The Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer

...cit., pp...

...The inspiring professor and intellectual leader became suddenly, in 1943, the director of the most significant technological enterprise of human history...

...millan, 1941...

...83 NOTEBOOK Oppenheimer the order while the officers, with "much discussion," tried to get him to betray Chevalier voluntarily...

...While Chevalier's book must be read with knowledge of his intense bitterness toward Oppenheimer, it is a fascinating and instructive document...

...Nothing I have written should be considered as passing judgment on Oppenheimer...

...There is no transcript of the interviews with General Groves, but we are told that early in the first conversation Oppenheimer volunteers to reveal Chevalier's name if Groves "orders" him to do so...

...The first modern textbook on quantum mechanics, published in the U.S...

...Atomc Energy Commission, "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer," Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board, U.S...

...cit., p. 81...

...945 f. 13 Hearings, op...

...4 Juitifiably, Oppenheimer's fame as a physicist, like that of Sommerfeld, was primarily based on his work as a teacher...

...Once Oppenheimer was committed intellectually to the building of the bomb in the apparent race against the German scientists, he submitted himself voluntarily to the totalitarian regime (the army) that logic convinced him to be necessary to achieve the goal...

...Rather, his story serves to illustrate the personal tragedy of the scientist in the nuclear age, who finds himself compromising ethical principles if he wishes to play a role in the vital decisions concerning nuclear weapons...

...9 Hearings, op...

...Although it was the unanimous decision of eight of America's leading scientists, Oppenheimer's hesitation at this moment to follow the destructive logic of the Cold War was one of the major charges brought against him at the Security Hearings...

...He flatters, he cajoles, he insults, and he threatens in succession...

...cit., pp...

...In the 30's progress in theoretical physics was to be much slower than it had been in those hectic years between 1925 and 1930...

...This was in October 1949, when the General Advisory Committee (to the Atomic Energy Commission), headed by Oppenheimer, unanimously voted against a crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb...

...His writings plead for a humanistic view of science in a nation where so much emphasis is placed on technology...

...The nuclear scientist, as much as anyone and perhaps even more than others, finds himself a stranger and afraid in this new world of 15 A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon, p. 254 (Mac- his own making...

...From 1937 on he was a contributor to, a member of, and an occasional worker for a variety of left-wing organizations...

...2 1 U.S...

...It seems impossible to accept his own self-debasing account: I had had a continuing, smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany...

...Oppenheimer and McCarthy, each in his own way and for his own reasons, sought to play an important role in the decision-making processes of our country...

...In some sense, then, the Oppenheimer that emerges in 1946 is a completely different person from the one we saw in 1939...

...Indeed, if Chevalier is to be trusted, Oppenheimer remained loyal throughout the difficult months between August, 1939, and June, 1941...

...Boris Pash, Lt...

...Their studies led to such books as Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, which was described by the late James Newman in the Scientific American as "a moral tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it...

...In fact, a postdoctoral student working under Opje's guidance, Sid Dancoff, came closest to the solution that was to win a Nobel prize for Feyman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, the team that was to find it in the postwar years...

...84 NOTEBOOK We can only guess to what extent Oppenheimer was troubled by that "silent partner, whose realm started just where logical thought ended, . . . the grammatical fiction...

...I am not defending the wisdom of these views...

...Yet, his submission to army rule in 1943 was not so dissimilar to his commitment to the Communist causes in 1939...

...7 3 Ibid., p. 169...

...His postwar role as an advocate of international control of atomic weapons and as an opponent of many of the concepts of the Strategic Air Command are well-known...

...I have limited myself here to the problems raised by rereading some 13 years later the transcripts of the Security Hearings together with Chevalier's interpretation of them...

...cit., p. 10...

...Throughout the proceedings he refuses to name Chevalier as the intermediary for the Russian "espionage" attempt although he does volunteer under direct questioning that he wouldn't be surprised if Chevalier were a Communist party member and that "he is quite a Red...

...It was the minority report of Fermi and Rabi that Oppenheimer was unwilling to endorse—that said of the H-bomb, "it is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light . . . [it is] wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon...

...14 Yet once the basic premise of the Cold War was accepted, once it was accepted that the Russians under Stalin were moving rapidly ahead and developing their own nuclear weaponry, each step seemed logical and necessary...

...to these one might add the Bethe-von Weizacker theory of stellar energy...

...Its history, probed with such agonizing detail in the 1954 AEC Security Board Hearings, 1 dramatizes the dilemma of the American scientist in the twentieth century...

