实验室主管，”传记的作者罗兹说。“他就变成了这样。”

作为表演者的奥本海默

奥本海默把自己变成领导者的方式也值得一提。这一点观看奥斯卡颁奖典礼的每一个人都可以欣赏，每一个人也都可以在家模仿。 6park.com
There’s one more thing that everyone at the Academy Awards can appreciate—and everyone at home can emulate—about the way Oppenheimer turned himself into a leader.  6park.com
    
“奥本海默，”罗兹告诉我，“在某种程度上是一名演员。” 6park.com
“Oppenheimer,” Rhodes told me, “was something of an actor.”  6park.com
   
事实上，罗兹告诉我，1982年他与贝特有过一次难忘的对话，当时这位诺贝尔物理学奖得主感叹奥本海默在洛斯阿拉莫斯实现的创举。贝特说，在战前和战后，奥本海默可能很讨厌，让天才们觉得自己被当成了傻瓜。但在战争期间并不是这样。 6park.com
In fact, Rhodes told me about one unforgettable conversation with Bethe in 1982, when the Nobel-winning physicist marveled about Oppenheimer’s reinvention at Los Alamos. Before the war and after the war, Oppenheimer could be nasty and make geniuses feel like fools, Bethe said. But not during the war.  6park.com
   
奥本海默完全变成了另一个人，变得与以前的他完全不同，就好像他在扮演一个角色。 6park.com
Oppenheimer morphed into someone else altogether and became so unrecognizable to previous versions of himself that it was almost as if he were playing a character.  6park.com
   
“他决定要成为有史以来最好的实验室主管，"罗兹说。“他就变成了这样。” 6park.com
“He decided he was going to be the best lab director there ever was,” Rhodes said. “That’s what he became.”