HISTORY83 - J. Robert Oppenheimer

My last blog was about the history of the super-secret Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II.  J. Robert Oppenheimer was chief scientist of that effort; the Manhattan Project cannot be fully understood without knowing details of the life of this man.  So, this blog will be a summary of Oppenheimer’s life and his contributions to nuclear science.


 

After a short introduction, I will cover Oppenheimer’s early life and education, his studies in Europe, his early career in California, his private and political life, his work on the Manhattan Project, his post-war activities, his security hearing, his final years, and end with a discussion of his legacy.

My principal sources include: American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005; “J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Wikipedia.com; “J. Robert Oppenheimer - American Physicist,” Britannica.com; “The True Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Life,” time.com; “J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), atomicarchive.com; “The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” nps.gov; “J. Robert Oppenheimer, - Nuclear Museum,” ahf.nuclearmuseum.org; plus, numerous other online sources.

Introduction

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967) was a brilliant American theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory that developed and tested the first atomic bomb during World War II.  He is often credited as being the "father of the atomic bomb.”

Born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Germany, Oppenheimer earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a PhD in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927.  After research at other institutions, he joined the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became a full professor in 1936.

Oppenheimer made significant contributions to theoretical physics, including quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.  With his students, he also made contributions to the theory of neutron starsblack holesquantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays.

In 1942, Oppenheimer 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 an atomic bomb.  In August 1945, atomic weapons were used against Japan in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the Japanese to surrender and ending World War II.

In 1947, Oppenheimer became the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and chaired the influential General Advisory Committee of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission.  He lobbied for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.  During a 1949 - 1950 government debate, he opposed the development of the much more powerful hydrogen bomb, and subsequently took perceived dovish positions on defense-related issues that provoked the ire of some U.S. government and military factions.

Following a secret, highly politicized 1954 security hearing, accused of disloyalty, Oppenheimer's expressed opinions, together with his past associations with Communist Party members, led to the revocation of his security clearance.  This effectively ended his access to the government's atomic secrets and thus his career as a nuclear physicist.  Stripped also of his direct political influence, Oppenheimer nonetheless continued to lecture, write, and work in physics.

In 1963, he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation.  On December 16, 2022, Jennifer Granholm, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, ordered that the 1954 decision to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance be vacated, based on the “bias and unfairness” of a “flawed process” that led to his exile from the nuclear establishment.

Early Life and Education 1904 - 1925

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, to a wealthy German immigrant textile importer Julius Oppenheimer and his wife painter Ella Friedman Oppenheimer.  He had a brother, eight years younger, Frank, who also became a physicist.

Robert Oppenheimer as a child with his father.

 

Robert Oppenheimer’s academic prowess was apparent very early on, and by the age of 10, Oppenheimer was studying minerals, physics, and chemistry.  His correspondence with the New York Mineralogical Club was so advanced that the Society invited him to deliver a lecture - not realizing that Robert was a twelve-year-old boy.

For ten years he attended the Ethical Culture School in New York City.  The school epitomized liberalism, concerned with the plight of the poor, guided by ideals of social justice, relentlessly hopeful, earnest, and progressive.  The sheltered atmosphere of the school was ideal for a socially awkward adolescent polymath (wide-ranging knowledge).

Oppenheimer graduated as valedictorian from the Ethical Culture School in 1921, but fell ill with a near-fatal case of dysentery and was forced to postpone enrolling at Harvard.  After being bedridden for months, his parents arranged for him to spend the summer of 1922 in New Mexico, a haven for health-seekers.  It was during this time that Oppenheimer learned to ride horses and developed a life-long love of New Mexico. 

In the fall of 1922, Oppenheimer entered Harvard University, and after briefly studying chemistry, switched to “his true passion” physics.  Introverted and at times socially uncomfortable, Oppenheimer continued to write poetry while taking a heavy courseload.  Recalling this time, Oppenheimer later said, “My feeling about myself was always one of extreme discontent.” Oppenheimer finished his degree in just three years, excelling in Latin, Greek, physics, and chemistry.  He also published poetry, and studied Eastern philosophy.  He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1925.

Oppenheimer’s Harvard graduation picture.

 

Studies in Europe: 1925 - 1927

In 1925, Oppenheimer was accepted to study physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, under British physicist J. J. Thomson, who had been awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting the electron.   Oppenheimer proved poor at conducting experiments in the laboratory and came close to being expelled for misbehavior.

