J. Robert Oppenheimer
Scientific director of the Manhattan Project, post-war atomic-policy figure
Also known as: Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) was scientific director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and, after the war, chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Quigley cites him as both a key witness and a casualty of the post-war national-security state in the McCarthy-era chapters of Tragedy and Hope.
Los Alamos and the bomb
Quigley credits Oppenheimer's organizational achievement at Los Alamos: he gathered "the world's greatest assemblage of working scientists (including almost a dozen Nobel laureates), planned and constructed the earliest bombs at that isolated spot" twenty miles from Santa Fe (T&H 868). The wartime program drew in adjacent efforts including Philip Abelson's work on uranium-235 separation for the Navy's submarine reactor program (T&H 870), but the scientific direction at Los Alamos was Oppenheimer's. His subsequent prestige was institutional as much as scientific: by 1947–1953 he sat on "a total of thirty-five government committees" while heading the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton — "American copy of All Souls College at Oxford" in Quigley's phrasing (T&H 898).
The security clearance affair
Quigley frames the destruction of Oppenheimer's public career in 1953–1954 as a casualty of the "massive retaliation" advocates' rejection of his graduated-response advice. The defense doctrine of March 1950 "and generally the advice given by Robert Oppenheimer before his public career had been destroyed by the 'massive retaliation' advocates in 1953… called for a graduated and varied strategic response to Soviet aggression" (T&H 892). "At the center of the whole struggle was Robert Oppenheimer" (T&H 897). The pretext was his earlier left-political associations: "in his younger and more naive days [Oppenheimer] had been closely associated" with figures whose loyalty was later questioned (T&H 898). The figure Joseph McCarthy stands at one end of the climate; the Atomic Energy Commission decision to revoke clearance, championed in part by allies of Edward Teller and the hydrogen-bomb advocates, at the other.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 868 Quigley
Robert Oppenheimer of the University of California, with the world's greatest assemblage of working scientists (including almost a dozen Nobel laureates), planned and constructed the earliest bombs at that isolated spot.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 892 Quigley
Generally to the advice given by Robert Oppenheimer before his public career had been destroyed by the 'massive retaliation' advocates in 1953.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 897 Quigley
And at the center of the whole struggle was Robert Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer, wartime director of the Los Alamos laboratory.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 898 Quigley
In spite of Oppenheimer's exalted positions in 1947–1953, which included the directorship of the great Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (American copy of All Souls College at Oxford), there was a shadow on Oppenheimer's past.
- book-reviews · p. 83 Quigley
The United States, thanks to Oppenheimer, sought to solve the problem by getting smaller bombs.