j. robert oppenheimer: a prometheus in chains

J. Robert Oppenheimer A Prometheus in Chains by Nathaniel Eiseman, Kevin Hoang, and Mark O’Donnell

Remembered today as the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer is best known as the director of the Manhattan Project—an operation that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But his resolute determination to share atomic secrets with the rest of the world to prevent an arms race, his attempts to thwart the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the security hearings in which he sacrificed power for the sake of his ideals seem to be forgotten. When the atomic bomb left the realm of theory and entered the working United States arsenal, Oppenheimer was no longer considered indispensable, and his red-baiting enemies were determined to plot his ruin. He had the opportunity to surrender his security clearances quietly and voluntarily. But his principles, forged from earliest childhood, required him to see things “… as they might be.” So, even when given the choice of a face-saving surrender, he chose to face his enemies, with the result that he would be totally barred from the field he had fathered.

The Young Man

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER was born on April 22, 1904 in the vibrant setting of Progressive Era New York to Julius S. Oppenheimer and Ella Friedman. (Some contend that the “J” his name stands for “Julius,” though Oppenheimer himself held that it stands “for nothing.”) Robert’s father was an affluent importer of textiles who had immigrated to the United States in 1888, six years before Robert’s birth. His mother, on the other hand, was a devoted artist. In addition to Robert, the face that would come to define twentieth century physics and politics, Julius and Ella had one other son, Frank, eight years after Robert’s birth on August 14, 1912. As Robert became more and more prominent as a physicist, Frank Friedman Oppenheimer, also a physicist, became agitated by the indifference with which he came to be treated. The public was more focused on his brother, whose name had become a household word, and thus, Frank lived, in some senses, a second-rate existence. After a while, however, the two reconciled and the rivalry ended, with Frank assisting Robert on key government projects, including the Manhattan Project.

As Robert grew older, he enrolled at the Ethical Culture Society School, a school that valued experimen-tal inquiry, open-minded thoughts—essentially, the scientific method. It was there where Oppenheimer began many of his studies, ranging from romance languages to the mathematics and science that would lay the foundations for his later discoveries. This school proved to be a great steppingstone for Oppen-heimer, as he was accepted at Harvard College for undergraduate studies. But unfortunately, the progress he would inevitably have made was impeded by a sudden case of colitis. As a result, instead of continuing his studies at Harvard, he traveled to New Mexico with his former English teacher to study and convalesce, with a new passion: horseback riding near the foot of the Rockies. Despite this setback, Robert resumed his studies with a renewed dedication, graduating a year earlier than expected and summa cum laude by taking six courses each term.

Robert was intending to major in chemistry; however, one fateful day, he heard a lecture on thermodynamics by Percy Williams Bridgman, renowned today for his work on the physics of high pressures. It was instant love, and he quickly became inspired to dedicate his life to physics. But to his dismay, physics was somewhat of a backwater the U.S. and thus, Oppenheimer had no choice but to travel to Europe for his postgraduate studies at Cavendish Laboratory in England under J.J. Thomson, a prominent English physicist known today for his discovery of the electron and isotopes. It was there that Oppenheimer began to transition from the field of experimental physics to theoretical physics. And so, he again transferred, this time to the University of Gottingen, where he began to focus more on quantum theory. Some of his prominent works while at Gottingen include the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, named after Max Born and Oppen-heimer himself for their research differentiating electronic motion, nuclear vibrations, and molecular rotation. After getting his Ph. D. at the early age of 22, Oppenheimer went back to study at Harvard and then at California Institute of Technology. Before long, he was hired as an assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer’s educational success and inquisitive mind were so great that during an oral exam, his examiner, James Franck, became frightened when Oppenheimer began to ask him questions.

After impressing his mentors and educators in the United States, Oppenheimer left the U.S. with his eyes set on the University of Leiden in the Netherlands where he gave lectures in Dutch. The Dutch were so awed by his intellect and charisma that they gave him the nickname Opje. Following his lectures in the Netherlands, Oppenheimer departed for Switzerland where he worked alongside one of his idols, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, an Austrian theoretical physicist noted for his works on the physics of spin and the Exclusion principle.

Following his around-the-world lectures, Oppenheimer returned to the U.S. where he worked on a variety of topics in physics—theoretical astrophysics, quantum field theory, spectroscopy, cosmic ray showers, to name a few. One of the more obscure topics involved the existence of black holes, which we still know little about today. Known today as the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, Oppenheimer proved that there was a limit to a star’s size, suggesting that stars would not live forever, eventually collapsing under the force of their own gravity. Even if he had never worked on the atomic bomb and even if he never did win the Nobel Prize in physics (probably because his work was fifty years ahead of its time), Oppenheimer would still be known as one of the brightest luminaries of 20th century physics.

