J. Robert Oppenheimer
A Prometheus in Chains
by Nathaniel Eiseman, Kevin Hoang, and Mark O’Donnell
Remembered today as the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer is best known
as the director of the Manhattan Project—an operation that resulted in the deaths of
hundreds of thousands. But his resolute determination to share atomic secrets with the rest
of the world to prevent an arms race, his attempts to thwart the development of the
hydrogen bomb, and the security hearings in which he sacrificed power for the sake of his
ideals seem to be forgotten.
When the atomic bomb left the realm of theory and entered the working United States
arsenal, Oppenheimer was no longer considered indispensable, and his red-baiting enemies
were determined to plot his ruin. He had the opportunity to surrender his security
clearances quietly and voluntarily. But his principles, forged from earliest childhood,
required him to see things “… as they might be.” So, even when given the choice of a facesaving surrender, he chose to face his enemies, with the result that he would be totally
barred from the field he had fathered.
The Young Man
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER was born on April 22, 1904 in the vibrant setting of Progressive Era New
York to Julius S. Oppenheimer and Ella Friedman. (Some contend that the “J” his name stands for
“Julius,” though Oppenheimer himself held that it stands “for nothing.”) Robert’s father was an
affluent importer of textiles who had immigrated to the United States in 1888, six years before Robert’s
birth. His mother, on the other hand, was a devoted artist. In addition to Robert, the face that would
come to define twentieth century physics and politics, Julius and Ella had one other son, Frank, eight
years after Robert’s birth on August 14, 1912. As Robert became more and more prominent as a
physicist, Frank Friedman Oppenheimer, also a physicist, became agitated by the indifference with
which he came to be treated. The public was more focused on his brother, whose name had become a
household word, and thus, Frank lived, in some senses, a second-rate existence. After a while, however,
the two reconciled and the rivalry ended, with Frank assisting Robert on key government projects,
including the Manhattan Project.
As Robert grew older, he enrolled at the Ethical Culture Society School, a school that valued experimental inquiry, open-minded thoughts—essentially, the scientific method. It was there where Oppenheimer
began many of his studies, ranging from romance languages to the mathematics and science that would
lay the foundations for his later discoveries. This school proved to be a great steppingstone for Oppenheimer, as he was accepted at Harvard College for undergraduate studies. But unfortunately, the
progress he would inevitably have made was impeded by a sudden case of colitis. As a result, instead of
continuing his studies at Harvard, he traveled to New Mexico with his former English teacher to study
and convalesce, with a new passion: horseback riding near the foot of the Rockies. Despite this setback,
Robert resumed his studies with a renewed dedication, graduating a year earlier than expected and
summa cum laude by taking six courses each term.
Robert was intending to major in chemistry; however, one fateful day,
he heard a lecture on thermodynamics by Percy Williams Bridgman,
renowned today for his work on the physics of high pressures. It was
instant love, and he quickly became inspired to dedicate his life to
physics. But to his dismay, physics was somewhat of a backwater the
U.S. and thus, Oppenheimer had no choice but to travel to Europe for
his postgraduate studies at Cavendish Laboratory in England under
J.J. Thomson, a prominent English physicist known today for his
discovery of the electron and isotopes. It was there that Oppenheimer
began to transition from the field of experimental physics to theoretical
physics. And so, he again transferred, this time to the University of
Gottingen, where he began to focus more on quantum theory. Some of
his prominent works while at Gottingen include the BornOppenheimer approximation, named after Max Born and Oppenheimer himself for their research differentiating electronic motion, nuclear vibrations, and molecular
rotation. After getting his Ph. D. at the early age of 22, Oppenheimer went back to study at Harvard
and then at California Institute of Technology. Before long, he was hired as an assistant professor at
University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer’s educational success and inquisitive mind were so
great that during an oral exam, his examiner, James Franck, became frightened when Oppenheimer
began to ask him questions.
After impressing his mentors and educators in the United States, Oppenheimer left the U.S. with his
eyes set on the University of Leiden in the Netherlands where he gave lectures in Dutch. The Dutch
were so awed by his intellect and charisma that they gave him the nickname Opje. Following his lectures
in the Netherlands, Oppenheimer departed for Switzerland where he worked alongside one of his idols,
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, an Austrian theoretical physicist noted for his works on the physics of spin and
the Exclusion principle.
