J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

• Bush, Vannevar
• Compton, Arthur H.
• Conant, James B.
• Groves, Leslie R.
• Lawrence, Ernest O.
• Oppenheimer, J. Robert
• Roosevelt, Franklin D.
• Truman, Harry S.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, the son of wealthy, first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Germany. He attended the Ethical Culture School in New York, an institution celebrating rationalism, and by 1922 had earned his B.A. in chemistry from Harvard University. In 1925 he traveled to England to study at the illustrious Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with J.J. Thomson (his first choice for mentor, Ernest Rutherford, had rejected him). He left Cambridge a year later to accept a position studying with Nobel Laureate Max Born at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Göttingen, Germany. At this renowned center of theoretical physics, Oppenheimer worked alongside luminaries such as Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Paul Dirac, John Von Neumann, and James Franck-some of whom he would work with again during the Manhattan Project. After finishing his physics Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1927, Oppenheimer returned to the United States. In 1929 he accepted a joint professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology to introduce the exciting theoretical work being done in Europe to American graduate students. In the subsequent decade Oppenheimer's teaching of the new physics and training of impressive graduate students helped forge an American school of theoretical physics. While at Berkeley, he became a friend and colleague of Ernest Lawrence who had built up the Radiation Laboratory at the university as a major center for nuclear physics. This time in Berkeley also marked the flowering of Oppenheimer's political activism, and it was here where he established personal connections to various left-leaning individuals and groups that years later would be central to his security problems.

In 1941, Oppenheimer became involved, partly through the efforts of Lawrence, in the research effort on the physics of a possible atom bomb. In June 1942, Arthur Compton asked Oppenheimer to coordinate weapon theory and ongoing fast-neutron research at a half-dozen universities. Oppenheimer accepted the assignment on the condition that he have an assistant with more experience than he had in experimental physics. Compton selected John H. Manley, an experimentalist working at Compton's newly established Metallurgical Laboratory. Oppenheimer established a theoretical physics group at Berkeley, while Manley directed experimental work from Chicago. Initially optimistic that the atomic bomb problem appeared in principle almost solved-with "a total of three experienced men and perhaps an equal number of younger ones," he wrote Lawrence, it should be possible to resolve the theoretical problems-Oppenheimer soon realized that the critical difficulty lay not in theory but in the lack of good experimental data. Precise calculation of the amount of fissionable material needed for the weapon, the efficiency of the reaction, and the destructive effect of the weapon was not so easily accomplished.

Not long after General Leslie Groves assumed command of the Manhattan Engineer District in September 1942, Oppenheimer suggested establishing a special bomb laboratory. Groves agreed and asked Oppenheimer to be the director of the new weapons laboratory at Los Alamos. Yet, Oppenheimer was not necessarily an obvious choice for the job. First, as a theoretical physicist, it was not apparent that Oppenheimer possessed the practical technical skills necessary to build a bomb. As the American physicist, and friend to Oppenheimer, I.I. Rabi, later explained, "He was a very impractical fellow. He walked about with scuffed shoes and a funny hat, and more important he didn't know anything about equipment." Second, other than briefly coordinating weapons theory research, he had never been an administrator and never demonstrated a desire for or skill at institution building. Hans Bethe who would work under Oppenheimer at Los Alamos noted that before being handed the tremendous responsibility for overseeing the weapons laboratory, Oppenheimer had, "no experience in directing a large group of people." Third, Oppenheimer's background revealed a history of political activism for left leaning causes and associations with politically radical individuals, which troubled security personnel greatly. Later writing of his decision, Groves noted, "No one with whom I talked showed any great enthusiasm about Oppenheimer as a possible director."

Despite reservations about his fitness to direct the weapons lab, Oppenheimer proved to be an excellent director. One oft appreciated administrative choice he made was avoiding the compartmentalization that could inhibit scientific work at secret facilities. He acquiesced to security requirements which wrapped the laboratory in a heavy blanket of isolation and secrecy, but he preserved the right of scientists to speak freely with their peers inside the laboratory as much as possible. Through relatively free discourse and weekly progress review meetings, Oppenheimer hoped to in some ways replicate the academic environment most comfortable for his personnel and most conducive to innovative thinking-even at a secret military laboratory. His personal charm and charisma won the admiration of many wartime lab personnel, and his capacity for understanding a great breadth of technical issues made him a useful and engaged leader.

After the war, Oppenheimer resigned as director of the Los Alamos lab and returned to academia. In 1947, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. Oppenheimer, at the same time, remained active in the postwar development of nuclear energy. He played a prominent role in shaping the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal report on international control of the atom. When the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took over most of the Manhattan Project's facilities and activities in 1947, he became chairman of the new agency's General Advisory Committee. The prestige and authority he earned during his wartime leadership made him an exceptionally respected and influential advisor. He fought the push for a crash effort to produce a thermonuclear fusion weapon in the late 1940s, calling the device "a torture thing that you could well argue did not make a great deal of sense," but when a radically new approach involving stage nuclear implosion made a workable weapon likely he described it as "technically so sweet that you could not argue about that." In 1954, however, at the height of McCarthyism, the AEC revoked Oppenheimer's security clearance and thus severed all connections between him and government policy. The 1954 security clearance hearing, which turned on Oppenheimer's left-leaning personal associations and on his resistance to developing the hydrogen bomb, was a polarizing moment for the scientific community, and its outcome shocked the nation. Oppenheimer now lingered in exile, cut off from a world that had been the center of his career. Even so, the greatness of the man and his service to his country could not be denied. In 1963, less than a decade after the United States government had declared Oppenheimer a security risk, President Lyndon Johnson presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award, the highest honor the AEC could bestow. Oppenheimer retired from the Institute of Advanced Study in 1966, and, following a struggle with throat cancer, died the next year.

• Bush, Vannevar
• Compton, Arthur H.
• Conant, James B.
• Groves, Leslie R.
• Lawrence, Ernest O.
• Oppenheimer, J. Robert
• Roosevelt, Franklin D.
• Truman, Harry S.

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