The Manhattan Project

COSTING A TOTAL of two billion 1945 dollars (over twenty billon, adjusted for inflation) and employ-ing over 130,000 people, including renowned scientist Albert Einstein, the Manhattan Project spanned from 1942 to 1946 and was directed under Robert J. Oppenheimer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and General Leslie R. Groves. Aside from the main weapons research and design labs at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, at which Groves and Oppenheimer worked, there were other sites

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in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, including the Hanford Site in Washington state, a facility in charge of plutonium production, and the site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in charge of uranium production. The Manhattan Project was created to serve the military interests of both the United States and the United Kingdom, with the Soviet Union excluded from the atomic bomb devel-opment during World War II. It would later prove a futile effort to retain such critical secrets from Russia, as multiple spies were found working at the Project. These included Allan May, Julius and Ethal Rosenberg, and David Greenglass, and most notoriously, Klaus Emil Fuchs, whose leakage of bomb secrets allowed the Russians to expedite their bomb development two to five years ahead of what was expected according to U.S. Intelligence.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, physics was blessed with discovery upon discovery. Integral to the design and construction of the atomic bomb was the discovery of the nuclear representa-tion of an atom. By 1932, scientists knew that an atom consisted of a small, dense nucleus, composed of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a ring of electrons.

Another important breakthrough was radioactivity, first discovered by a French scientist named Henri Becquerel. While experimenting on phosphorescent materials, he inferred that x-rays were somehow transferring energy to the glowing phosphorescent material. Bacquerel tested his new idea by wrapping a photographic plate in black paper and exposing it to various phosphorescent minerals. Nothing happened until he placed uranium salts on the plate, which immediately caused it to blacken. He quickly realized that a new form of radiation had been discovered that effortlessly went through the wrapped paper, and blackened the photographic plate.

The discovery of uranium was also crucial to the creation of the atomic bomb. This discovery is attrib-uted to a German pharmacist by the name of Martin Heinrich Klaproth. By dissolving pitchblende, a type of uranium ore, in nitric acid and mixing the solution with sodium hydroxide, Klaproth produced a yellow substance. Heating this substance with charcoal, Klaproth obtained a black powder—an oxide of uranium. He named this newly-discovered oxide after the planet Uranus.

After the discovery of uranium, it was only a matter of time before scientists developed the theory of nuclear fission. In Berlin, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman believed that the fission of uranium could produce binding energy. These chemists correctly concluded that the bombarding of neutrons into uranium could release an immense amount of energy and more neutrons. In the United States as well, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi led a team of scientists at the University of Chicago that developed the first nuclear reactor. On December 2, 1942, the team began the first artificial nuclear reaction by combining 400 tons of graphite, 58 tons of uranium oxide, and 6 tons of uranium metal. Fermi’s revolutionary works led to new ideas concerning human control of the newfound power—both as an energy source and as a weapon more powerful than anything the world had ever seen. Contempo-raneous to Fermi’s research, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard realized, as he walked down the street, that if more neutrons were released than the amount required to start the process, the process of uranium nuclear fission might expand and continue, producing a self-sustaining reaction. After a few experi-ments, Szilard realized that the fission of uranium released an average of two neutrons. He kept this vital information secret for quite some time, however, careful so as to keep the fascist governments from harnessing such potentially disastrous power.

In February 1941, Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium, another radioactive metal. Plutonium was the product of uranium-238 absorbing a neutron that had been released by uranium-235 during nuclear


fission. Despite the mystery surrounding the properties of plutonium at first, scientists hoped that the newfound element could serve as a second fissile substance. Plutonium did, indeed, prove viable in nuclear weapons. When the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan—a plutonium bomb—the explosive force equaled approximately 21,000 tons of TNT.

While discoveries in physics made nuclear fission and the atomic bomb possible, the fear that Germany and the Axis Powers could themselves develop an atomic bomb was a growing concern. This fear was motivation enough for the U.S. to start its own nuclear campaign. By 1942, U.S. intelligence had suggested that the Germans were developing their own weapons of mass destruction; an arms race against Germany had begun. Because Britain was under constant German attack from the air, President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill agreed to carry on the development of the atomic bombs in the United States. Employing luminaries in all fields of science in what was code-named the Manhattan Project, the United States and England embarked on a project whose purpose, many thought, was never to be fulfilled.