Following his around-the-world lectures, Oppenheimer returned to the U.S. where he worked on a
variety of topics in physics—theoretical astrophysics, quantum field theory, spectroscopy, cosmic ray
showers, to name a few. One of the more obscure topics involved the existence of black holes, which we
still know little about today. Known today as the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, Oppenheimer
proved that there was a limit to a star’s size, suggesting that stars would not live forever, eventually
collapsing under the force of their own gravity. Even if he had never worked on the atomic bomb and
even if he never did win the Nobel Prize in physics (probably because his work was fifty years ahead of
its time), Oppenheimer would still be known as one of the brightest luminaries of 20th century physics.
The Manhattan Project
COSTING A TOTAL of two billion 1945 dollars (over twenty billon, adjusted for inflation) and employing over 130,000 people, including renowned scientist Albert Einstein, the Manhattan Project spanned
from 1942 to 1946 and was directed under Robert J. Oppenheimer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
and General Leslie R. Groves. Aside from the main weapons research and design labs at Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico, at which Groves and Oppenheimer worked, there were other sites
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in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, including the Hanford Site in Washington
state, a facility in charge of plutonium production, and the site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in charge of
uranium production. The Manhattan Project was created to serve the military interests of both the
United States and the United Kingdom, with the Soviet Union excluded from the atomic bomb development during World War II. It would later prove a futile effort to retain such critical secrets from
Russia, as multiple spies were found working at the Project. These included Allan May, Julius and
Ethal Rosenberg, and David Greenglass, and most notoriously, Klaus Emil Fuchs, whose leakage of
bomb secrets allowed the Russians to expedite their bomb development two to five years ahead of what
was expected according to U.S. Intelligence.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, physics was blessed with discovery upon discovery.
Integral to the design and construction of the atomic bomb was the discovery of the nuclear representation of an atom. By 1932, scientists knew that an atom consisted of a small, dense nucleus, composed of
protons and neutrons, surrounded by a ring of electrons.
Another important breakthrough was radioactivity, first discovered by a French scientist named Henri
Becquerel. While experimenting on phosphorescent materials, he inferred that x-rays were somehow
transferring energy to the glowing phosphorescent material. Bacquerel tested his new idea by wrapping
a photographic plate in black paper and exposing it to various phosphorescent minerals. Nothing
happened until he placed uranium salts on the plate, which immediately caused it to blacken. He
quickly realized that a new form of radiation had been discovered that effortlessly went through the
wrapped paper, and blackened the photographic plate.
The discovery of uranium was also crucial to the creation of the atomic bomb. This discovery is attributed to a German pharmacist by the name of Martin Heinrich Klaproth. By dissolving pitchblende, a
type of uranium ore, in nitric acid and mixing the solution with sodium hydroxide, Klaproth produced a
yellow substance. Heating this substance with charcoal, Klaproth obtained a black powder—an oxide of
uranium. He named this newly-discovered oxide after the planet Uranus.
After the discovery of uranium, it was only a matter of time before scientists developed the theory of
nuclear fission. In Berlin, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman believed that the fission of
uranium could produce binding energy. These chemists correctly concluded that the bombarding of
neutrons into uranium could release an immense amount of energy and more neutrons. In the United
States as well, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi led a team of scientists at the University of Chicago that
developed the first nuclear reactor. On December 2, 1942, the team began the first artificial nuclear
reaction by combining 400 tons of graphite, 58 tons of uranium oxide, and 6 tons of uranium metal.
Fermi’s revolutionary works led to new ideas concerning human control of the newfound power—both
as an energy source and as a weapon more powerful than anything the world had ever seen. Contemporaneous to Fermi’s research, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard realized, as he walked down the street,
that if more neutrons were released than the amount required to start the process, the process of uranium
nuclear fission might expand and continue, producing a self-sustaining reaction. After a few experiments, Szilard realized that the fission of uranium released an average of two neutrons. He kept this
vital information secret for quite some time, however, careful so as to keep the fascist governments from
harnessing such potentially disastrous power.
In February 1941, Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium, another radioactive metal. Plutonium was the
product of uranium-238 absorbing a neutron that had been released by uranium-235 during nuclear
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fission. Despite the mystery surrounding the properties of plutonium at first, scientists hoped that the
newfound element could serve as a second fissile substance. Plutonium did, indeed, prove viable in
nuclear weapons. When the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan—a
plutonium bomb—the explosive force equaled approximately 21,000 tons of TNT.