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.”

Oppenheimer was a tall, thin chain smoker, who often neglected to eat during periods of intense concentration.  Many friends said he could be self-destructive.  Oppenheimer saw three psychoanalysts in four months, but ultimately credited reading Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time and a bicycle tour of Corsica with lifting his depression.

Note:  Oppenheimer was plagued by periods of depression throughout his life, and once told his brother Frank, "I need physics more than friends.” 

In 1926, Oppenheimer accepted an invitation from Max Born, director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen, to study under him in Germany.  Göttingen was one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics, and in particularly the rising field of quantum mechanics (the study of very small-scale molecules and atoms).  Thriving at Göttingen, Oppenheimer learned that his talent was for theoretical physics, not experimental physics, and collaborated with Born to work toward mastery of the new quantum mechanics.

Oppenheimer had the good fortune to be in Europe during a pivotal time in the world of physics, as European physicists were then developing the groundbreaking theory of quantum mechanics. 

During his time in Germany, he studied with a number of prominent physicists, including Max Born, Neils Bohr, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller.  Oppenheimer attended Göttingen alongside Werner Heisenberg, who would go on to be a main contributor to the German effort to develop an atomic bomb.

1926 gathering of physicists in Europe.  In the second row, Oppenheimer is second from left, with Paul Dirac to his right.

 

At Göttingen, Oppenheimer published many important contributions to the then newly developed quantum theory, most notably a famous paper on the so-called Born-Oppenheimer approximation, that was a breakthrough in using quantum mechanics to understand the behavior of molecules.

Oppenheimer was awarded a doctorate in physics in May of 1927 at the age 22.

Research and Teaching in California:  1927 - 1942

In 1927, Oppenheimer returned to Harvard to study mathematical physics as a National Research Council Fellow. 

But in early 1928, he left Harvard and moved to Pasadena, California and the California Institute of Technology to do research and teach.

Note:  In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, where he impressed his audience 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.”

In 1929, Oppenheimer accepted an assistant professorship in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and maintained a joint appointment with California Institute of Technology.  For the next 13 years, he "commuted" between the two universities, and many of his associates and students commuted with him.

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.  He recovered from tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley, where he prospered as an advisor and collaborator to a generation of physicists who admired him for his intellectual virtuosity and broad interests. 

At Berkeley, Oppenheimer gathered a dedicated following of student admirers that coalesced around his genius.  Berkeley gained a reputation as the premier place to study physics in the United States because of Oppenheimer’s work and the work of experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence. 

In 1931, Lawrence created his first particle accelerator, a groundbreaking device he called a “cyclotron” and was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 1939.  Oppenheimer worked closely with and became good friends with Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping them understand 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 Oppenheimer to full professor.  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 is credited with being a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics.  His early research was devoted in particular to energy processes of subatomic particles, including electrons, positrons, and cosmic rays.  He also did groundbreaking work on neutron stars.  In the 1930s, he was the first to write papers suggesting the existence of what we today call black holes.  Since quantum theory had been proposed only a few years before, the university posts provided him an excellent opportunity to devote his entire career to the exploration and development of its full significance.  In addition, he trained a whole generation of U.S. physicists, who were greatly affected by his qualities of leadership and intellectual independence.

Nuclear scientists at Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory in 1940.  Left to right:  Robert Oppenheimer (smoking), Enrico Fermi (who would create the world’s first nuclear reactor in 1942), and Earnest Lawrence.

 

Oppenheimer did not have the patience to stick with any one problem very long.  As a result, it was frequently he who opened the door through which others then walked to make major discoveries.

Note: 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 the mystical and the cryptic.  After leaving 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 in 1933.  He eventually read literary works such as the Bhagavad Gita and Meghaduta in the original Sanskrit, and deeply pondered them.

In December 1938, scientists in Germany discovered nuclear fission of uranium (the process of breaking large atomic nuclei into smaller atomic nuclei to release a large amount of energy).  Hungarian-born American physicist Leo Szilard realized that nuclear chain reactions could be used to create new and extremely powerful atomic weapons. 

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard warned the U.S. government of the danger threatening all of humanity if the Nazis should be the first to make a nuclear bomb.  

