A Review of :
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of
J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
.jpg)
Oppenheimer is a towering figure in Atomic physics, not only for his own work but for the leadership of the US Atomic Bomb programme, which from a standing start produced the world’s first atomic bombs in only three years. After their first (and thankfully last) use in war, and against people, Oppenheimer’s deep understanding of science, literature, and history led him to question further development of atomic weapons and he became a strong advocate of international agreements not to produce further devices. This stance put him on a collision course with his own government. The hastily-convened, and constitutionally-illegal enquiry which resulted in him losing his security clearance has become a notorious low-point in the United States’ long history of consuming its own children.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer, known as Robert or “Oppy”, was born in New York City in 1904, the son of Julius, a wealthy textile importer, and Ella, a painter, both of Jewish-German descent. He had a younger brother Frank, who like him became a physicist. From the start, this biography does not skimp on detail, it does not speed through Oppy’s early life, an approach which allows a proper understanding of his character and motives in the years when he was a radical liberal, a “fellow traveller” with the early US communist movement, through his conversion to patriot motivated by the perceived need to beat Nazi Germany to build an atomic bomb. Without this detail of Oppenheimer’s life, his sudden change of political mind might seem jarring, perhaps motivated by a desire to get paid by government to do something simply to confirm that it could be done. Seen with the supporting detail of a wide-ranging education, and a love of learning for its own sake however, it is easy to understand Oppy’s progress from liberal professor at the cutting edge of Quantum Theory, to a respected icon of scientific endeavour.
Nevertheless it is also clear that Oppenheimer was tragically flawed. He was able to keep an audience of non-scientists enraptured, speaking in whole sentences without notes and yet with fellow scientists and politicians at all levels up to The President himself, he could be dangerously candid. He produced the analysis which let the US Military choose Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the targets of the bombs which supposedly ended the War in the Pacific. However, at the time of these decisions, the US was already aware of secret Japanese communications suggesting they were looking for a way to end the conflict. The Americans were also aware that The Soviet Union was about to declare war on Japan and it is probable that the surrender would have happened without the attacks. Oppenheimer was not party to this information, and went ahead with the analysis. On his first and last meeting with President Truman after the bombs had been dropped he said he felt like he had blood on his hands, an emotional statement which led Truman to decree that Oppenheimer should never be readmitted to the Oval Office and to embellish the details of the meeting in future increasingly melodramatic accounts designed to make Oppy look weak.
Oppenheimer, obviously deeply affected by his role in the Manhattan Project, became a strong advocate of International control over nuclear weapons and disagreed strongly with some of his more gung-ho Los Alamos colleagues such as Edward Teller who immediately started advocating for what became known colloquially as “The Super” – the thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb, a weapon with the potential for detonations many multiples of the simple fission weapons of 1945. It was clear to Oppy that there were no targets of The Super which were big enough and that its use would be simple genocide, a race towards complete destruction of both opposing nations together with much collateral damage to the entire planet. In the face of the Soviet acquisitions first of fission devices and then their own hydrogen bombs, this call for sanity flagged Oppenheimer, after the war a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), as an obstacle to the further development of such weapons. In addition, his prickly demeanour, easily dealt with by many of his fellow scientists, became a stimulus for personal vendettas from certain politicians and Washington insiders. Notable among these was the businessman, Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the AEC who developed an almost irrational dislike of Oppenheimer. The FBI had been monitoring Oppy for many years, the result of his flirtations with many Communist Party members as part of his support for union activities in California, often using illegal (and therefore inadmissible) wiretaps.
Strauss, with the assistance of the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, gained access to these and used them to build a case for the removal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance, a move which Strauss hoped would end his government career, and perhaps even render him unemployable. The security review, pointedly referred to by its instigators as “not a trial” was a tetchy, biased, and bitter affair, with consequences for all participants. It comes late in the book but is the brilliant hub around which the rest of the text hangs. It is more redolent of a Soviet political trial, the attempted destruction of an “expert” for political purposes and foreshadows more recent extreme attitudes towards knowledge and rationality. The “review” resulted in the largely-symbolic removal of Oppenheimer’s clearance but contrary to its outcome, raised his public profile to what has been compared to the suppression of Galileo by The Inquisition for the promotion of heliocentrism. Only decades later did the idea of Atomic Weapons treaties gain ground in the face of the obvious madness of nuclear proliferation.
The book has a massive cast of heroes and villains. Einstein bumbles in and out of later chapters, the iconic figure of scientific authority. Richard Feynman clowns around in Los Alamos cameos (his own chatty memoirs provide a contrasting personal look at the building of the atomic bombs). Strauss, Teller and a host of oleaginous lawyers flesh out the darker side of the US establishment, though at the end of everything Oppenheimer himself is part of the establishment, a more honourable reflection of what the United States has claimed to be since the Declaration of Independence. In December 2022, the Biden administration voided the revoking of Oppy’s security clearance. Kai Bird, one of the authors of this Pulitzer-prize winning book said “History matters and what was done to Oppenheimer in 1954 was a travesty, a black mark on the honor of the nation”.
Oppy himself was a widely-read man of deep thinking and measured response. That he was so badly treated by his country is a tragedy. Shortly before the Trinity test, the first atomic explosion in history he made his hopes and feelings about the potential use clear using a quotation from Bhartṛhari's Śatakatraya:
In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains,
On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him.
So read this book before the film and then let it go, enjoy the drama because a two hour movie cannot hope to sum up this complex and towering figure.
