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Robert Oppenheimer



Oppenheimer eventually took over Einstein's position at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Oppenheimer eventually took over Einstein's position at the Institute for Advanced Study.

In 1947, Oppenheimer left Berkeley, citing difficulties with the administration during the war, and took up the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. He later held Albert Einstein's old position of senior professor of theoretical physics.[14]

After 1953, deprived of political power, 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. On 3 May 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1963, at the urging of many of Oppenheimer's political friends who had ascended to power, President John F. Kennedy awarded Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation. Edward Teller, the winner of the previous year's award, had also recommended Oppenheimer receive it. A little over a week after Kennedy's assassination, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, presented Oppenheimer with the award, "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". Oppenheimer told Johnson: "I think it is just possible, Mr. President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this award today."[55] The rehabilitation implied by the award was partly symbolic, as Oppenheimer still lacked a security clearance and could have no effect on official policy, but the award came with a $50,000 tax free stipend, and its award to Oppenheimer outraged many prominent Republicans in Congress. The late President Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, still living in the White House, made it a point to meet with Oppenheimer to tell him how much her husband had wanted him to have the medal. While still a congressman in 1959, JFK had been instrumental in voting to narrowly deny Oppenheimer's enemy Lewis Strauss, a coveted government position as Secretary of Commerce, effectively ending Strauss' political career. This was partly due to lobbying on the basis of the scientific community on behalf of Oppenheimer, as was the Fermi prize later.

In his final years, Oppenheimer continued his work at the Institute for Advanced Study, bringing together intellectuals at the height of their powers and from a variety of disciplines to solve the most pertinent questions of the age. He directed and encouraged the research of many well-known scientists, including Freeman Dyson, and the duo of Yang and Lee, who won a Nobel Prize for their discovery of parity non-conservation. He also instituted temporary memberships for scholars from the humanities, such as T. S. Eliot and George Kennan. Some of these activities were resented by a few members of the mathematics faculty, who wanted the institute to stay a bastion of pure scientific research. Abraham Pais said that Oppenheimer himself thought that one of his failures at the institute was a failure to bring together scholars from the natural sciences and the humanities.

Oppenheimer's lectures in America, Europe, and Canada were published in a number of books. Still, he thought the effort had little effect on actual policy.

[

Final years

Oppenheimer Beach, in St John, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Oppenheimer Beach, in St John, U.S. Virgin Islands.

After the 1954 security hearings, Oppenheimer started to retreat to a simpler life. In 1957, he purchased a piece of land on Gibney Beach in the island of St John in the Virgin Islands. He built a spartan vacation home on the beach, where he would spend holidays, usually months at a time, with his wife Kitty. Oppenheimer also spent a considerable amount of time sailing with his wife.

Increasingly concerned about the potential danger to humanity arising from scientific discoveries, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat and other eminent scientists and academics to establish what would eventually become the World Academy of Art and Science in 1960. Significantly, however, after his public humiliation, Oppenheimer did not sign the major open protests against nuclear weapons of the 1950s, including the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955. He also did not attend the first Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in 1957, though invited. However, 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.[56]

A chain-smoker since adulthood, Robert Oppenheimer was diagnosed with throat cancer in late 1965, and after inconclusive surgery, underwent radiation treatment by cobalt gamma rays and high energy electrons, then finally chemotherapy late in 1966. These were not curative, and the tumor spread to his palate, affecting his swallowing, hearing, and breathing.[56] He died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey in February 1967, at age 62. His funeral was attended by many of his scientific, political, and military associates, and eulogies were delivered by Hans Bethe and George F. Kennan among others. He was cremated and his wife placed his ashes in an urn and dropped them into the sea, within sight of the coast at the location of his beach house.[57]