Oppenheimer realized the potential of nuclear fission immediately, and he and his students began to sketch out rudimentary atomic bomb concepts.  On his own, Oppenheimer began to seek a process for the separation of uranium-235 from natural uranium, and to determine the critical mass of uranium required to make such a bomb

Private and Political Life

During the 1920s, Oppenheimer remained uninformed on worldly matters. 

But after January 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, politics began to intrude into Oppenheimer’s consciousness.  In 1934, he earmarked three percent of his annual salary for two years to support German physicists fleeing Nazi Germany.  As Oppenheimer engaged with politics further, he developed a “smoldering fury” for the oppression his Jewish relatives were suffering in Nazi Germany. 

In 1936, Oppenheimer entered a turbulent relationship with Jean Tatlock, a Stand-ford Medical School student and Communist Party member who brought left-wing politics into Oppenheimer’ life.  Tatlock introduced Oppenheimer to West coast left-wing figures like Thomas Addis, who would later be investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Jean Tatlock’s relationship with Robert Oppenheimer, began in 1936..

 

Like many young intellectuals in the 1930s, Oppenheimer supported social reforms that were later categorized as communist ideas.  He donated to many progressive causes considered left-wing during the later McCarthy era.  Most of his allegedly radical work consisted of hosting fundraisers for anti-fascist activities. 

Oppenheimer did give money to leftist causes.  His father’s death in 1937 left Oppenheimer a fortune that allowed him to spend freely.

While Oppenheimer never officially joined the Communist Party, many of his closest friends and family members were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Tatlock, and several of his graduate students at Berkeley.

Note: Despite Stalinist purges in Russia, many people in the 1930s thought Communism was the only viable alternative to the rise of Fascism in Europe. 

Tatlock ended her relationship with Oppenheimer in early 1939, and later that same year, he met his future wife, Katherine “Kitty” Puening, a German American biologist and botanist, also a member of the Communist Party.  On November 1, 1940, Oppenheimer married Katherine.  The Oppenheimer’s first child, Peter, was born in May of 1941.

Robert Oppenheimer married Katherine “Kitty” Puening in 1940.

 

The FBI opened a file on Oppenheimer in March 1941, and began to track his associations with known Communist Party members and organizations.  Oppenheimer's party membership, or lack thereof, has been debated.  Almost all historians agree he had strong left-wing views during this time and interacted with party members, but there is no evidence that he was officially a member of the party.

Manhattan Project: 1941 - 1945

Note:  Details of the Manhattan Project can be found in my previous blog (August 5, 2023) on that subject.  This is the story of Robert Oppenheimer and this section will focus on his role in the development and testing of the first atomic bomb.

In early 1941, Robert Oppenheimer began collaborating with Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley on questions of atomic bomb development.  Lawrence used his Cyclotron particle accelerator to develop a method of uranium isotope separation for bomb making.

In the spring of 1941, the Roosevelt Administration received a British report on their work on atomic bombs, prompting the U.S. to create a high-level Advisory Committee, a team of military, academic, and scientific personnel to focus on planning for an atomic bomb building project. 

Based on Oppenheimer’s head start in calculating the amount of U-235 for an effective weapon, and his general brilliance, Ernest Lawrence, lobbied for Oppenheimer to be included in a secret meeting of the Committee on October 21, 1941.  As a result, in May 1942, Oppenheimer was directed to organize a secret seminar of theoretical physicists to make the basic outline for atomic bomb design.  Prominent theoretical physicist Hans Bethe who participated said, “I could see the tremendous intellectual power of Oppenheimer who was the unquestioned leader of the group.”

By the fall of 1942, leading Advisory Committee members Vannevar Bush, Director of the new created Office of Scientific Research and Development, and James Conant, President of Harvard University and Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, wanted Oppenheimer to direct an atomic bomb development laboratory.   Bush and Conant pressured the War Department to approve security clearances for Oppenheimer and other scientists with left wing political views. 

On September 18, 1942, Army General Leslie Groves took charge of the Advisory Committee’s work, with a transfer or responsibility from the Office of Scientific Research and Development to the military.  The Manhattan Engineer District, later known as the Manhattan Project, was established.

With Groves’ support, at the end of October 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed to lead the atom bomb production laboratory at a TBD remote secret site.  Oppenheimer immediately began to recruit scientists for the project - efforts that continued relentlessly throughout the time of the program.

Note:  There is no question that Oppenheimer wanted the assignment to design, construct, and use the atomic bomb.  He felt strongly that Germany needed to be defeated!