While discoveries in physics made nuclear fission and the atomic bomb possible, the fear that Germany
and the Axis Powers could themselves develop an atomic bomb was a growing concern. This fear was
motivation enough for the U.S. to start its own nuclear campaign. By 1942, U.S. intelligence had
suggested that the Germans were developing their own weapons of mass destruction; an arms race
against Germany had begun. Because Britain was under constant German attack from the air, President
Truman and Prime Minister Churchill agreed to carry on the development of the atomic bombs in the
United States. Employing luminaries in all fields of science in what was code-named the Manhattan
Project, the United States and England embarked on a project whose purpose, many thought, was never
to be fulfilled.
As World War II escalated, Oppenheimer became more and more involved in the research and development of the atomic bomb that was, at that time, being conducted at Berkeley. Initially, Oppenheimer
was responsible solely for neutron calculations, but as the Manhattan Project progressed, U.S. Army
General Groves decided to appoint him project director. He knew that Oppenheimer’s charismatic
personality made him the only man that could successfully lead the diverse group of physicists in the
newly-built, clandestine lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was there that Oppenheimer worked long
hours, day and night, perfecting the atomic bomb, all the while, under constant scrutiny by FBI agents
and security. In trying to assemble a group of the finest, most qualified scientists, “[Groves] believed
that Oppenheimer was endangering security by recruiting ‘questionable people’ at Los Alamos,” (Bird
and Sherwin). Even though Oppenheimer was the mastermind of the lab, many people accused him of
engaging in dangerously left-wing activities. Nevertheless, President Truman was, throughout the
Manhattan Project, willing to overlook this side of Oppenheimer, for he was more concerned about the
bomb’s ability to end the war than with Oppenheimer’s political views.
The first nuclear explosion, which Oppenheimer designated the
“Trinity” test, took place on July 16, 1945 near Alamogordo, New
Mexico. At 5:10 a.m., the twenty-minute countdown began. At
5:29:45, the nuclear weapon exploded, releasing an amount of energy
equivalent to the explosion of nineteen kilotons of TNT. The bomb’s
explosive force was so great that its detonation created a crater of
radioactive glass, now called trinitite, three meters deep in the desert.
It was also reported that the nearby mountains were for a split second
illuminated with a light brighter than the sun. Colors of purple, to
green, and ultimately to white emanated from the explosion. The
sound could be heard over a hundred miles away. As Oppenheimer
watched what would be the first of many nuclear tests, he said,
quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer
of worlds.” The U.S. had “spent two billion dollars on the greatest
scientific gamble in history—and won.”
The greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains
in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a
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workable plan. […] Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which
achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly
short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the
greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under pressure and without failure. (Stimson)
—President Harry Truman, August 6, 1945
A Fact of Life
As the United States debated whether or not to abandon its neutrality and join the side of the Allied
Powers, the entire U.S. Pacific fleet was attacked unexpectedly by Japan in the early morning hours on
December 7, 1941. This surprise attack killed over 2,400 American sailors and wounded countless
others. Eight battleships were either sunk or severely damaged by the Japanese attack under the
command of Japanese general Hideki Tojo. By employing such an malicious plan, Tojo provided
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s a way to enter the war alongside the Allies.
Even after the U.S. won two key naval battles—the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, in May 1942 and
June 1942, respectively—and decrypted their military code, the Japanese were not about to back down,
as they continued to fight gruesomely in several other bloody battles between 1943 and 1945. As
American warships came closer and closer, the Japanese grew more and more desperate—so desperate
that sending suicide bombers into U.S. warships became a valid means of warfare. When President
Truman received the news of such inconceivably inhumane military practice, he realized that the only
way to end the war would be to invade Japan. But he did not want to jeopardize the lives of the thousands of Americans it would take for a successful invasion. As a result, his only viable option was to use
nuclear weapons on Japan. Before doing so, however, the representatives of the Allies convened at
Potsdam, Germany and decided to give Japan one final warning to submit to an unconditional surrender. Japan was unwilling. On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul Tibetts dropped the first atomic bomb
used in war—a uranium bomb named “Little Boy”—from the Enola Gay over the industrial city of
Hiroshima, killing over 80,000 civilians instantly. Countless others were condemned to a slow, painful
death due to the radiation. With the Japanese still unwilling to surrender, the Allies dropped a second
bomb—specifically a plutonium bomb called “Fat Man”—dropped three days later, on Nagasaki.
Another 60,000 civilians were incinerated instantly. Because most of the Japanese homes and buildings
were made of wood, the nuclear explosion acted also as an incendiary bomb, and city burned for miles
around the blast. Finally, on September 2, 1945, Emperor Hirohito authorized a surrender, despite his
fears that his ultra-nationalistic generals would carry out a coup d’état.
