Kai Bird - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Table of Contents

For Susan Goldmark and Susan Sherwin
and in memory of
Angus Cameron
and
Jean Mayer

Acclaim for Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwins

AMERICAN PROMETHEUS

A New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, Kansas City Star, and Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year A Booklist and Discover Magazine Best Science Book of the Year

In this stunning blockbuster, two accomplished Cold War historians have come together to tell Robert Oppenheimers poignant and extraordinary story. Foreign A fairs

A masterpiece of scholarship and riveting writing that brings vividly to life the complicated and often enigmatic Oppenheimer. Chicago Tribune

A nuanced and exacting portrait.... A standout in two genres: biography and social history. San Francisco Chronicle

Riveting and revealing.... A magisterial biography that is about as close to the whole storyand to a resolution of the contradictionsas we may hope to get. The New Republic

Destined to become the canonical biography. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Important, exhaustively researched.... A major contribution to American history, [it] offers a judicious interpretation of the evidence [and] incisively portrays Oppenheimers personal life and character. The Philadelphia Inquirer

American Prometheus tells [Oppenheimers] story at length and exceedingly well. The authors employ a mix of thoroughness and judgment that makes this an essential book. Time

Comprehensive and compelling, a meticulous survey of Oppenheimers life and times.... Bird and Sherwins book has an epic quality.... A sweeping, perhaps definitive portrait of the man and his times. San Jose Mercury News

An engaging, informative, well-written biography that will be the standard for works about Oppenheimerand how good biographies should be written. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

American Prometheus is clear in its purpose, deeply felt, persuasively argued, disciplined in form, and written with a sustained literary power. The New York Review of Books

An absorbing, densely detailed biography.... American Prometheus is both an incisive portrait of a scientist and a vivid chronicle of an age. Houston Chronicle

This commanding biography, the result of twenty-five years of research, reevaluates [Oppenheimers] character, and delivers the most complex portrait of Oppenheimer to date. The New Yorker

Exceptional and exhaustively researched.... Not only do Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin explain Oppenheimers dazzling, emblematic and vexatious career, but they also illuminate the strains in American culture that formed todays notions of liberalism and reaction. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The best single book ever written about Oppenheimer. American Scientist

Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus. Scientific Monthly, September 1945

Prometheus stole fire and gave it to men. But when Zeus learned of it, he ordered Hephaestus to nail his body to Mount Caucasus. On it Prometheus was nailed and kept bound for many years. Every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night. Apollodorus, The Library, book 1:7, second century B.C.

PREFACE

ROBERT OPPENHEIMERS lifehis career, his reputation, even his sense of self-worthsuddenly spun out of control four days before Christmas in 1953. I cant believe what is happening to me, he exclaimed, staring through the window of the car speeding him to his lawyers Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. There, within a few hours, he had to confront a fateful decision. Should he resign from his government advisory positions? Or should he fight the charges contained in the letter that Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), had handed to him out of the blue earlier that afternoon? The letter informed him that a new review of his background and policy recommendations had resulted in his being declared a security risk, and went on to delineate thirty-four charges ranging from the ridiculousit was reported that in 1940 you were listed as a sponsor of the Friends of the Chinese Peopleto the politicalin the autumn of 1949, and subsequently, you strongly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Curiously, ever since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer had been harboring a vague premonition that something dark and ominous lay in wait for him. A few years earlier, in the late 1940s, at a time when he had achieved a veritably iconic status in American society as the most respected and admired scientist and public policy adviser of his generationeven being featured on the covers of Time and Life magazineshe had read Henry James short story The Beast in the Jungle. Oppenheimer was utterly transfixed by this tale of obsession and tormented egotism in which the protagonist is haunted by a premonition that he was being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen. Whatever it was, he knew that it would overwhelm him.

As the tide of anticommunism rose in postwar America, Oppenheimer became increasingly aware that a beast in the jungle was stalking him. His appearances before Red-hunting congressional investigative committees, the FBI taps on his home and office phones, the scurrilous stories about his political past and policy recommendations planted in the press made him feel like a hunted man. His left-wing activities during the 1930s in Berkeley, combined with his postwar resistance to the Air Forces plans for massive strategic bombing with nuclear weaponsplans he called genocidalhad angered many powerful Washington insiders, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Lewis Strauss.

That evening, at the Georgetown home of Herbert and Anne Marks, he contemplated his options. Herbert was not only his lawyer but one of his closest friends. And Herberts wife, Anne Wilson Marks, had once been his secretary at Los Alamos. That night Anne observed that he seemed to be in an almost despairing state of mind. Yet, after much discussion, Oppenheimer concluded, perhaps as much in resignation as conviction, that no matter how stacked the deck, he could not let the charges go unchallenged. So, with Herbs guidance, he drafted a letter addressed to Dear Lewis. In it Oppenheimer noted that Strauss had encouraged him to resign. You put to me as a possibly desirable alternative that I request termination of my contract as a consultant to the [Atomic Energy] Commission, and thereby avoid an explicit consideration of the charges.... Oppenheimer said he had earnestly considered this option. But [u]nder the circumstances, he continued, this course of action would mean that I accept and concur in the view that I am not fit to serve this government, that I have now served for some twelve years. This I cannot do. If I were thus unworthy I could hardly have served our country as I have tried, or been the Director of our Institute [for Advanced Study] in Princeton, or have spoken, as on more than one occasion I have found myself speaking, in the name of our science and our country.

By the end of the evening, Robert was exhausted and despondent. After several drinks, he retired upstairs to the guest bedroom. A few minutes later, Anne, Herbert and Roberts wife, Kitty, who had accompanied him to Washington, heard a terrible crash. Racing upstairs, they found the bedroom empty and the bathroom door closed. I couldnt get it open, Anne said, and I couldnt get a response from Robert.