Snapshots of Oppenheimer
Much has already been written about J. Robert Oppenheimer, perhaps most familiarly in Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s 2005 biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. That book and other Oppenheimer biographies draw heavily on a lengthy transcript of an interview he gave in 1963 that is in the collection at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA is part of the American Institute of Physics, publisher of Physics Today).
Before this past April, those resources were readily available only to researchers and only through explicit permission of the Oppenheimer family. But in coordination with the family, NBLA has now made the interview—along with two others Oppenheimer gave that are lesser known—publicly accessible for noncommercial, not-for-profit use. (For a panel discussion about the interviews, featuring Bird, members of the Oppenheimer family, and historian David Kaiser, visit https://bit.ly/4dnt9jnM .)
In this issue, PT takes a cue from the interviews and explores Oppenheimer’s role in science through a variety of lenses.
Starting on page 26 , PT’s Ryan Dahn explores what a 1963 interview with Oppenheimer reveals—and doesn’t reveal—about his early career. Oppenheimer carried out doctoral and postdoctoral work in Europe in the mid and late 1920s, just as modern quantum mechanics was taking shape. In the interview, he shares his recollections of the time and how he came to be an evangelist for the new quantum theory in the US. Dahn also shares parts of the other two newly released interviews: one from 1960 on the Trinity nuclear test and one from 1966 focusing on Enrico Fermi.
Following Oppenheimer’s death in February 1967, PT ran a special commemorative issue in October that featured four articles by eminent contemporaries who looked back at different aspects of his life and contributions. On page 34 , we feature one of them: Abraham Pais’s recounting of Oppenheimer’s time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he became director in 1947.
It was while Oppenheimer was at the institute that the Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance, an action that triggered strong responses from the physics community. Not only was the loyalty of a preeminent physicist being questioned, but the fundamental relationship between government and the scientific community was being drawn into question. Starting on page 44 , you can read letters about how the American Physical Society and AIP considered their responses to the commission’s action.
One issue that fueled the campaign to revoke Oppenheimer’s clearance was his postwar concern for preventing an arms race. For example, in his farewell speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists on 2 November 1945, shortly after he resigned as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer said, “I think it is true to say that atomic weapons are a peril which affect everyone in the world, and in that sense a completely common problem.” On page 51 , Stewart Prager and Denisse Córdova Carrizales place that issue in a modern setting: the US nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Program. Although it is designed to maintain the US arsenal using science rather than weapons tests, the authors argue that the advancing science could actually further the development of new weapons and that ethical choices like those faced by Oppenheimer and other nuclear scientists of the era continue today.