As World War II escalated, Oppenheimer became more and more involved in the research and develop-ment of the atomic bomb that was, at that time, being conducted at Berkeley. Initially, Oppenheimer was responsible solely for neutron calculations, but as the Manhattan Project progressed, U.S. Army General Groves decided to appoint him project director. He knew that Oppenheimer’s charismatic personality made him the only man that could successfully lead the diverse group of physicists in the newly-built, clandestine lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was there that Oppenheimer worked long hours, day and night, perfecting the atomic bomb, all the while, under constant scrutiny by FBI agents and security. In trying to assemble a group of the finest, most qualified scientists, “[Groves] believed that Oppenheimer was endangering security by recruiting ‘questionable people’ at Los Alamos,” (Bird and Sherwin). Even though Oppenheimer was the mastermind of the lab, many people accused him of engaging in dangerously left-wing activities. Nevertheless, President Truman was, throughout the Manhattan Project, willing to overlook this side of Oppenheimer, for he was more concerned about the bomb’s ability to end the war than with Oppenheimer’s political views.

The first nuclear explosion, which Oppenheimer designated the “Trinity” test, took place on July 16, 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico. At 5:10 a.m., the twenty-minute countdown began. At 5:29:45, the nuclear weapon exploded, releasing an amount of energy equivalent to the explosion of nineteen kilotons of TNT. The bomb’s explosive force was so great that its detonation created a crater of radioactive glass, now called trinitite, three meters deep in the desert. It was also reported that the nearby mountains were for a split second illuminated with a light brighter than the sun. Colors of purple, to green, and ultimately to white emanated from the explosion. The sound could be heard over a hundred miles away. As Oppenheimer watched what would be the first of many nuclear tests, he said, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The U.S. had “spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and won.”

The greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a


workable plan. […] Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under pressure and without failure. (Stimson)

—President Harry Truman, August 6, 1945

A Fact of Life

As the United States debated whether or not to abandon its neutrality and join the side of the Allied Powers, the entire U.S. Pacific fleet was attacked unexpectedly by Japan in the early morning hours on December 7, 1941. This surprise attack killed over 2,400 American sailors and wounded countless others. Eight battleships were either sunk or severely damaged by the Japanese attack under the command of Japanese general Hideki Tojo. By employing such an malicious plan, Tojo provided President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s a way to enter the war alongside the Allies.

Even after the U.S. won two key naval battles—the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, in May 1942 and June 1942, respectively—and decrypted their military code, the Japanese were not about to back down, as they continued to fight gruesomely in several other bloody battles between 1943 and 1945. As American warships came closer and closer, the Japanese grew more and more desperate—so desperate that sending suicide bombers into U.S. warships became a valid means of warfare. When President Truman received the news of such inconceivably inhumane military practice, he realized that the only way to end the war would be to invade Japan. But he did not want to jeopardize the lives of the thou-sands of Americans it would take for a successful invasion. As a result, his only viable option was to use nuclear weapons on Japan. Before doing so, however, the representatives of the Allies convened at Potsdam, Germany and decided to give Japan one final warning to submit to an unconditional surren-der. Japan was unwilling. On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul Tibetts dropped the first atomic bomb used in war—a uranium bomb named “Little Boy”—from the Enola Gay over the industrial city of Hiroshima, killing over 80,000 civilians instantly. Countless others were condemned to a slow, painful death due to the radiation. With the Japanese still unwilling to surrender, the Allies dropped a second bomb—specifically a plutonium bomb called “Fat Man”—dropped three days later, on Nagasaki. Another 60,000 civilians were incinerated instantly. Because most of the Japanese homes and buildings were made of wood, the nuclear explosion acted also as an incendiary bomb, and city burned for miles around the blast. Finally, on September 2, 1945, Emperor Hirohito authorized a surrender, despite his fears that his ultra-nationalistic generals would carry out a coup d’état.

On August 9, 1949, just four years after the “Fat Man” bomb, Russia developed its own nuclear weapons. Suddenly, both the United States and Russia had the capabilities and the resources to attack one another by means of nuclear warfare. These conditions led to the military doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. MAD essentially stated that if one nation with a large arsenal of nuclear weapons were to fire upon another nation with the same military capabilities, the second nation would respond in the same manner, causing the destruction of both the attacker and the defender.

The basic idea of MAD is that the certainty of catastrophic retaliation will stop anybody from starting a nuclear war. It will indeed stop anybody who is cool and rational and in firm command of his own forces. If somebody is


not cool and rational and not in firm command, then what? Then we trust to luck and hope for the best. If our luck turns sour, our missiles take off and carry out the greatest massacre of innocent people in all of history.

—Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe

Before long, nations struck nuclear arms agreements, supported by the public’s fear of mutual destruc-tion. One of such agreements was the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on July 31, 1991. This treaty ensured that both the U.S. and the USSR would not stockpile more than six thousand nuclear warheads. While the race for more nuclear weapons of mass destruction seemed inevitable, America tried at least to delay it.