...Oppenheimer started the first great graduate school of theoretical physics in the United States...

...And later, in the years just after the war, Oppenheimer's lectures were the source of graduate courses taught in universities throughout the United States...

...155, 1084 (1967...

...There is no disagreement among the many observers: Opje was a brilliant analytical thinker, an intellectual with a striking variety of interests, and a natural leader of men...

...I liked the new sense of companionship, and at the time felt that I was coming to be part of the life of my time and country...

...I think they were idiotic...

...82 NOTEBOOK It was, to a considerable extent, a passion for intelligence, an intense faith in the efficacy of reason, that impelled him to share his (political) insights with students and colleagues.8 Oppenheimer must have been aware of the Communists' totalitarian methods and found them acceptable in view of the overall goals...

...And even now, after the intervening McCarthy years, the transcripts of these interviews make remarkable and painful reading...

...Lansdale feels him out about doing a little spying and Oppenheimer volunteers that he "could get partial information...

...In 1929, when Oppenheimer returned to the United States after several years of study and work in Europe, he was only 25 years old...

...The Soviet-German pact," writes Chevalier, "and later the invasion of Poland by the U.S.S.R., and the Soviet war with Finland, had confused [sic] and upset many people, even the most open-minded and liberal...

...cit., p. 114...

...In the hearings Oppenheimer spoke of learning of the Russian purges and terror in 1938, to indicate how his views began to change;9 but in fact he remained close to the Communists at least through 1941...

...16 Hearings, op...

...Finally, two months later, "after much discussion in trying to lead him into it," General Groves reports that he now gives the order—and Oppenheimer betrays Chevalier...

...In the non-physics world, he now found himself dealing not with professional intellectual colleagues like Chevalier but with a completely different breed—men like General Groves...

...cit., pp...

...7 Chevalier, op...

...19, No...

...But these years marked a complete transformation in Oppenheimer's way of life...

...in 1949 by Leonard Schiff, was inspired by Oppenheimer's lectures...

...They have been involved in developing more and more atomic weaponry and in planning for all types of catastrophic nuclear wars...

...THIS NOTE is not an atttempt to give a total picture of Oppenheimer, either as a thinker or as a scientific adviser to the government...

...To appreciate this history, we must have a view of Oppenheimer (or Opje, as he was called) before World War II, in those days before the scientists knew sin...

...This was not a matter of understanding and informed convictions...

...14 James R. Newman, in the Scientific American, p. 197, March 1951...

...9, p. 25 (1966...

...The basic development and application of quantum mechanics by physicists like Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, and Pauli was practically completed, and the young Oppenheimer had already made a significant contribution in the work he had done with Max Born on the quantum theory of molecules...

...10 Chevalier, op...

...However, once President Truman had given the order to go ahead with the hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer insists "the moral and ethical and political issues . . . were never again mentioned, and that we [the General Advisory Committee] never again questioned the basic decisions under which we were operating...

...4 S. Tomonaga, in Physics Today, Vol...

...17 Hearings, op...

...Government Printing Office (1954...

...Chevalier, a close friend of Oppenheimer around 1940, was the central character of the "attempted espionage" incident that dominated much of the 1954 Hearings...

...John Lansdale, and General Groves...

...I had no clearly formulated political views...

...His moral code, from the beginning, was of this particular rational logic...

...Oppenheimer is a Rubashov, the victim not of his pride or his self-seeking, as Chevalier would have us believe, but of a cold logic that had always governed his life...

...The inveterate bachelor with a sequence of mistresses suddenly became, in late 1939, the responsible married man and the following year a father...

...During the postwar years we have seen the escalation of this calculating logic among the scientists—including Oppenheimer—who were advising the government...

...The matter that most engaged my sympathies and interests was the war in Spain...

...But I had no framework of political conviction or experience to give me perspective in these matters...

...18 LOOKING BACK at these interviews, it seems that they were not aimed at the information Oppenheimer had to give, but rather at Oppenheimer himself...

...BUT OPJE WAS MORE than a physicist...

...The picture given by Chevalier seems to ring more true than Opje's even though it may contain its own exaggerations: He was keenly alert to the problems of the day, he was active among his fellows, surrounded by students and colleagues and plain ctizens, vigorously discussing public issues— eloquent, persuasive: a counselor, a guide, a leader...

...Each was an interloper obtaining a share of power by an unconventional method...

...cit., p. 168...