The choice of Oppenheimer to lead the laboratory surprised many, because Oppenheimer had left-wing political views and no record as a leader of large projects. Groves was concerned by the fact that Oppenheimer did not have a Nobel Prize, and might not have had the prestige to direct fellow scientists.

But Groves was impressed by Oppenheimer's singular grasp of the practical aspects of designing and constructing an atomic bomb, and by the breadth of his knowledge.   As a military engineer, Groves knew that this would be vital in an interdisciplinary project that would involve not just physics but also chemistry, metallurgy, ordnance, and engineering.  Groves also detected in Oppenheimer something that many others did not, an "overweening ambition" that Groves reckoned would supply the drive necessary to push the project to a successful conclusion.

Since Oppenheimer was familiar with the New Mexico landscape, Groves asked Oppenheimer if there was somewhere appropriate for the secret laboratory.  Oppenheimer suggested a site he knew well, the Los Alamos Ranch School, an isolated area in northern New Mexico, 34 miles north of Santa Fe.  After visiting the site, Groves approved it and the army began purchasing the land two days later.

The Los Alamos Laboratory was built on the site of the school, taking over some of its buildings, while many new buildings were erected in great haste.

The main gate at Los Alamos Laboratory at the start of the Manhattan Project.

 

Starting in the spring of 1943, Oppenheimer assembled a group of the top scientists of the time to live and work at Los Alamos until the bomb had been completed.  Oppenheimer convinced Groves that Los Alamos should be turned into a town where scientists could live with their families, since many might refuse to relocate otherwise.

It soon turned out that Oppenheimer had hugely underestimated the magnitude of the project: Los Alamos grew from a few hundred people in 1943 to over 6,000 in 1945.

All personnel at Los Alamos Laboratory required photo IDs.

 

Oppenheimer had never managed anything larger than a graduate seminar, but molded himself into an efficient and persuasive administrator.  At first, he had difficulty with the organizational division of large groups, but rapidly learned the art of large-scale administration after he took up permanent residence on the mesa.   He was noted for his mastery of all scientific aspects of the project and for his efforts to control the inevitable cultural conflicts between scientists and the military.  He was an iconic figure to his fellow scientists, as much a symbol of what they were working toward as a scientific director. 

Prominent resident theoretical physicist Victor Weisskopf put it: “Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the real sense of the words.  Here his uncanny speed in grasping the main points of any subject was a decisive factor; he could acquaint himself with the essential details of every part of the work.”

Weisskopf continued:  “He did not direct from the head office.  He was intellectually and physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived.  It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else.  It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.”

Oppenheimer wore jeans or khaki pants and a blue work shirt in Los Alamos and the civilian workforce followed his casual lead.  The lab was open day and night with scientists setting their own schedules.  Everyone worked six days a week and took Sundays off.  Oppenheimer “completely changed to fit his new role” colleague Hans Bethe said, “he brought out the best in us.”

General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer conferring at Los Alamos Laboratory.

 

Balancing the contrasting needs of secrecy and scientific collaboration, while trying to maintain harmony between civilian and military workers fell to Oppenheimer.  Huge responsibilities, constant surveillance, and a fear of failure took a toll on Oppenheimer. 

Oppenheimer chain smoked four to five packs of cigarettes a day, along with a pipe and had a persistent cough.  At five feet, ten inches tall, he only weighed 115 pounds during his time directing the atom bomb development.  Many workers, including Oppenheimer, drank as “alcohol flowed freely on the mesa.”  Louis Hempelmann, director of the Health Group, said, “as things wore on and everybody got tired and tense and irritable, it wasn’t so good.” Oppenheimer relieved stress by riding his horse on mountain trails.

Throughout 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 San Francisco, California in June 1943 to visit Jean Tatlock, where she was working as a pediatric psychiatrist at Mount Zion Hospital, and suffering depression.  While Tatlock had broken off their official relationship in 1939, Oppenheimer remained in contact with her.  Nearly seven months after Tatlock and Oppenheimer’s final June 1943 meeting, Tatlock, suffering from clinical depression, committed suicide on January 4, 1944, leaving Oppenheimer deeply grieved.

Ironically, Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, gave birth to a daughter, Katherine Toni, in December 1944, while living with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.