Oppenheimer’s discoveries left rippling effects for centuries later. By winning the war against Japan, Oppenheimer solved one dilemma, but created another. In developing the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer opened what could be described as Pandora’s Box. During the 1950s, school-children were taught to take cover under their desks in case of a nuclear attack. An increasing number of developing nations are pursuing nuclear weapons technology. And what if they, as Dyson said, are not in firm command of their forces? Even today, films about the military industrial complex and nuclear energy are part of popular culture. Clint Eastwood’s films, Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, and Jarecki’s movie, Why We Fight, are just a few examples. The U.S. military-industrial complex will be a part of future generations until it gets blown off the face of the earth by someone else’s. As President Eisenhower had said in his farewell address: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” (Jarecki)

The Hydrogen Bomb

On the technical side,…the super is not very different from what it was when we first spoke of it more than seven years ago—a weapon of unknown design, cost, deliverability and military value…

What concerns me is not really the technical problem. I am not sure the miserable thing will work, nor that it can be gotten to a target except by ox cart. It seems likely to me even further to worsen the unbalance of our present war plans.

—Robert Oppenheimer, letter to James Conant, October 21, 1949

ON OCTOBER 29, 1949, the eight members of the Atomic Energy Commission’s General Advisory Council met in Washington to discuss the fate of a proposed all-out effort to research the hydrogen bomb. The eight scientists arrived with no clear consensus, but after mere hours of debate, GAC chairman Oppenheimer and Conant, both adamantly opposed to the development of the H-bomb, had won over the other council members. In a unanimous 8–0 decision, the council voted to recommend to President Truman not to fund any H-bomb research, issuing three documents to the president. The


majority opinion, signed by all present, stated that “We all hope that by one means or another, the development of these weapons can be avoided.” A concurring opinion, signed by six GAC members warned, in addition, that “a super bomb might become a weapon of genocide,” and that “a super bomb should never be produced.” A second concurring statement written by GAC members Isidor Isaac Rabi and Enrico Fermi truly arouses the soul: “It is an evil thing in any light. […] an inhuman applica-tion of force,” (McMillan).

Irrespective of the fact that their appeals against the H-bomb were on moral grounds and their plans of peaceful negotiations with Russia, the GAC members were not naïve. They recognized that the U.S. already possessed the technology necessary to create large stockpiles of atomic bombs and that to perfect a design for the H-bomb would not only require redirecting of resources that could be used to increase stockpiles of A-bombs, but that tests of such a super bomb would be impossible to hide from Russian intelligence and would lead inexorably to an arms race. Furthermore, there was still much debate as to whether the H-bomb could even work. In essence, the GAC was suggesting that the U.S. military quit while it was ahead.

Unfortunately, neither the Machiavellian pentagon officials nor the ambitious AEC commissioners understood the physicists’ moving language. Though Truman had promised AEC commissioner David Lilienthal that he would not let himself be “blitzed” by the AEC or Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in Congress, he seemed to have a change of heart after a seven minute meeting with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson. Truman decided, with the AEC threatening to go public with plans for the H-bomb, that he had no choice but to begin development. To further the GAC’s injury, the president forbade its members to voice any dissent until the public was more in-formed about the H-bomb program. When introduced to the new wife of AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss’s son, Oppenheimer “merely extended a hand over his shoulder,” (McMillan).

On February 2, 1950, “the roof fell in,” said David Lilienthal. It was the day of “a world catastrophe, and a sad day for the human race,” (McMillan). Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, sent to the Manhattan Project from England, had confessed to giving atomic energy secrets to the Russians. Whether Fuchs’s information had led Russia to perfecting the A-bomb long before U.S. predictions was relatively unimportant—a Russian nuclear program had long been a fait accompli. Rather, the question was whether Fuchs knew of plans for the H-bomb. Teller—though possibly as a means to expedite U.S. H-bomb research—said that he believed Fuchs did, while other scientists thought that any knowledge Fuchs could possibly have would be so outdated that it would, in fact, confuse the Russians and delay their bomb research.

Into the midst of this discord and fear, came Senator Joseph McCarthy with a list of “known commu-nists” working in the U.S. government. Among the names was Oppenheimer’s. Suddenly, peaceful negotiations became “un-American.” Strauss even accused him of helping the Russians by trying to delay America’s H-bomb program. Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and a handful of his loyal GAC members tried to appeal to the public in Scientific American and other journals, asking: “Can we, who have always insisted on morality and human decency, introduce this weapon of total annihilation into the world?” (McMillan). Bethe and Oppenheimer appealed to the public, explaining that the decision to produce the H-bomb had been made behind the scenes. But with a war with Russia on the horizon, Americans were more concerned with military strength than with due process. AEC commissioner Robert Bacher successfully convinced the public that the renegade GAC members were deceiving them. By the end of 1949, Oppenheimer had been largely discredited.


j. robert oppenheimer: a prometheus in chains

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