When J. Robert Oppenheimer walked out of the hearing room on that beautiful spring day in May 1954 he was, by all accounts, a broken man. The United States government had been looking into the question of whether or not to renew his access to classified material, a question made pertinent by Oppenheimer’s past associations with communists. The dangling cigarette – as much a part of his public face as the hooded eyes and sharp, aquiline features – seemed to hang from the corner of his thin, expressionless mouth and a look of rueful sadness was on his face, as if he didn’t quite believe what had befallen him.

Later that summer, The Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance because of “[c]oncern for the defense and security of the United States.” His loyalty to the United States an open question, Oppenheimer withdrew from public life to spend the remainder of his years teaching, lecturing, and writing about science and man’s place in the universe.

It could be said that the years following his humiliation were an anti-climax to one of the most remarkable scientific careers in history. For despite taking over Albert Einstein’s old job at Princeton as Chair of the Institute for Advanced Study as well as being a respected and well traveled writer and lecturer, nothing could compare to what Oppenheimer accomplished in the war years when he headed up the scientific team that built the atomic bomb. And, more importantly, his post war fall from grace was a far cry from the heady days following World War II when for a brief instant, it seemed as if Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists who unlocked the secrets of the atom and allowed mankind to control the lightening, would achieve what politicians and diplomats could not – international control of nuclear power.

Born in 1904 to wealthy, immigrant parents, Oppenheimer’s early years were marked by astounding academic achievement. A delayed entrance to Harvard due to a bout with colitis didn’t slow him down as he graduated in three years with a degree in Chemistry. After a very brief and unsatisfying stint with Ernest Rutherford’s famous Cavendish Laboratory of Experimental Physics, Oppenheimer realized his ability tended more to the theoretical aspect of the science and proceeded to study with the brilliant Max Born at the University of Cottingen in Germany where he received his PHD in Theoretical Physics in 1927.

The history of physics from the turn of the century to the early 1930’s will be remembered as one of the most remarkable periods of discovery in human history. Oppenheimer’s contributions to this explosion of knowledge has been generally dismissed as inconsequential, although some have pointed to his seminal work regarding the relationship between protons and electrons – the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation – as extremely important to the ultimate understanding of sub-atomic particles. He also predicted both the existence of one of those particles, the positron, as well as the existence of black holes.

But Oppenheimer’s was a restless mind. He migrated to Berkeley to teach and advise the brilliant Ernest O. Lawrence with his cyclotron experiments. Lawrence’s experiments needed a theoretician to explain what the experimentalists were seeing with their cyclotron work and Oppenheimer’s collaboration with with University of California scientist turned out to be both intellectually satisfying and profoundly relevant to advancing scientific knowledge of the atom.

Oppenheimer’s brilliance could be overwhelming. He had an extraordinary knack for grasping a concept immediately and cutting to the heart of a problem. His memory was legendary. In addition, the broad reach of Oppenheimer’s intellect was startling. This probably contributed to his lack of recognition as a top level theoretical physicist. His long time friend Isidor Rabi:

Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was…he turned away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.

All the while, Oppenheimer maintained relationships with communists. As most intellectuals during the 1930’s, Oppenheimer saw the depression as a failure of capitalism and communism as the wave of the future. Using his vast inheritance, he bankrolled many left wing causes while marrying a former communist Kitty Harrison. It was these associations that would come back to haunt him later although it appears Oppenheimer himself was never that interested in politics. In fact, once Stalin’s horrors started to become known, Oppenheimer began to cut his ties with most left wing organizations and individuals. Cynics also point to the fact that it was at this time that the federal government was getting interested in the potential for building the atom bomb and that Oppenheimer’s associations would have precluded his participation.

Whatever the reason, Oppenheimer threw himself into the early atom bomb work with enthusiasm. He assembled a theoretical team in California that included future Nobel Prize winners Hans Bethe and Edward Teller who dealt with some of the early problems of bomb design. And later, when looking for someone to head up the scientific enterprise that became the Manhattan Project, the Project’s director General Leslie Groves found in Oppenheimer someone who was familiar with the many scientific disciplines that would be required to build a successful bomb as well as a driven personality that would see the project through to completion.

In September of 1942, Oppenheimer accepted the position as Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project. Starting from scratch in the New Mexico desert, Los Alamos became a magnet for the best minds in physics, chemistry and engineering. Oppenheimer rode herd on this diverse group, amazing his colleagues with his grasp of the problems associated with turning the theoretical into the practical. Victor Weisskopf , a brilliant theoretical physicist in his own right, gives us a sense of what it was like at Los Alamos working under Oppenheimer:

“He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.”