By late 1944, a number of scientists at Los Alamos began to voice their growing ethical qualms about the continued development of the atomic bomb.  Oppenheimer stated his belief that scientists had no right to a louder voice in determining the bomb’s fate than any other citizen.  He argued although that they were all destined to live in perpetual fear, the bomb might also end all war.  

On May 8, 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe.  With Germany out of the war, the Allies turned their full attention to the war in the Pacific.

By the summer of 1945, two types of atom bombs had been developed and were ready for testing: a uranium-based weapon called “Little Boy” and a plutonium-based weapon called “Fat Man.”

Oppenheimer, physicist Kenneth Bainbridge, and a few army officers chose an 18 by 25-mile area in central New Mexico, at the newly named White Sands Proving Grounds, for the first atomic bomb test; the site was code named by Oppenheimer “Trinity” in reference to one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets

As the date of the test approached, Oppenheimer alone climbed the 100-foot tower holding the “Gadget” test device for a final inspection of what the laboratory had made under his directorship.  General Groves then took Oppenheimer to a bunker six miles south of ground zero where they decided on an early morning test of the Gadget

Less than three years after the laboratory’s founding, the first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:30 am on July 16, 1945.

Oppenheimer (in white hat) at center, and General Groves to his immediate left, inspect the damage around the test tower after the Trinity atom bomb test.

 

Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, who was present in the control bunker with Oppenheimer, recalled: “Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed.  He held on to a post to steady himself.  For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then when the announcer shouted "Now!" and there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief.”

After the successful detonation of the first atomic test bomb at Trinity, Oppenheimer told his brother Frank simply “it worked.”  Twenty years later in 1965, Oppenheimer claimed seeing the successful test detonation reminded him of lines from the Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds...”

In the weeks following the Trinity test, Oppenheimer became “very still and ruminative” as he consulted with air force officers on potential Japanese targets.

After the Little Boy atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, Oppenheimer talked to assembled workers and said he was “proud” and his only regret was not getting the bomb fast enough to use against the Germans.  Charlotte Serber, librarian at Los Alamos, said that after the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th, “a sense of gloom settled over the lab.”  An FBI informant reported that Oppenheimer was a “nervous wreck” the day Nagasaki was bombed. 

The bombings together killed between an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people, most of whom were civilians. 

On August 10th, the Japanese informed Washington, of their intention to surrender, and formally surrendered on August 14, 1945, officially ending the most deadly and destructive war in human history. 

The enormity of what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected Oppenheimer profoundly.  On August 17th, Oppenheimer traveled to Washington to hand-deliver a letter to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson expressing his revulsion and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned.  In October he met with President Harry S. Truman.  The meeting went badly after Oppenheimer said he felt he had "blood on my hands;” this remark infuriated Truman, who later told his Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, "I don't want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.”

Oppenheimer became famous because of his role in the Manhattan Project.  In a speech before leaving the Manhattan Project, he warned of the dangers of wars fought with atomic bombs, which he called “a most terrible weapon.” 

Riding the crest of his newfound fame, Oppenheimer considered offers to teach at many universities before deciding on Caltech.  Oppenheimer resigned his position at Los Alamos on October 16, 1945, and in November, the Oppenheimer family left Los Alamos and moved to Pasadena.

Post War Activities: 1946 - 1952

Following the war, public opinion about the use of the atomic bomb wavered.   However, Oppenheimer was hailed as a national hero by many and, in 1946, was awarded a Medal for Merit by President Truman.

Institute for Advanced Study. Oppenheimer soon found that his heart was no longer in teaching.  In 1947, he accepted the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  For almost 20 years, at Princeton, Oppenheimer brought together intellectuals at the height of their powers and from a variety of disciplines to discuss the most pertinent questions of the age.  He directed and encouraged the research of many well-known scientists.  He stimulated discussion and research on quantum and relativistic physics.  He also instituted temporary memberships for scholars from the humanities.  Oppenheimer retired from the Institute in 1966.

Albert Einstein’s 70th birthday party at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, 1949.  Einstein at right center; Oppenheimer two positions to his left.

 

Note:  Between 1946 and 1950, Oppenheimer co-authored a paper with Hans Bethe, published three additional short physics papers, and one paper on biophysics.  After 1950 (age 46), he never published another scientific paper.