On August 9, 1949, just four years after the “Fat Man” bomb, Russia developed its own nuclear
weapons. Suddenly, both the United States and Russia had the capabilities and the resources to attack
one another by means of nuclear warfare. These conditions led to the military doctrine of Mutual
Assured Destruction, or MAD. MAD essentially stated that if one nation with a large arsenal of
nuclear weapons were to fire upon another nation with the same military capabilities, the second nation
would respond in the same manner, causing the destruction of both the attacker and the defender.
The basic idea of MAD is that the certainty of catastrophic retaliation will stop anybody from starting a nuclear
war. It will indeed stop anybody who is cool and rational and in firm command of his own forces. If somebody is
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not cool and rational and not in firm command, then what? Then we trust to luck and hope for the best. If our
luck turns sour, our missiles take off and carry out the greatest massacre of innocent people in all of history.
—Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe
Before long, nations struck nuclear arms agreements, supported by the public’s fear of mutual destruction. One of such agreements was the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and
the Soviet Union on July 31, 1991. This treaty ensured that both the U.S. and the USSR would not
stockpile more than six thousand nuclear warheads. While the race for more nuclear weapons of mass
destruction seemed inevitable, America tried at least to delay it.
Oppenheimer’s discoveries left rippling effects for centuries later. By
winning the war against Japan, Oppenheimer solved one dilemma, but
created another. In developing the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer opened
what could be described as Pandora’s Box. During the 1950s, schoolchildren were taught to take cover under their desks in case of a nuclear
attack. An increasing number of developing nations are pursuing
nuclear weapons technology. And what if they, as Dyson said, are not in
firm command of their forces? Even today, films about the military
industrial complex and nuclear energy are part of popular culture. Clint
Eastwood’s films, Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, and Jarecki’s movie,
Why We Fight, are just a few examples. The U.S. military-industrial
complex will be a part of future generations until it gets blown off the
face of the earth by someone else’s. As President Eisenhower had said
in his farewell address: “We must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists and will persist.” (Jarecki)
The Hydrogen Bomb
On the technical side,…the super is not very different from what it was when we first spoke of it more than seven
years ago—a weapon of unknown design, cost, deliverability and military value…
What concerns me is not really the technical problem. I am not sure the miserable thing will work, nor that it can
be gotten to a target except by ox cart. It seems likely to me even further to worsen the unbalance of our present
war plans.
—Robert Oppenheimer, letter to James Conant, October 21, 1949
ON OCTOBER 29, 1949, the eight members of the Atomic Energy Commission’s General Advisory
Council met in Washington to discuss the fate of a proposed all-out effort to research the hydrogen
bomb. The eight scientists arrived with no clear consensus, but after mere hours of debate, GAC
chairman Oppenheimer and Conant, both adamantly opposed to the development of the H-bomb, had
won over the other council members. In a unanimous 8–0 decision, the council voted to recommend to
President Truman not to fund any H-bomb research, issuing three documents to the president. The
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majority opinion, signed by all present, stated that “We all hope that by one means or another, the
development of these weapons can be avoided.” A concurring opinion, signed by six GAC members
warned, in addition, that “a super bomb might become a weapon of genocide,” and that “a super bomb
should never be produced.” A second concurring statement written by GAC members Isidor Isaac
Rabi and Enrico Fermi truly arouses the soul: “It is an evil thing in any light. […] an inhuman application of force,” (McMillan).
Irrespective of the fact that their appeals against the H-bomb were on moral grounds and their plans of
peaceful negotiations with Russia, the GAC members were not naïve. They recognized that the U.S.
already possessed the technology necessary to create large stockpiles of atomic bombs and that to perfect
a design for the H-bomb would not only require redirecting of resources that could be used to increase
stockpiles of A-bombs, but that tests of such a super bomb would be impossible to hide from Russian
intelligence and would lead inexorably to an arms race. Furthermore, there was still much debate as to
whether the H-bomb could even work. In essence, the GAC was suggesting that the U.S. military quit
while it was ahead.
Unfortunately, neither the Machiavellian pentagon officials nor the ambitious AEC commissioners
understood the physicists’ moving language. Though Truman had promised AEC commissioner David
Lilienthal that he would not let himself be “blitzed” by the AEC or Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
in Congress, he seemed to have a change of heart after a seven minute meeting with Secretary of State
Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson. Truman decided, with the AEC threatening to
go public with plans for the H-bomb, that he had no choice but to begin development. To further the
GAC’s injury, the president forbade its members to voice any dissent until the public was more informed about the H-bomb program. When introduced to the new wife of AEC commissioner Lewis
Strauss’s son, Oppenheimer “merely extended a hand over his shoulder,” (McMillan).