The closer the bomb got to becoming a reality, the more unease was demonstrated by scientists working on the project. This was especially true after it became clear in early 1945 that Germany was nowhere near completing a bomb and in fact had never really started. This fractured the scientific consensus that was responsible for the idea of building the bomb in the first place. The fear that Germany would construct an atomic b0mb is what gave impetus to the entire effort and once that threat was gone, many of the scientists began to have second thoughts.

Notable among them was Leo Szilard, the diminutive Hungarian immigrant who first conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction (he actually patented the process, later giving it to the British government to maintain secrecy) and who was present at the creation of the first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in 1942. Szilard was horrified at the prospect of actually using the bomb, believing the threat would be enough to deter either Japan or Germany and cause them to surrender. Szilard’s naivete regarding Hitler and Japan carried over into a belief after the war that only a committee of scientists from all over the world should be entrusted with nuclear secrets.

Szilard drafted a letter as a cover to a report that came to be known as The Franck Report and circulated it among scientists not only in Chicago, but also at Los Alamos and at Berkley where Ernest Lawrence was busy working on uranium isotope separation. The Franck report not only opposed the use of the bomb on Japan but called for atomic secrets to be shared openly with all nations after the war. Groves was livid with Szilard believing that the scientist had not only violated security, but that he was undermining the dedication of his scientists at Los Alamos.

While the debates over whether or not to use the bomb raged in the laboratories and dormitories at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer remained committed to at the very least, testing the weapon. In that respect, Oppenheimer convinced almost all the scientists that they should view the project as a physics experiment which needed to have the main hypothesis tested. And he promised some of the more outspoken advocates for not using the bomb that as member of the scientific advisory group to the Interim Committee on using the bomb, he would make their views known to both military and civilian authorities.

By May of 1945 with Germany out of the war, The members of the Committee came up with three options on what to do with the bomb:

1. Inform the Japanese of the existence of the bomb and threaten to use it unless they immediately surrendered.

2. A demonstration of the bombs destructive power at a remote location.

3. Drop the bombs on Japanese cities with no warning.

Oppenheimer was part of a group of scientists who contributed to the report that advocated using the bomb on Japanese cities without warning. The reasoning was that any warning given would allow the Japanese to move thousands of American POW’s into the area where the bomb would be dropped. Plus, it was felt that the psychological effect of the bomb would be lost if any advance notice was given the Japanese. The report stated that since “we can purpose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

Oppenheimer was always torn on taking this position. On the one hand, he sympathized intellectually with his colleagues from Chicago who didn’t want to use the bomb. On the other hand, Oppenheimer was privy to intelligence that indicated unless the Japanese were shocked by using the bomb without warning on one or two of their cities, they would not surrender without a massive invasion. To the end of his days, his public statements reflected this dichotomy as he alternately would justify his support for using the bomb and curse himself for not taking a stronger stand against the post-war plans for nuclear power that, for the most part, shut scientists out of the decision making process.

Oppenheimer did oppose the quick use of the second bomb on Nagasaki reasoning that the Japanese government should have time to evaluate the bomb’s effects. In this, he may have been correct in that the Japanese at first disbelieved President Truman’s announcement that one, lone bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and secondly, the Japanese government was unable to get to the city and evaluate the damage until August 8th, less than 24 hours before the second bomb was used on Nagasaki.

Following Japan’s surrender, a tug of war ensued between the scientists and the government on who would best control the awesome power of the atom. It is perhaps instructive that at this time, scientists believed that anything short of international controls on nuclear secrets would result in an arms race. Intellectually they were right. But in the practical world of post war domestic and international politics, there was never a chance for any such plan to succeed. The Soviets had proved themselves duplicitous in eastern Europe and the cold war was well underway. Oppenheimer was made an adviser to the newly minted Atomic Energy Commission which oversaw America’s efforts to both build weapons of mass destruction and use the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project for peaceful purposes. He correctly predicted that the Soviets would have a weapon much faster than the military’s estimate of 10 years (1955). This was born out when the Soviet’s exploded their first atomic bomb in September of 1949. What the scientists had feared became a reality; an arms race was underway that was to divert massive amounts of both money and scientific expertise to bomb making.

The dilemma faced by Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists echoes down to this day as more and more scientists are opting out of weapons building even with the promise of exciting, breakthrough work as part of the bargain. But perhaps Oppenheimer and his fellows should be remembered as much for their patriotism as they are for the work they did. For it was the belief that their nation’s survival was at stake that drove them to achieve the breakthroughs necessary to bring the Manhattan Project to fruition. Because of that, and even with their doubts and feelings of guilt about how it was used, we should be eternally grateful for their work.