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SITE-SPECIFIC: THE FRACTURED HUMANITY OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER*

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BirdKai and SherwinMartin J., American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)
CarsonCathryn and HollingerDavid A., eds., Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections, (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Papers in the History of Science, vol. 21, 2005)
CassidyDavid C., J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (New York: Pi Press, 2004)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

ELIZABETH BORGWARDT
ELIZABETH BORGWARDT*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis
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Extract

“God knows,” lamented the physicist Isidor Rabi, “I'm not the simplest person, but compared to Oppenheimer, I'm very, very simple.” J. Robert Oppenheimer played myriad roles in the science and politics of modern America: as a physicist working to establish a synthetic American school uniting theoretical and experimental approaches; as a government functionary and “weaponeer” piloting the development and fine-tuning the deployment of the first atomic bombs; as insider, consultant, and oracle speaking in the name of American science; but also as outsider, voice of conscience, and political pariah.

Type
Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 2008 , pp. 547 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Isidor Rabi quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 77; a slightly different version of this quote appears in Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 32. (Most quotations in this essay from Oppenheimer-era sources appear in multiple books under review: for simplicity of reference I use Bird and Sherwin as a default source for citation unless the quotes differ materially.)

2 David A. Hollinger, “Afterword,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 385.

3 Isidor I. Rabi quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 76.

4 Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 82, 111–112; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 66, 78; for more on Oppenheimer's early science see Cassidy, 159–80; and Cassidy, “From Theoretical Physics to the Bomb: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American School of Theoretical Physics”; and Karl Hufbauer, “J. Robert Oppenheimer's Path to Black Holes,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 13–31; 31–49.

5 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 89; Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 173.

6 Nobels are awarded exclusively to living scientists. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 89; Hufbauer, “J. Robert Oppenheimer's Path to Black Holes,” 31; Bernstein, Jeremy, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (Chicago, 2004), viii, 48Google Scholar; see also Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 177–8.

7 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 31.

8 Ibid., 35.

9 Petition to Max Born quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 60, 74.

10 Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 154–5; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 82, 84, 89, 170–71.

11 Murray Gell-Mann quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 375; Richard Polenberg, “The Fortunate Fox,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 269; see also Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 90.

12 On the “American School” see Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 134–5.

13 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 209; 186; 209; 218–19; Los Alamos population in Charles Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 90.

14 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 99, 34.

15 Isidor I. Rabi quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 100. See also John L. Heilbron, “Oppenheimer's Guru,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 275–91.

16 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 96, 85; D. Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 150.

17 Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 243; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 29, 93; Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 151.

18 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 113, 567.

19 Ibid., 113, 567; Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 243.

20 Herbert Smith quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 27, internal quotations omitted; see also ibid., 25, 10; Rabi quoted in ibid., 76.

21 Oppenheimer quoted in Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 345; Rabi quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 76.

22 See Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 344; Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 257.

23 Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 345.

24 Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 258, 257; Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 344–5; Holton, Gerald, “The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” in Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (New York, 1995)Google Scholar, quoted in Cassidy at 86, internal quotations omitted.

25 For Chevalier as “parlor pink” see Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 135; an entire chapter on the Chevalier affair appears in ibid. at 194–201; discussion of the Tatlock affair in ibid. at 231–3 and 248–54.

26 Ernest O. Lawrence quoted in ibid. at 364–5.

27 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 121–2, 395–7, 116; Bernard Peters quoted in ibid., 400; see also Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 61, 206–7.

28 Oppenheimer quoting Proust in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 51; ibid., 571.

29 Ibid., 313–14, 316; see also Malloy, Sean L., Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb against Japan (New York, 2008)Google Scholar.

30 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 83, 90.

31 Ibid., xi.

32 Rabi quoted in Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 311.

33 See Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 313–15; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 498–537.

34 The historian Barton Bernstein urges rigor in defining both the actual charge and the relevant standard of proof more precisely. See Bernstein, “The Puzzles of Interpreting J. Robert Oppenheimer, His Politics, and the Issues of His Possible Communist Party Membership,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer; Lee DuBridge, president of Caltech, quoted in Cassidy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 329; see also ibid., 310, 314.

35 Bernstein, “The Puzzles of Interpreting J. Robert Oppenheimer,” 105–8.

36 See, for example, the discussion of Griffith's unpublished memoir naming Oppenheimer as a member of this “faculty communist group,” where Bird and Sherwin attempt to distinguish Oppenheimer from other participants because he was not “dues paying.” Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 140.

37 Richard Polenberg, “The Fortunate Fox,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 266.

38 Laura Kalman, “The Power of Biography” (review essay on Lahav, Pnina, Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (California, 1997)Google Scholar), in Law & Social Inquiry 23 (Spring 1998), 479–533, 481.

39 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, xii (parentheses in original), 22.

40 Ibid., 258–59; Naomi Oreskes, “Objectivity or Heroism: On the Invisibility of Women in Science,” Osiris 11 (1996), 87–133.

41 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 165, 264.

42 It is perhaps unsurprising that passages on Oppenheimer's adolescence and early adulthood would rely heavily on interviews recorded long after the events; perhaps the concern is a more subtle one, that no particular framing or hierarchy is offered by any of these books to situate the probative value of different types of source. Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 38–9; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 46–7.

43 Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 45–6.

44 Ibid., 287.

45 Oppenheimer, speaking in 1959, quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, xi; Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, 156, 151. The 1959 Oppenheimer quotation suggests another quibble with the Bird and Sherwin treatment, namely that it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to divine the date of a particular document or quotation.

46 McMillan, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 6.

47 Ibid., 14.

48 Stern, Philip, The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

49 Thorpe, J. Robert Oppenheimer, 243; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 571, 221–2.

50 Abraham Pais, cited in Hollinger, “Afterword,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 388.

51 Barton Bernstein indicates that he discusses the parallel with Teller in his lectures; conversation with Bernstein, 12 Sept. 2007.

52 James Hershberg, “‘The Jig Was up’: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the International Control of Atomic Energy, 1947–49,” in Carson and Hollinger, Reappraising Oppenheimer, 149–84; Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, xv.

53 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, 4 Jan. 2007, A15.

54 See, for example, Jo Nye, Mary, Blackett: Physics, War, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hawkins, Helen S., Greb, G. Allen, and Szilard, Gertrud Weiss, eds., Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Rotblat, Joseph and Ikeda, Daisaku, A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics, and the Nuclear Threat (New York, 2007)Google Scholar. Rotblat's 1995 Nobel lecture was titled, “Remember Your Humanity”: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1995/rotblat-lecture.html.

55 Max Born quoted in Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 560.