On February 2, 1950, “the roof fell in,” said David Lilienthal. It was the day of “a world catastrophe,
and a sad day for the human race,” (McMillan). Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, sent to the Manhattan
Project from England, had confessed to giving atomic energy secrets to the Russians. Whether Fuchs’s
information had led Russia to perfecting the A-bomb long before U.S. predictions was relatively
unimportant—a Russian nuclear program had long been a fait accompli. Rather, the question was
whether Fuchs knew of plans for the H-bomb. Teller—though possibly as a means to expedite U.S.
H-bomb research—said that he believed Fuchs did, while other scientists thought that any knowledge
Fuchs could possibly have would be so outdated that it would, in fact, confuse the Russians and delay
their bomb research.
Into the midst of this discord and fear, came Senator Joseph McCarthy with a list of “known communists” working in the U.S. government. Among the names was Oppenheimer’s. Suddenly, peaceful
negotiations became “un-American.” Strauss even accused him of helping the Russians by trying to
delay America’s H-bomb program. Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and a handful of his loyal GAC
members tried to appeal to the public in Scientific American and other journals, asking: “Can we, who
have always insisted on morality and human decency, introduce this weapon of total annihilation into the
world?” (McMillan). Bethe and Oppenheimer appealed to the public, explaining that the decision to
produce the H-bomb had been made behind the scenes. But with a war with Russia on the horizon,
Americans were more concerned with military strength than with due process. AEC commissioner
Robert Bacher successfully convinced the public that the renegade GAC members were deceiving them.
By the end of 1949, Oppenheimer had been largely discredited.
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Edward Teller’s dreams of building the Super bomb
were finally to be realized, and in February 1950, he
started recruiting scientists for the task. Among
those, were Fermi, who was to help with the thermonuclear stage, and Bethe, who was to contribute to the
fission stage. Bethe was also somewhat driven by
schadenfreude—he was quite positive that the Hbomb would never work and wanted to be there for
the “I told you so” moment.
Teller’s original “Super bomb” relied on the heat of a
fission bomb to trigger fusion in the thermonuclear
fuel, usually liquid deuterium, a non-radioactive
isotope of hydrogen. A series of fruitless tests proved this design impracticable. It was polish Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam who suggested that if the primary fission stage and secondary fusion stage were
separated, the radiation and shockwaves created by the fission device would be directed at the fusion
fuel—and would be sufficient to ignite it. The first stage, could, in turn, ignite a second, and so on…
The beauty—or the horror—of the Teller-Ulam design is that there is no theoretical maximum to the
number of thermonuclear stages. Teller and Ulam had created a bomb whose destructive power seemed
to be limitless.
Edward Teller
EDWARD TELLER was born in 1908 to a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. As
a young boy he was incredibly gifted in the field of mathematics. As he grew older, he left his home
country to study in Germany, moving there in 1926. He studied under Werner Heisenberg at the
University of Leipzig, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1930. He continued to study in Germany, where he
made friends with many physicists, such as George Gamow. As Hitler rose to power in Germany,
Teller, a strong enemy of fascism, believed it to be unsafe in the country and left, whereupon he had the
opportunity to work with such prominent physicists as Niels Bohr.
He eventually made his way to the United States, where he was offered a position at George Washington University, at which his old friend George Gamow also worked. He continued to work with fellow
nuclear physicist Gamow at the university until 1941. Teller’s most significant work at the university
was the explanation of the Jahn-Teller Effect in 1939, a theory concerning the electron cloud model of
the atom. Its primary use was in chemical reactions concerning metals and metallic dyes.
By this point, it had been discovered that it is possible to split an atom. The process of doing so would
release enormous amounts of energy, thus making it possible to use as a weapon. When the U.S.
formed the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic weapon, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director,
recruited Teller to work on the project. During the early years of his work at the Los Alamos weapons
laboratory, Teller was inspired by another nuclear physicist, Enrico Fermi about the H-bomb. Fermi
knew that while a fission weapon would be powerful, a fusion weapon would constitute a “Super bomb.”
Teller instantly became intrigued by this idea and remained the most ardent supporter of thermonuclear
weapons throughout the years.
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As the atomic bomb was being developed, Teller was convinced that it would
be completed easily and began to focus his attention on the H-bomb. One of
the scientists working with Teller, Hans Bethe, had this to say about Teller’s
interest in the H-bomb, “Teller told me that the fission bomb was all well
and good and, essentially, was now a sure thing… He said that what we
really should think about was the possibility of…the hydrogen bomb,” (“The
American Experience: Edward Teller”). As he and the development team
worked on the atomic bomb, Teller continued to ardently support the design
of the H-bomb even declining to work on the development of the atomic
bomb. His absolute obsession with the H-bomb caused other scientists to
become wary of him.
