Eureka! Smart life in the Trump family: his uncle John, great nuclear physicist
The President of the United States always mentions the brother of his father to reason that his family is of intelligent genes.
During his round of calls to different leaders last week, President Donald Trump interrupted his conference with Vladimir Putin, who had just raised the issue of the New START nuclear agreement, for a few minutes to ask one of his aides what the New START deal was. START.
After the explanation, the president told Putin that it was a bad deal, negotiated by the Obama administration and that he favored Russia.
However, during the campaign, Trump boasted that he was very much in control of the issue, thanks to his uncle, John G. Trump, a physicist who became director of research at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Specifically, his fetish phrase was: "My uncle used to tell me about nuclear before nuclear was nuclear." Considering that Donald - who is the son of John's brother, Frederick Trump - was born in 1946, after Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Alamogordo, the claim is controversial. He also said in a recent speech that his uncle John revealed to him 35 years ago the dangers of nuclear weapons. This is, in the early eighties.
Who was John Trump?
In the obituary that the New York Times dedicated to him in February 1985, they explain how John Trump became interested in high-voltage experiments, initially designed for clinical purposes. Together with Robert Van de Graaff, he created the first million-volt X-ray generator, something that "provided additional years of life for cancer patients around the world." This was in the 30s of the last century.
The war absorbed him and Trump's uncle focused his talents on developing radars and short-wave devices. After the conflict, he continued linked to MIT and published more than 80 scientific articles. Throughout his life he received practically all the decorations that a nuclear physicist can receive, such as a National Medal of Science or the Medal of Majesty from him, awarded by the King of England, George VI.
On occasion, Donald Trump has mentioned his uncle as proof that he carries the same genes as a brilliant nuclear physicist. For example, in this interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, he says "I had an uncle who went to MIT, a first-rate professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It's my blood. I'm smart. Great grades. Like really smart."
Trump has taken his uncle out of his hat on many other occasions, sometimes to talk about nuclear, sometimes to talk about technology and others, such as when he was asked if he would continue to use such lewd language if he became president. "My uncle, I would say that my uncle was a brilliant person," Trump replied, "He was 35 years at MIT. As a great scientist and engineer, actually more than anything else, Dr. John Trump, a great guy. I'm a person. smart. I understand what's going on. "
As a profile they made of John Trump in The New Yorker summed up very well, in the rhetorical universe of his nephew, the MIT engineer functions as a eugenic guarantor of intelligence.
Trump vs. Tesla
Although the Republican tends to exaggerate, when he talks about his uncle he is right. One of the best known anecdotes about him took place in January 1943.
Nikola Tesla had just died in New York and his possessions were claimed by the so-called Office of Foreign Property Custody, an institution that functioned during the two world wars to basically loot what they considered enemies of the homeland. Weeks later, the FBI had to confront the Tesla documents and guess who they chose to interpret them.
Upon reviewing the documents, John Trump concluded that "Tesla's thoughts and efforts for at least the past 15 years were primarily speculative, philosophical, and in some way promotional," but nonetheless, "did not include principles. or new, robust or feasible methods to reach those results. "
Yes, Trump's uncle may have contributed to the ostracism suffered by the Balkan genius, but his contributions in MIT's high-voltage laboratory, in the development of radar and shortwave applications, and in pioneering radiation therapies make it quite understandable that, In his obituary, the current president of the United States hardly occupied a line: "He was the brother of Frederick C. Trump and the uncle of Donald Trump, real estate developers from New York."