Upon the death of Mrs. Oppenheimer (Kitty died of an intestinal infection complicated by pulmonary embolism in October 1972), Oppenheimer's ranch in New Mexico was inherited by his son Peter, while the beach property in St. John was inherited by their daughter Toni. Toni, who had been refused security clearance for her chosen vocation as a U.N. translator, committed suicide by hanging in the beach house in St. John in January 1977, and left it in her will to "the people of St. John for a public park and recreation area."[58] The original house, built too close to the coast, succumbed to a hurricane, but today, the Virgin Islands Government maintains a Community Center in the area, which can be rented. The northern portion of the beach is colloquially known to this day as "Oppenheimer Beach".[59]

[

Legacy

As a scientist, Oppenheimer is remembered by his students and colleagues as being a brilliant researcher and engaging teacher, the founder of modern theoretical physics in the United States.[60] Many have asked why Oppenheimer never won a Nobel Prize. Scholars respond that his scientific attentions often changed rapidly and he never worked long enough on any one topic to achieve enough headway to merit the Nobel Prize.[61][62] His lack of a Prize would not be odd (many great scientists never won Nobel Prizes) had not so many of his associates (Einstein, Fermi, Bethe, Lawrence, Dirac, Rabi, Feynman, etc.) won them. Some scientists and historians have speculated that his investigations towards black holes may have warranted the Nobel, had he lived long enough to see them brought into fruition by later astrophysicists.[15]

Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves, shortly after the war.
Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves, shortly after the war.

As a military and public policy advisor, Oppenheimer was a technocratic leader in a shift in the interactions between science and the military and the emergence of "Big Science." During World War II, scientists became involved in military research to an unprecedented degree (some research of this sort had occurred during World War I, but it was far smaller in scope). Because of the threat Fascism posed to Western civilization, scientists volunteered in great numbers both for technological and organizational assistance to the Allied effort, resulting in such powerful tools 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 "head in the clouds" and that knowledge on such previously esoteric subjects as the composition of the atomic nucleus had no "real-world" applications.[63]

When Oppenheimer was ejected from his position of political influence in 1954, he symbolized for many the folly of scientists thinking they could control how others would use their research. Oppenheimer has been seen as symbolizing the dilemmas involving the moral responsibility of the scientist in the nuclear world.[63]

Most popular depictions of Oppenheimer view his security struggles as a confrontation between right-wing militarists (symbolized by Edward Teller) and left-wing intellectuals (symbolized by Oppenheimer) over the moral question of weapons of mass destruction. Many historians have contested this as an oversimplification.[64] The hearings were motivated both by politics, as Oppenheimer was seen as a representative of the previous administration, and also by personal considerations stemming from his enmity with Lewis Strauss.[50] Furthermore, the ostensible reason for the hearing and the issue that aligned Oppenheimer with the liberal intellectuals, Oppenheimer's opposition to hydrogen bomb development, was based as much on technical grounds as on moral ones. Once the technical considerations were resolved, he supported "the Super" because he believed that the Soviet Union too would inevitably construct one. Nevertheless, the trope of Oppenheimer as a martyr has proven indelible, and to speak of Oppenheimer has often been to speak of the limits of science and politics; however, more complicated is the actual history.

One particular example of the view of Oppenheimer as martyr is found in German playwright Heinar Kipphardt's 1964 play, In the Matter J. Robert Oppenheimer. Even Oppenheimer himself had difficulty with this portrayal—after reading a transcript of Kipphardt's play soon after it began to be performed, Oppenheimer threatened to sue the playwright.[65] Later he told an interviewer:

“ The whole damn thing [his security hearing] was a farce, and these people are trying to make a tragedy out of it. ... I had never said that I had regretted participating in a responsible way in the making of the bomb. I said that perhaps he [Kipphardt] had forgotten Guernica, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Dachau, Warsaw, and Tokyo; but I had not, and that if he found it so difficult to understand, he should write a play about something else.[66] ”
Oppenheimer, Groves, and others at the site of the Trinity test shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oppenheimer, Groves, and others at the site of the Trinity test shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Despite Oppenheimer's remorseful, or at least conflicted, attitudes, Oppenheimer was a vocal supporter of using the first atomic weapons on "built-up areas" in the days before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather than consistently opposing the "Red-baiting" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, he had testified against many of his former colleagues and students, both before and during his hearing. In one incident, Oppenheimer's damning testimony against former student Bernard Peters was selectively leaked to the press. Historians have interpreted this as an attempt by Oppenheimer to please his colleagues in the government (and perhaps to divert attention from his own previous left-wing ties and especially from those of his brother, who had earlier been a target of the anti-Red lobby). In the end it became a liability: under cross-examination, it became clear that if Oppenheimer had really doubted Peters' loyalty, then his recommending him for the Manhattan Project was reckless, or at least contradictory.[67]