After the war, Teller moved to the University of the Chicago. He was still a supporter of the H-bomb
and was trying to petition various politicians, but it took the Soviet Union’s test of an atomic weapon for
him to get real support for his project. He said about the bomb, “If the Russians demonstrate a super
before we possess one, our situation will be hopeless,” (“The American Experience: Edward Teller”).
But as the H-bomb project grew in feasibility, Teller was not put in charge of the project and he
subsequently left Los Alamos.
By 1954, Teller had already distanced himself from many of his colleagues because of his almost “mad
scientist” like support for weapons of mass destruction. It was the Oppenheimer hearing that truly put
him over the edge, and made him lose a great many of his friends in the field of physics. He testified to
the Atomic Energy Commission’s review board that Oppenheimer was untrustworthy and had communist sympathies. It is quite possible that his motivation to testify in this manner stemmed from the fact
that Oppenheimer was an opponent to all of his grand schemes to create Super weapons. Despite this,
Teller remained prominent in national politics. He was a strong supporter of national defense during
the Cold War, continuing to endorse the development of the H-bomb.
For his contributions to the security of the United States, Teller was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 2003 by George W. Bush. He died in September of that year from a stroke.
The Security Hearings
DURING THE LATE 1940S and early ‘50s, Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Atomic Energy
Commission. Under this capacity, he worked to develop Atomic power as an alternative form of energy
and spoke out against the hydrogen bomb project and the development of other nuclear weapons—a
position that made him enemies in high places.
On November 7, 1953, a letter was sent to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, written by William L. Borden, the former Executive director of the Atomic Energy Commission. The content of the letter was information regarding purported ties between physicist Oppenheimer and communist organizations. The letter, in essence, asserted that Oppenheimer was a communist, a soviet spy, and most importantly, a security risk to secrecy of the atomic weapons program and to
the entire United States.
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Immediately after the FBI received the letter, Oppenheimer’s
security clearance was revoked. Federal Law gave the AEC
authority to do this “when deemed necessary in the interest of
national security,” (Public Law 733 of August 26, 1950). But the
same law gave the victim—Oppenheimer—the right to a public
hearing in which he could refute the accusations.
Oppenheimer opted for a hearing. The reasons for the revocation
of his security clearance were presented. The incriminating
evidence showed that he did indeed have communist ties. His
brother was a communist, who had attended multiple meetings of
organizations that were known to promote communism, and had
paid dues to the communist parties. He also had come into
contact with Soviet spies. He testified that he was approached by Haakon Chevalier, a fellow teacher at
Berkeley. Chevalier was supposedly a Soviet spy, who asked Oppenheimer for atomic information. But
the fact that his brother was a communist didn’t necessarily make Robert a security risk. As the hearing
went on, several questions arose:
Had his government service cancelled out his dubious left-wing past, as his defence counsel maintained? Did the
advice he had given, whether on the hydrogen bomb, tactical atomic weapons or continental air defence, have any
bearing on the issue of security clearance if the opinions he had offered were honestly based? Was his work for the
United States a real contribution towards its welfare and its safety?
—John Major, The Oppenheimer Hearing
Oppenheimer had long been an opponent of the H-bomb, Teller’s brainchild in which he had invested
years, so what happened was no surprise. Teller testified that the government simply could not trust
Oppenheimer with a high security clearance. He had no doubts as to Oppenheimer’s loyalty, but given
Oppenheimer’s leftist tendencies and advocacy for freedom of information, did not trust him with the
secret information that he was privy to during his time at Los Alamos. Teller said in his testimony:
I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted—in a way which for me was
exceedingly hard for me to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly
appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this
country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more… (Major)
Many witnesses were brought in to testify against Oppenheimer, many of whom were prominent
scientists that had worked closely with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. Out of all these witnesses, Teller
was the only one who had testified that Oppenheimer’s security clearance should be revoked, others
stating that despite his communist ties, he would not be a threat to the United States and that he was a
loyal citizen.
Ultimately, the hearing was not brought about due to Oppenheimer’s loyalties or his abilities. The
hearing was not about his security clearance. It was about whether or not he would be an ally to the
hydrogen bomb project. Since it was known that he was a staunch opponent of the project, his clearance
was revoked and he was stripped of any power that he could possibly use to delay or halt the project.
