American Prometheus, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Vintage Books (ISBN: 9780375726262) 2006.
Summary: A biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, focused on his leadership of the atomic bomb program and security clearance trial.
My birth and the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima occurred on the same day (although in different years). I’m in my eighth decade of living under a nuclear cloud. One of the scientists who helped make that possible was J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, from 1943 to 1945, that built the first bombs, including those dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Therefore, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s massive biography of Oppenheimer was one of those books I knew I would read sooner or later (though I will pass on the movie). They trace his early life and educational work, and early work in theoretical physics that led to appointments at Caltech, and eventually at Berkeley.
While at Berkeley in the mid-1930’s he expressed his developing social consciousness through associations with and support of organizations with Communist party ties. While likely not a party member, he had close friends who were among the scientists he worked with and others he associated with. One of them, Haakon Chevalier, would later cause him much grief. He also pursued an intimate relationship with psychotherapist and party member Jean Tatlock, who later committed suicide. His wife, Kitty Puening had previously been married to a man killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting for the Communists.
World War Two changed many things. The USSR became an ally. Intelligence, including warnings from Albert Einstein, revealed the Germans were working on an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer’s theoretical work with Ernest Lawrence made him a strong candidate to lead the bomb development program. By this time, he had severed ties to the Communist Party, but his past raised security issues. But investigations cleared him and he became director under Leslie Groves.
His fertile mind and quick grasp of the various challenges facing the teams of scientists made him an ideal director. Meanwhile, he paid assiduous attention to building the Los Alamos community, including cross-team seminars that facilitated teamwork and advances on the science front. But his past associations tripped him up. Haakon Chevalier made an approach, exploring whether Oppenheimer would consider sharing information with Soviet scientists. While he flatly refused Chevalier, his tardy reporting and attempts to cover for his friends, including his brother Frank, made him suspect, though he maintained his clearance and overall director, General Leslie Groves staunchly supported him.
The successful Trinity test of the bomb was significant in raising Oppenheimer’s own fears about using the weapon. He sought unsuccessfully to stop its use. The book raises evidence that the U.S. could have ended the war without using it or invading the mainland. I think that will continue to be debated. But Oppenheimer later had a meeting with Harry Truman “repenting” his own role, something Truman ever after despised.
Leaving Los Alamos, Oppenheimer accepted a position as director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, perhaps the happiest situation he enjoyed. He advocated for open sharing of nuclear secrets (though maintaining security himself), hoping for an international order that would oversea and prevent nuclear war. He also opposed the H-bomb, although a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. Chairman Lewis Strauss, who was also on his board at Princeton, became an enemy. Eventually, when he was up for renewal of his security clearance, Strauss orchestrated a star-chamber-like hearing process with the result of denying that clearance. The father of the atomic bomb was excluded from all further nuclear work.
The biography portrays the complexity of Oppenheimer. He is both aloof and condescending and warm and sensitive, He both adored Kitty and yet engaged in several outside relationship. Intelligence mixed with lack of common sense. Most notably, we see how his enemies used the McCarthyism of the early 1950’s to smear him. Yet his character emerges as he comes to terms with his fate. But he was a victim of one of the uglier sides of American character.
Most of all, there is the bomb. Oppenheimer stood apart from many scientists in wrestling with the morality of what he had done. And he spoke out against the fundamental immorality and insanity of a nuclear arms race. His life exemplifies the inherent immorality of war-making. It implicates us in the taking of lives we would never personally choose to take. Bird and Sherwin’s biography serves as a mirror that makes us take a good look at ourselves.