The question of the scientists' responsibility towards humanity, so manifest in the dropping of the atomic bombs and Oppenheimer's public questioning, in addition to Kipphardt's play, inspired Bertolt Brecht's drama Galileo (from 1955), left its imprint on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker, and is the basis of the opera Doctor Atomic by John Adams (2005), which portrays Oppenheimer as a modern Faust.

[

Works

  • Science and the Common Understanding (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954).
  • The Open Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955).
  • The flying trapeze: Three crises for physicists (London: Oxford University Press, 1964).
  • Uncommon sense (Cambridge, MA: Birkhäuser Boston, 1984). (posthumous)
  • Atom and void: Essays on science and community (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). (posthumous)

[

See also

[

Notes

  1. ^ Smith 1980, p. 1
  2. ^ Goodchild, Peter (1981). J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 
  3. ^ Hijiya, James A. (June 2000). "The Gita of Robert Oppenheimer". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144 (2). 
  4. ^ Michelmore, Peter (1969). The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story. Dodd, Mead and Company. 
  5. ^ "The Eternal Apprentice", Time, 1948-11-08. Retrieved on 2008-05-23. 
  6. ^ Hager, Thomas (1995). Force of Nature: The life of Linus Pauling. Simon & Schuster. 
  7. ^ The Early Years. University of California, Berkeley (2004). Retrieved on 2008-05-23.
  8. ^ Conant, Jennet (2005). 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. Simon & Schuster, 75. 
  9. ^ a b Bethe, Hans (1997). J. Robert Oppenheimer. United States National Academy of Sciences.
  10. ^ Smith 1980, p. 135
  11. ^ Smith 1980, p. 91
  12. ^ Herken 2002, pp. 14–15
  13. ^ Pais 2006, pp. 126–127
  14. ^ a b Rhodes, Richard. ""I AM BECOME DEATH..." The Agony of J. Robert Oppenheimer", American Heritage, October 1977. Retrieved on 2008-05-23. 
  15. ^ a b Kelly, Cynthia C. (2006). Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. New Jersey: World Scientific, 128. ISBN 9812564187. 
  16. ^ Feldman, Burton (2000). The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige. Arcade Publishing, 196–198. ISBN 155970537X. 
  17. ^ Carson 2005, pp. 31–47
  18. ^ Pais 2006, p. 33
  19. ^ Bird 2005
  20. ^ Herken, Gregg (2005-03-25). The Oppenheimer Case: An Exchange. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved on 2008-05-23.
  21. ^ The Brothers. Time (1949-06-27). Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  22. ^ FBI file: Katherine Oppenheimer (PDF). Federal Bureau of Investigation (1944-05-23). Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  23. ^ A Life. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  24. ^ Herken 2002
  25. ^ Haynes, John Earl (2006). Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 147. 
  26. ^ Findings and Recommendations of the Personnel Security Board in the Matter of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. United States Atomic Energy Commission (1954-05-27). Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  27. ^ J. Robert Oppenheimer, (1904 - 1967). Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  28. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. (1954-03-04). Oppenheimer's Letter of Response on Letter Regarding the Oppenheimer Affair. Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  29. ^ Strout, Cushing (1963). Conscience, Science and Security: The Case of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Chicago: Rand McNally, 4. 
  30. ^ Herken, Gregg (2002). Chevalier to Oppenheimer, July 23, 1964. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller.
  31. ^ Herken, Gregg (2002). Excerpts from Barbara Chevalier's unpublished manuscript. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller.
  32. ^ Herken, Gregg (2002). Excerpts from Gordon Griffith's unpublished memoir. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller.
