Two Perspectives on J. Robert Oppenheimer

Like the two images in a stereoscope, the subject is the same person in both views. The source materials are largely the same. 

American Prometheus is focused on the personalities of the physicists. Life in the Center goes into the development of quantum theory and JRO’s role in that. It was as a physicist in the 1920s and 1930s that Oppenheimer earned his reputation and the respect of the colleagues who later endorsed his leadership of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

Robert Oppenheimer: 

A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk, 

Anchor 2014. 

The value judgments of the authors are necessarily similar though somewhat different. In 200 years, we advanced from Wheatstone’s viewer to the IMAX, but the overwhelming projection of a huge flat image does not replicate the immersive experiences of hours, years, or decades. In quantum theory it is known that indeterminacy cannot be overpowered with two repetitions of the same experiment because they will not be the same experiment. Delivered in two books or a hundred, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s emotions and intellect, motives and motivations, virtues and foibles, must separately explicable while remaining collectively indeterminate. The important questions are: Would you want him for a colleague, or a supervisor, or a neighbor or an in-law; as collaborator or a competitor; a teacher or a student? He was all of those though to different people at different times and no two matrices of data can be the same as received then and there, or here and now. It remains that he was not a sphynx, neither the silent Egyptian nor the deceptive Greek. At some junctures he was one or the other—and other times, he something completely different. 

“The Institute is an interesting paradise. But in an ideal society, when you remove all the everyday frictions, the frictions that are created to take their place are so much more cruel.” Verna Hobson quoted in Monk, Life Inside the Center, page 338. 

American Prometheus:
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 
by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Vintage, 2006.

The decades of conflict between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss were as inevitable as the civil wars of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar—and Brutus. The movie version of American Prometheus trivializes that clash of personalities. Strauss hated Oppenheimer for several reasons starting with their competition to head the Institute for Advanced Studies. In the opening gambit, Oppenheimer acquired a rental home for someone else, blocking Strauss’s acquisition, apparently knowing fully that Strauss wanted to be near the institute which intended to head. In addition, Strauss was politically conservative. Moreover, as Oppenheimer was often insensitive to other people, Strauss was extremely sensitive to other people and their perception of him. Being embarrassed (humiliated, in his view) by Oppenheimer at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing may have been the nadir of their relationship, but it was not the last point below the horizon. 

According to Monk, even Edward Teller was impressed with JRO’s leadership. That they disagreed on other subjects did not alter his view of those facts. Teller was a scientist. That was true of all of them: their feelings were not as important to themselves or to each other individually as were the verifiable theories and substantiated facts, including what makes a good academic department chair. 

Everyone had ideas and theories and experiments but Oppenheimer seemed less willing to forcefully put forward his own because he was critical of them. That self-critical judgment allowed the other physicists to trust him as a leader of perhaps the most complex human achievement to that time. Regardless of whether Teller was right about the practicality and desirability of the hydrogen bomb, Teller could not have run Manhattan. Lawrence wanted the job, but Manhattan was far more than a very large academic laboratory. Everyone knew that about themselves and each other. That was why they endorsed J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Manhattan Project.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Genius 

Physics for Astronomers: the Works of Steven Weinberg 

The Legacy of Vannevar Bush 

Simply Dirac by Helge Kragh