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The Aftermath
After his security hearings, the high security clearance that he
held was revoked and he no longer held any power to protest
the hydrogen bomb project. Oppenheimer had left his
position at Berkeley in 1947 because the administration was
becoming increasingly critical of his overtly leftist political
sympathies during the war. He accepted a position as a
director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton,
where he remained in communication with the Atomic Energy
Commission until 1956. As his health declined he took up a
position in 1966, previously held by Albert Einstein: professor
of theoretical physics. There, he taught and brought together
many prominent scientists, most notably Freeman Dyson.
In 1957, he purchased a piece of land on the island of St. John
in the Virgin Islands. There, he would often sail with his wife.
When he died, the island was left to his daughter, who donated
it to the people of St. John. The beach that he owned is now
called Oppenheimer beach.
The Japanese Committee for Intellectual Exchange invited him to Japan. Although many advised him
to decline, he went in 1960. When Japanese reporters asked him whether he felt any remorse for
creating an instrument that had killed tens of thousands, he replied: “I do not regret that I had something to do with the technical success of the atomic bomb. It isn’t that I don’t feel bad; it is that I don’t
feel worse tonight than I did last night,” (“Oppenheimer - A Life”).
The scientific community recommended him for the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963. Even Edward
Teller, who had testified against him in the security hearings, recommended that he receive this award,
perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation. Though President Kennedy had originally awarded the prize, he
was assassinated before the ceremony and President Johnson presented him with the prize several weeks
after the assassination. The award was part of Oppenheimer’s so called post-hearing political
“rehabilitation.” Supposed to give him back some of his power that had been stripped from him after
the hearings, the rehabilitation proved only to be superficial and ceremonial. Oppenheimer was never
again granted security clearance.
At age 62, Robert Oppenheimer died of throat cancer in Princeton New Jersey on February 18, 1967.
His funeral took place at the Institute for Advanced Studies and brought together physicists and
government leaders, former friends and former enemies. Hans Bethe, physicist at Los Alamos, George
Kennan, diplomat and fellow institute member, Henry de Wolf Smyth, the only AEC commissioner
who was not in favor of Oppenheimer’s loss of clearance, spoke at the funeral. Selections from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in c sharp minor were played by the Juillard String Quartet, after which his
wife and brother met with guests at the IAS library. His ashes were scattered over Oppenheimer beach.
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The Verdict: A Hero or a Victim
MOST PEOPLE, when asked their opinion on whether Robert Oppenheimer was a hero or a victim,
become confused. “A victim?” they ask. It seems that the security hearings and stand Oppenheimer
took against the creation of the hydrogen bomb have faded into the past and that the hero who saved
America by building the atomic bomb has clearly been a more indelible characterization. Indeed, many
haven’t even heard of the security hearings and aren’t familiar with the iconic “martyr to McCarthyism”
persona that much of the scientific community assigned him.
We must be very careful, however, when we call Oppenheimer a martyr. He himself said about his
security hearings:
The whole damn thing 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. (Bird and Sherwin)
Aside from Oppenheimer the hero and Oppenheimer the victim, we can consider through a third
window: Oppenheimer the man. As inconsistencies and poor decisions amass, we hope that you will
come to realize that despite the larger-than-life figure historians present you with, Oppenheimer, too,
had his share of human vices. We begin when Oppenheimer was a tortured undergraduate at Harvard:
In the days of my almost infinitely prolonged adolescence, I hardly took an action, hardly did anything or failed to
do anything, whether it was a paper in physics, or a lecture, or how I read a book, how I talked to a friend, how I
loved, that did not arouse in me a very great sense of revulsion and of wrong. (Rhodes)
—Robert Oppenheimer, reminiscing in 1963
Then, in 1925, when Oppenheimer was a graduate student at Cambridge, he developed a certain hatred
towards one of his professors—and expressed it:
Oppenheimer poisoned an apple with chemicals from the laboratory and put it on Blackett’s desk […] As Robert’s
parents were still visiting Cambridge, the university authorities immediately informed them of what had happened. Julius Oppenheimer [Robert’s father] frantically—and successfully—lobbied the university not to press
criminal charges. After protracted negotiations, it was agreed that Robert would be put on probation and have
regular sessions with a prominent Harley Street psychiatrist in London.
—Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, authors, American Prometheus
Before he knew that the Manhattan Project’s goals would be
realized, Oppenheimer suggested a less technologically
intensive plan to deal with Germany. The U.S. would poison
German food and water supplies with Strontium 90, a radioactive element that poisons the bones. He warns, however, not
to execute the plan until its success could be guaranteed:
I should recommend delay if that is possible. (In this connection I
think that we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food
sufficient to kill a half a million men, since there is no doubt that the
actual number affected will, because of non-uniform distribution, be
much smaller than this.) (Rhodes)
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Despite calling his own hearings “a farce,” Oppenheimer actively participated in the red hunt, occasionally testifying against his own students.
Though in 1949, he said the H-bomb is “an evil” under any light and an instrument of genocide, in
1951, he advocated its construction, even calling it “beautiful”:
The program we had in 1949 was a tortured thing that you could well argue did not make a great deal of
technical sense. It was therefore possible to argue that you did not want it even if you could have it. The program
in 1951 was technically so sweet that you could not argue about that. (Rhodes)
That being said, Oppenheimer did, even after he began work on the H-bomb, advocate the creation of
an international consortium to regulate nuclear weapons. The Achenson-Lilienthal plan almost would
realize his vision. The plan called for a cease in atomic weapons research in all nations and for the U.S.
to destroy its stockpiles. Naturally, it never passed through Congress.
Throughout his life, Oppenheimer was driven by two antithetical desires: to save humanity and to
destroy it. These mindsets were woven so deeply into his soul that they manifested themselves not only
towards mankind, but to the man himself. At one minute he would contemplate suicide, while at the
next, he would incriminate his friends to save his reputation. At one minute, he might refer to weapons
of mass destruction technically sweet, and at the next, call for their abolition. It was this bipolarity that
made Oppenheimer untrustworthy and unreliable after he was no longer needed to head the Manhattan
Project. Indeed, the few years he spent building the atomic bomb were, some say, his only sustained
periods of stability and productivity.
An Interview with Freeman Dyson
FREEMAN DYSON is a professor at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced
Studies who worked there when Robert Oppenheimer was its director.
He is renowned by the scientific community for his work in quantum
electrodynamics and by the public for his many books and activism
concerning the politics of nuclear policy.
Thank you for your message. My memories of Oppenheimer are not reliable
after forty years, and he never talked directly about the questions that you are
asking. I give you brief answers to the questions, based on memories which
could well be wrong.
I understand that O. wanted to invite Japanese and Russian observers to
the Trinity test in order to avoid having to use the bomb on civilians, but
once the US government refused to permit this, he seemed to support
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you believe that he did so
despite knowing that the Japanese were already trying to surrender?
I do not believe that O. wanted to invite Japanese and Russian observers to the Trinity test. So far as I
know, this was never discussed. What was discussed was a possible demonstration of the bomb to
international observers after the Trinity test. O. was against this and in favor of using the bomb on a
city. I do not know whether he then knew anything about Japanese efforts to negotiate an end to the war.
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When O. opposed Teller’s work on the H bomb, was it in order to speed the development of the A
bomb, skepticism about whether the H bomb would work, opposition to a new weapon of mass destruction which would have little strategic value, or a personal conflict with Teller?
Most of the time, O. supported Teller’s work on the H-bomb. He was opposed to a crash program to
develop the H-bomb in 1950 when there was not yet a workable design. He then opposed it for all the
reasons that you mention. But he stopped opposing it in 1951 when the new Teller-Ulam design made
the H-bomb practical.
Did he always maintain that the A bomb was “sweet?”
I never heard O. say that the A-bomb was sweet. But he did say that he never regretted having led the
effort to produce the A-bomb, and he played a leading role after the war in persuading the U.S. army to
acquire tactical A-bombs in large numbers.
Is there some sense to the view that he created his own role as a martyr in his conflicting testimony
before investigators?
I do not believe that O. ever thought of himself as a martyr. He did say that the security hearing in
1954 was not a tragedy but a farce. He strongly opposed the Kipphart play which portrayed him as a
tragic hero. He even sued the theater to stop the production of the play.
Did he ever express any remorse for “naming the names” of his leftist friends? In some ways his behavior seemed as self-serving as Teller’s.
I never heard him express remorse for anything. In my opinion, his behavior in “naming names” was
much worse than anything that Teller did. But he never discussed this part of his life.
Are there any questions you wish you had asked him?
I do not wish I had asked him more questions, because I am sure he would not have answered them. He
was very good at not answering questions, and enjoyed being inscrutable.
I have written a chapter about Oppenheimer in my new book The Scientist as Rebel which is just published, but it does not answer your questions. That is all I have to say. I am interested to read whatever
you write if you like to send it to me.
With thanks and good wishes, yours sincerely,
Freeman Dyson
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