Atomic Energy Commission / General Advisory Committee. In 1946, a civilian agency, the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), took over the responsibility for overseeing nuclear weapons development and the peaceful uses of atomic energy.  Oppenheimer was appointed Chairman of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) to the AEC, serving from 1947 to 1952.  It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb - that was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb.  From this position, he advised on a number of nuclear-related issues, including project funding, laboratory construction, and even international policy.  As chairman of the GAC, Oppenheimer lobbied vigorously for funding for basic science, and attempted to influence policy away from a heated arms race and toward international arms control.

The first atomic bomb test by the Soviet Union in August 1949 came earlier than Americans expected, and over the next several months, there was an intense debate within the U.S. government, military, and scientific communities over whether to proceed with the development of the far more powerful, nuclear fusion-based hydrogen bomb. 

In October 1949, Oppenheimer and the GAC recommended against the development of the hydrogen bomb.  He and the other GAC members were motivated partly by ethical concerns, feeling that such a weapon if used could only result in millions of deaths.  They also had practical qualms, as there was no workable design for a hydrogen bomb at the time.  Regarding the possibility of the Soviet Union developing a thermonuclear weapon, the GAC felt that the United States could have an adequate stockpile of atomic weapons to retaliate against any thermonuclear attack

Oppenheimer vigorously opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb.

 

A majority of the AEC subsequently endorsed the GAC recommendation, and Oppenheimer thought that the fight against the hydrogen bomb would triumph, but proponents of the weapon lobbied the White House strongly.  On January 31, 1950, President Truman, who was predisposed to proceed with the development of the weapon anyway, made the formal decision to do so.  Oppenheimer and other GAC opponents of the project felt disheartened and considered resigning from the committee.  They stayed on, though their views on the hydrogen bomb were well known.

In 1951, Edward Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam developed what became known as the Teller-Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb. This new design seemed technically feasible and Oppenheimer officially acceded to the weapon's development, while still looking for ways in which its testing or deployment or use could be questioned.

Oppenheimer and other members of GAC who had opposed the H-bomb decision, left the GAC when their terms expired in August 1952.  Truman had declined to reappoint them, as he wanted new voices on the committee who were more in support of H-bomb development.  In addition, various opponents of Oppenheimer had communicated to Truman their desire that Oppenheimer leave the committee.

One of the issues that Oppenheimer felt was especially important was that the U.S. government practice less secrecy and more openness toward the American people about the realities of the nuclear balance and the dangers of nuclear warfare.  Oppenheimer presented his view on the lack of utility of ever-larger nuclear arsenals to the American public in a June 1953 article in Foreign Affairs, and it received attention in major American newspapers.

Oppenheimer Security Hearing: 1953 - 1954

The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had been following Oppenheimer since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a professor at Berkeley and had been close to members of the Communist Party, including his wife and brother.  He had been under close surveillance since the early 1940s, his home and office bugged, his phone tapped, and his mail opened.

The FBI furnished Oppenheimer's political enemies with evidence that intimated communist ties. These enemies included Lewis Strauss, an AEC commissioner who had long harbored resentment against Oppenheimer for his activity in opposing the hydrogen bomb, stifling Lewis’s participation in Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, and for his humiliation of Strauss before Congress some years earlier.  Strauss had expressed opposition to exporting radioactive isotopes to other nations, and Oppenheimer had called them "less important than electronic devices, but more important than, let us say, vitamins.”

In January 1953, President Eisenhower named Strauss as presidential atomic energy advisor.  Then in July 1953, Eisenhower named Strauss as chairman of the AEC.

The triggering event for Oppenheimer’s AEC security hearing happened on November 7, 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, when William Liscum Borden, a close confidant of Strauss and former executive director of Congress’s Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, sent Hoover a letter accusing Oppenheimer of having communist sympathies, saying that "more probably than not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union. 

The letter was passed on to President Eisenhower who didn’t necessarily believe the accusations, but felt compelled to move forward with an investigation, and on December 3, he ordered that a "blank wall" be placed between Oppenheimer and any government or military secrets.

On December 21, 1953, Strauss told Oppenheimer that his security clearance had been suspended, pending resolution of a series of charges outlined in a letter, and discussed his resigning by way of requesting termination of his consulting contract with the AEC.  Oppenheimer chose not to resign and requested a hearing instead.  

On April 12, 1954, a monthlong secret security hearing began during which Oppenheimer’s previous communist leanings and associations, views on U.S. nuclear policy, particularly his opposition to the H-bomb, and other personal transgressions were used to discredit him in a kangaroo court-style proceeding led by AEC lawyer Roger Robb.