...THE TRAGEDY OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER IS usually described in terms of the Security Hearings held in 1954, after which "he was a changed person...

...10 ONE MAY NEVER really understand how Oppenheimer changed from a committed Communist fellow-traveler in 1940 to a supporter of the May-Johnson Bill for the military control of the atom in 1945, and to a strong Cold Warrior in the following years...

...17 THE AEC SECURITY HEARINGS are often considered an aspect of the McCarthy era, the persecution of a liberal by the right wing...

...12 LANSDALE is as clever, as insulting and insidious an inquisitor as any in fiction...

...5 Hearings, op...

...5 [Again, discussing his views of some Communist activities] That seemed fine to me at the time...

...cit., p. 26...

...Was it so different from that of the men who submitted themselves to Communist discipline because of their commitment to the building of a "socialist" society...

...11 But Chevalier claims that Oppenheimer's personal tragedy was already consummated in 1943, and to this end he refers to Oppenheimer's interviews with (or more accurately, interrogation by) Lt...

...15 The majority report, written by Conant and signed by Oppenheimer among others, emphasized the development of tactical nuclear weapons as an alternative to developing the super bomb and expressed the hope of "providing by example some limitations on the totality of war...

...Already here in 1943, as in the longer cross-examinations of the Security Hearings in 1954, he cuts a pitiful figure...

...8-10...

...He volunteers name after name of people who he knows are or whom he suspects of being Communists...

...Only two new important theoretical ideas were to be formulated in the 30's: the Fermi theory of beta-decay and the Yukawa theory of the meson...

...How are we to understand Oppenheimer's behavior...

...81 NOTEBOOK It has been suggested that even in this early period Oppenheimer felt a sense of inadequacy as a theoretical physicist because he made "no fundamental contribution to his field, which men like Heisenberg, Fermi, Dirac, Joliot, and a dozen others of his generation had so greatly enriched...

...3 On the whole this suggestion is probably not correct, though Opje undoubtedly must have felt the sense of frustration that is the lot of all theoretical physicists most of the time...

...The great, remaining problem of quantum electrodynamics, that of the divergence difficulties, proved as unyielding to men like Dirac as it did to Oppenheimer...

...cit., p. 26...

...No vague morality contrary to this logic could keep him from betraying Chevalier once he had received the "order" to do so...

...much of his previous spirit and liveliness had left him...

...He was a humanist, deeply and rationally concerned with the fate of mankind...

...To gain an insight into Oppenheimer's story one must know some of the basis for these left-wing activities...

...Opje had a simple, lucid way of explaining facts and arguments that allayed misgivings and carried conviction...

...2 H. M. Chevalier, Oppenheimer, the Story of a Friendship, Pocket Books, p. 21 (1966...

...In the late 1930's the most brilliant American graduate and postgraduate students—men like Julian Schwinger—went to California to study with Oppenheimer instead of going to Europe...

...6 Hearings, op...

...How else could one explain that for two months Groves refrained from giving 8 Chevalier, op...

...Yet neither one was put down, despite his vulnerability, until he angered the most powerful establishment of all, the military...

...Yet, in a sense the hearings are more analogous to the Army-McCarthy Hearings which were taking place simultaneously...

...12 Hearings, op...

...When I was a graduate student, in 1947, I counted a copy of the Oppenheimer lecture notes on classical electrodynamics among my most prized possessions...

...The whole moral tone and the very manner of speaking seem completely alien to Oppenheimer as he appeared in 1939...

...McCarthy was too crude and Oppenheimer too literate to fit in with the Establishment...

...my admiration for his intelligence," writes Haakon Chevalier, "his judgment, and his character had gradually led me to the conviction that a high destiny awaited him...

...Oppenheimer, already then the director of Los Alamos, submits and cooperates...

...I saw what the depression was doing to my students...

...6 Possibly, Opje had thought very little about politics before 1937, but it seems improbable that he could have become so involved in radical politics from 1937 on without a deep intellectual commitment...

...11 H. A. Bethe, in Science, Vol...

...This conclusion may not be correct, but one feels that these army men were delighted to make the civilian head of this great project squirm and submit to their inquisition...

...79-80...

...He was an avid student of Sanskrit, philosophy, poetry, and the classics...

...Oppenheimer's opposition to the development of this weapon, which would be a thousand times more powerful than the original atomic bomb, was not based on moral grounds...

...15 YET THERE WAS one historic moment when the scientists recoiled from the next step demanded by the logic of the Cold War...

...cit., p. 172...