American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird (PDF)

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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.THE INSPIRATION FOR THE UPCOMING MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMERIn this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.“A masterful account of Oppenheimer’s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America’s own transformation. It is a tour de force.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review“A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer’s essential nature…. It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior.” —The New York Times

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⭐It is rare to read a biography that is so rich in detail, so clear in ideas, and so beautifully written that it can be counted as literature. For the past week, I have been deliciously absorbed in this book, feeling an alternation of awe and disgust. Oppenheimer is a unique figure in American history: starting as an academic, he became a master administrator for one of the most important technological breakthroughs in the history of mankind – harnessing the atom – and then a “wise man” insider in politics, only to be cast down and ruined in the McCarthy era because his views diverged from those of the powerful. It is an amazing journey.Oppenheimer came from privilege: not only was he gifted with an absolutely first rate mind and great wealth, but he was in the right place at the right time, during a revolution in science and then in technology. He started out as a sheltered prodigy, a polymath in science and in literature, who wound up studying theoretical physics at the moment that quantum mechanics was in its final phase of development. His mentors were the discoverers themselves, and he studied alongside Heisenberg and virtually all of the greats in that field. He then went on to a professorship at Cal Tech and Berkeley, where he built the best department of physics in the US while in his 20s. Without exaggeration, I believe that this period will be regarded as profoundly influential as the Renaissance or Enlightenment.However, as the authors relate, his ascent was not at all easy. Oppenheimer suffered from some form of mental illness, either a depression or worse. Given his loving childhood background, it is hard to know what really went wrong for him, but he contemplated suicide and even poisoned an apple that he left from one of his adversaries, which almost led to his dismissal from Cambridge. Perhaps what explains part of it was that Oppenheimer was of the types whose ambitions are so monstrously huge (and completely unfathomable) that he needed to operate at the highest pinnacle to feel whole within himself, that there was not much more to him than the kind of narcissism to seek perfection. In addition to his personal charm and intellectual charisma, he had many character flaws, which engendered great resentments and even bitter hatreds throughout his career.In spite of the admiration of the authors, they are highly critical of Oppenheimer. He was too impatient to develop his ideas systematically – by means of the mathematical proofs required for a Nobel Prize in theoretical physics – so he merely contributed to the discoveries of others. In this way, he was not truly original as a scientist, but a “synthesizer”. His attention was also overly divided as he learned languages, apparently including Sanskrit so that he could read the Bhagavagita in the original as he did Dante’s Inferno in Italian and Les Fleurs du Mal in French, and during the Depression widened his concerns to politics, getting involved with communism as a possible remedy to the social ills he saw, the Spanish Revolution, and opposition to Nazism.Because of his scientific breadth, he was chosen to head the Manhattan Project. Though many predicted his abrasive behavior and arrogance would doom his leadership effort, he astounded even his critics by becoming a master administrator, getting the right person for each job, inspiring them, and keeping everything – all the myriad issues that required resolution – in his head and moving forward just at the needed time. It was perhaps here, as an administrator, that his true genius flowered. When the bomb was finally exploded, he was barely 40 years old and, after Einstein, the most famous scientist in the world. Afterwards, he took over the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, transforming it into a focal point of intellectual endeavor in the US.In the meantime, his enemies bided their time, compiling information about him via years of FBI surveillance and illegal wiretaps, waiting for the right moment to strike at him. Many of them bore him petty personal grudges, such as Lewis Strauss of the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission). They looked at his past communist associations, some bad judgment calls, and certain self destructive behaviors such as occasional lies as well as his marital infidelities and personality quirks. The case they built occupies an inordinate portion of the book, though it culminated in a Security Committee hearing of the AEC that stripped him of his security clearance, shutting him out of the upper circles of government and the establishment that he had come to love. The hearing was not a “trial” with due process or even constitutional guarantees, brought out nothing new that hadn’t been known when he was first given the clearance by the Army in 1943, and he was not convicted of any crime – even his loyalty to the US went unchallenged, but he was instead branded a “security risk” in a kangaroo court. Beyond his personal enemies, his real offense was his opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb that the politicians wanted. There were lots of “bad guys” here, including even Harry Truman and J. Edgar Hoover, which made the narrative a bit too black and white for my taste, however much I agree with their portrayal.Oppenheimer emerged from this ordeal a broken man at 50, forever unable to operate at the level to which he was accustomed. The reader really gets a feel for the man, who was full of contradictions. He was a serious drinker though not as alcoholic as his troubled wife, Kitty, and was not a very good father, yet admired by millions for his wisdom and public charm. He had a knack for making powerful enemies in addition to lifelong friends and was arrogant beyond belief – I know the type from graduate school! You feel simultaneous sympathy and revulsion for him, or at least I did. It is an unusually nuanced and balanced portrait.I do have criticisms of the book. The science is not well explained, so for anyone unfamiliar with it will find it hard going – I would have liked more nutshell explanations, but instead the authors just mention theories (e.g. “quantum electrodynamics”) in passing. The management of the Manhattan Project is also glossed over, so the reader will have to go elsewhere for that. There is also far too much in the way of supporting quotes, particularly when it comes to their making a case that Oppenheimer was unfairly treated by the AEC committee but also for trivial details.This is a great bio that all atom bomb buffs, history students, and those curious about the 20C should read. Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm.