The proceeding included a review of Oppenheimer testimony at a June 7, 1949 session of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that he had associations with the Communist Party USA in the 1930s.  He testified then that some of his students had been communists at the time they had worked with him at Berkeley.  Frank Oppenheimer and his wife Jackie testified before the HUAC that they had been members of the Communist Party USA.

Note: Frank Oppenheimer was subsequently fired from his University of Minnesota position.  Unable to find work in physics for many years, he became a cattle rancher in Colorado.  He later taught high school physics and was the founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium.

At his 1954 security clearance hearings, Robert Oppenheimer denied being 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.

Several high-level contemporaries of Oppenheimer were called to testify at the hearing, including Edward Teller, Ernest Lawrence, and General Leslie Groves - all offered opinion that Oppenheimer’s was loyal to the U.S government, but were aware of his past associations with Communist Party members.  There was no information presented to support a charge of treason.  In Teller’s case, there was obviously strong disagreement with Oppenheimer about the need for the hydrogen bomb, and Teller stated that he would be “more comfortable” with someone else advising U.S. nuclear weapon policy - a statement for which Teller was reviled by the scientific community for the rest of his life.

J. Robert Oppenheimer appearing before the AEC Security Hearing in 1954.

 

Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf.  But inconsistencies in his testimony and his erratic behavior on the stand - at one point saying he had given a "cock and bull story" and that this was because he "was an idiot" - convinced some that he was unstable and a possible security risk.  Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked one day before it was due to lapse anyway,  

Most in the scientific community were outraged at the treatment of Oppenheimer, and saw him as a martyr to McCarthyism, an eclectic liberal unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific work from academia into the military.

As a result, his contract as adviser to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was canceled. The Federation of American Scientists immediately came to his defense with a protest against the trial.  Oppenheimer was made the worldwide symbol of the scientist who, while trying to resolve the moral problems that arise from scientific discovery, becomes the victim of a witch hunt.

Final Years:  1954 - 1967

The result of the security hearing came to define Oppenheimer for the rest of his life, with Oppenheimer’s close friend and fellow physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi later saying that, “[Oppenheimer] was a man of peace and they destroyed him.  He was a man of science and they destroyed this man.  A small, mean group.”

In the long run, Lewis Strauss’s vendetta against Oppenheimer backfired; the unclassified transcript of the hearing revealed the inquisitional character of the hearing, and the corruption of justice during the McCarthy period.  Within four years, the transcript would destroy the reputation and government career of Lewis Strauss.

Beginning in 1954, Robert Oppenheimer and his family spent several months each year living on the tiny island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, where they relished this self-imposed exile.

Revoking his clearance stripped Oppenheimer of political power and influence.  He stayed on as director of the Institute for Advanced Study until 1966, spending the last years of his life working out ideas on the relationship between science and society.

Oppenheimer's first public appearance following the stripping of his security clearance was a lecture titled "Prospects in the Arts and Sciences" for the Columbia University Bicentennial radio show Man's Right to Knowledge, in which he outlined his philosophy and his thoughts on the role of science in the modern world.  

Oppenheimer was increasingly concerned about the potential danger that scientific inventions could pose to humanity.  He joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and other eminent scientists and academics to establish what would eventually, in 1960, become the World Academy of Art and Science.  Significantly, after his public humiliation, he did not sign the major open protests against nuclear weapons of the 1950s, nor attend scientific protest conferences.

In his speeches and public writings, Oppenheimer continually stressed the difficulty of managing the power of knowledge in a world in which the freedom of science to exchange ideas was more and more hobbled by political concerns. 

In 1955, Oppenheimer published The Open Mind, a collection of eight lectures that he had given since 1946 on the subject of nuclear weapons and popular culture.  Oppenheimer rejected the idea of nuclear gunboat diplomacy.  "The purposes of this country in the field of foreign policy,” he wrote, "cannot in any real or enduring way be achieved by coercion.”

Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work on physics.  He toured Europe and Japan, giving talks about the history of science, the role of science in society, and the nature of the universe.  

In 1963, President John Kennedy intended to present Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award, as a gesture of political rehabilitation, "for contributions to theoretical physics as a teacher and originator of ideas, and for leadership of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the atomic energy program during critical years.”  Kennedy was assassinated before he could present the award; new President Lyndon Johnson followed through with the presentation of the award.