  33. ^ Schweber, S. S. (September 2004). "A Puzzle of a Man". American Scientist 2 (5). 
  34. ^ (1941-03-28) "Sec. 1", FBI file: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Internal Security - C. 
  35. ^ (1941-05-27) "Sec. 1", FBI file: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Internal Security - C. 
  36. ^ (1943-12-02) "Section 1", FBI File: J. Robert Oppenheimer. 
  37. ^ Benson, Robert L.. The Venona Story. National Security Agency, 41. 
  38. ^ a b Schecter, Jerrold (2002). Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 49–50. ISBN 1-57488-327-5. 
  39. ^ Carson 2005
  40. ^ Bird 2005
  41. ^ a b Bird 2005
  42. ^ Smith 1980, p. 227
  43. ^ Herken 2002, pp. 101–102
  44. ^ Herken 2002, p. 102
  45. ^ Herken 2002, p. 119
  46. ^ J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Trinity test (1965). Atomic Archive. Retrieved on 2008-05-23.
  47. ^ Ferenc M. Szasz, The Day the Sun Rose Twice (University of New Mexico Press, 1984): 88.
  48. ^ Polenberg 2002, pp. 110–111
  49. ^ McMillan 2005
  50. ^ a b c McMillan 2005
  51. ^ Crouch, Paul (1953-09-15). Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee in Government Operations, Eighty-Third Congress, First Session, Vol. 3 (PDF). United States Senate.
  52. ^ Polenberg 2002
  53. ^ Carson 2005, pp. 267–272
  54. ^ Bethe, Hans (1991). The Road from Los Alamos. Springer Science+Business Media, 27. 
  55. ^ "Tales of the Bomb", Time, 1968-10-04. Retrieved on 2008-05-23. 
  56. ^ a b Bird 2005
  57. ^ Bird 2005, p. 588
  58. ^ Gibney Beach, St. John US Virgin Islands (2000). Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  59. ^ Gibney Beach. St. John's Beach Guide. Retrieved on 2008-05-22.
  60. ^ Pais 2006
  61. ^ Cassidy, David (2004). J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. Pi Press. ISBN 0-13-147996-2. 
  62. ^ Carson 2005, pp. 13–29
  63. ^ a b Thorpe, Charles (2002). "Disciplining Experts: Scientific Authority and Liberal Democracy in the Oppenheimer Case". Social Studies of Science 32 (4): 525–562. 
  64. ^ Carson 2005, §intro
  65. ^ "The character speaks out", Time, 1964-11-20. Retrieved on 2008-05-23. 
  66. ^ Seagrave, Sterling. "Play about him draws protests of Oppenheimer", The Washington Post, 1964-11-09, p. B8. 
  67. ^ Schweber, S.S. (2000). In the shadow of the bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the moral responsibility of the scientist. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

[

References

[

Further reading

  • Thorpe, Charles. Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect (University Of Chicago Press, 2006) ISBN 0-226-79845-3
  • Cassidy, David C. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (New York: Pi Press, 2005). ISBN 0-13-147996-2
  • Davis, Nuel Pharr. Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968).
  • Hijiya, James A. "The Gita of Robert Oppenheimer" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 144:2 (June 2000).[1] (on Oppenheimer's famous quote)
  • Michelmore, Peter. The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (Dodd Mead, 1969) ISBN 0-396-06024-2
  • Romerstein, Herbert and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000
  • Rummel, Jack. Robert Oppenheimer: Dark Prince (New York: Facts on File, 1992). ISBN 0-8160-2598-3
  • Schweber, S.S. In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-691-04989-0
  • Schweber, S.S. "J. Robert Oppenheimer: Proteus Unbound", Science in Context 16 (1/2), 219–242, 2003 (abstract, Retrieved on 2007-03-13)
  • U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Washington, D.C.: 1954).
  • York, Herbert. The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).

[

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Persondata
NAME Oppenheimer, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH New York, New York
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1967
PLACE OF DEATH Princeton, New Jersey




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