Oppenheimer receives the Enrico Fermi award from President Lyndon Johnson in 1963.

 

Oppenheimer, who was a chain smoker, was diagnosed with throat cancer in late 1965.  After inconclusive surgery, he underwent unsuccessful radiation treatment and chemotherapy late in 1966.  On February 18, 1967, three days after falling into a coma, Oppenheimer died at his home in Princeton, aged 62.

Note:  Katherine and Robert Oppenheimer remained married until Oppenheimer’s death in 1967 - despite his relationship with Jean Tatlock and rumored romantic entanglements with other women.  Though she was a volatile person of difficult moods, Katherine loved and   loyally supported her husband through thick and thin.  She remained by his side throughout the 1954 AEC hearing, and was one of his steadfast defenders.

A memorial service for Oppenheimer was held at Alexander Hall on the campus of Princeton University. The service was attended by 600 of his scientific, political, and military associates.  His brother Frank and the rest of his family were there. 

Oppenheimers body was cremated, and his wife Katherine, as Oppenheimer had wanted, took his remains to St. John Island, and dropped the urn into Hawksnest Bay.

In 2014, 60 years after the proceedings that effectively ended Oppenheimer’s career, the U.S. Department of Energy released the full, declassified transcript of the 1954 hearing.  While many of the details were already known, the newly released material bolstered Oppenheimer’s assertions of loyalty and reinforced the perception that a brilliant scientist had been brought low by a bureaucratic cocktail of professional jealousy and McCarthyism. 

On December 16, 2022, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm formally vacated the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance.  Her statement said, "In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission revoked Dr. Oppenheimer's security clearance through a flawed process that violated the Commission's own regulations.  As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to, while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed.”

Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics three times, in 1946, 1951, and 1967, but never won.  Observers such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez have suggested that if he had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, Oppenheimer 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 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.  

Legacy

J. Robert Oppenheimer is the subject of many biographies, including American Prometheus (2005) by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The 1980 BBC TV serial Oppenheimer, starring Sam Waterston, won three BAFTA Television Awards. The Day After Trinity, a 1980 documentary about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, was nominated for an Academy Award and received a Peabody Award.  Oppenheimer's life is explored in Tom Morton-Smith's 2015 play Oppenheimer, and the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy, where he was portrayed by Dwight Schultz.  In the same year, David Strathairn played Oppenheimer in the TV movie Day One. In the 2023 American film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and based on American Prometheus, Oppenheimer is portrayed by actor Cillian Murphy.

On July21, 2023, the new movie Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy, was released.

 

A centennial conference about Oppenheimer's legacy was held in 2004 at the University of California, Berkeley, alongside a digital exhibition on his life, with the conference proceedings published in 2005 as Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections.  His papers are in the Library of Congress.

As a scientist, Oppenheimer was remembered by his students and colleagues as a brilliant researcher and engaging teacher who founded modern theoretical physics in the United States.

"More than any other man", Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Han Bethe wrote, "he was responsible for raising American theoretical physics from a provincial adjunct of Europe to world leadership". 

Because his scientific attentions often changed rapidly, he never worked long enough on any one topic and carried it to fruition to merit the Nobel Prize, though his investigations contributing to the theory of black holes might have warranted the prize had he lived long enough to see them brought to fruition by later astrophysicists.  An asteroid, 67085 Oppenheimer, was named in his honor on January 4, 2000, as was the lunar crater Oppenheimer in 1970.

As a military and public policy advisor, Oppenheimer was a technocratic leader in a shift in the interactions between science and the military, and in the emergence of "big science.”  During World War II, scientists became involved in military research to an unprecedented degree.  Because of the threat fascism posed to Western civilization, they volunteered in great numbers for technological, and organizational, assistance to the Allied effort, resulting in powerful tools such as radar, the proximity fuse, and operations research. As a cultured, intellectual, theoretical physicist who became a disciplined military organizer, Oppenheimer represented the shift away from the idea that scientists had their "heads in the clouds" and that knowledge of esoteric subjects like the composition of the atomic nucleus had no "real-world" applications.

Two days before the Trinity test, Oppenheimer expressed his hopes and fears in a quotation from Bhartṛhari's Śatakatraya:

In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains,
On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him.

 

 

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