⭐Summary Thoughts1. Deserving winner of a Pulitzer Prize; a true human story of science, evolution, and conscience2. Knowledge threatens political power; especially when it has a liberal mind that doesn’t pander to government3. Respect (from practitioners) vs. Reprimand (by politicians) – Oppenheimer battled bureaucrats to his graveContent Highlights1. “Damn it, I happen to love this country.” (pg 3) #truth, Oppenheimer wasn’t the communist his haters wanted him to be2. “He received every idea as perfectly beautiful” (pg 9) #objective research defined3. “Well, neither one of us came over on the Mayflower” (pg 25) on being Jewish, Oppie to his Scotch-Irish friend at #Harvard4. “The notion that I was travelling down a clear track would be wrong” (pg 29) #honesty about learning (1922 enrolled @Harvard)5. Proust’s “A La Recherche du Temp Perdu” (pg 51) a book that left an impression on him in college #introspection6. “Becoming a scientist, Oppenheimer later remarked, is like climbing a mountain in a tunnel” (pg 67) #Gottingen 1927 Germany7. “Quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense” -Feynman (pg 79) #Oppie liked8. “Oppie” = title of Chapter 6 (Oppenheimer’s nickname, humanizes the man as he moved on to teach in California)9. “How far is it wise to respond to a mood?” -Oppenheimer in #1930 (pg 95), we was 26 yrs old, #mentoring brother Frank10. “In 1936 my interests began to change” -Oppie (pg 111) met his 1st love, young #communist party member, Jean Tatlock11. “FBI would never resolve the question of whether or not Robert was a CP member” (pg 142) b/c he wasn’t a #communist12. “devoted to working for social and economic justice… he chose to stand with the left” (pg152) left isn’t Russian Communist13. “By the end of 1939, Oppenheimer’s often stormy relationship with Jeadn Tatlock had disintegrated” (pg 153)14. “I’d had about enough of the Spanish cause… there were more pressing crises in the world” (pg 178) #1941 post Pearl Harbor15. “Only an atomic bomb could dislodge Hitler from Europe” -Oppenheimer to #Teller in #194216. “Groves is a bastard but he’s a straightforward one” -Oppenheimer (pg 185) on his boss at #LosAlamos17. “He’s a genius, a real genius” -Groves on Oppenheimer (pg 185) #1942, peer #respect18. “Robert was beginning a new life. As the Director of a weapons laboratory…” (pg 205) #1942, he was 38 yrs old19. “No, no, you’re crazy… that’s nuts” -Dick Feynman (pg 217) Feynman, Bethe, Bohr + Oppenheimer = genius collaboration20. “Oppenheimer is telling the truth…” (pg 236) people may have not liked the #truth, but he was usually telling it; that’s life21. “I am disgusted with everything” -Jean Tatlock (pg 249), in #1944 Oppenheimer’s 1st love committed #suicide22. “December 1943, Niels Bohr arrived at Los Alamos” (pg 268) Oppie was his #prophet23. “If Bohr was convinced, then Oppenheimer must have realized that German physicists were in all likelihood far behind” (pg 276)24. “Everyone sensed Oppie’s presence. He drove himself around The Hill in an army jeep” (pg 277) #leader amongst peers25. “Well, Roosevelt was a great architect, perhaps Truman will be a good carpenter” -Oppenheimer (pg 290) he respected POTUS26. “I feel I have blood on my hands” -Oppenheimer (pg 323) October 16, #1946 to #Truman (and Truman didn’t like the honesty)27. “Oppenheimer arrived in Princeton in mid-July 1947” (pg 369) he was appointed Director of Einstein’s Institute #thinktank28. “After Einstein, Oppenheimer was undoubtedly the most renowned scientist in the country” (pg 390) #1948 (so he was a #threat)29. “Our atomic monopoly is like a cake of ice melting in the sun…” -Oppenheimer (cover of Time Magazine 1948) (pg 418)30. “The Administration now supported a program to build a bomb 1,000x as lethal as the Hiroshima weapon” (pg 430)31. “You probably don’t know to what extent you have become my intellectual conscience” -George Kennan to Oppie #1950 (pg 431)32. “We may be likened to 2 scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life” -Oppenheimer (pg 462)33. In 1953 Oppenheimer sent the new Eisenhower Administration a report “urging a policy of candor” (pg 463) #transparency34. “I must reveal its nature without revealing anything” -Oppenheimer on #nuclear weapons in 1953 #candor (pg 463)35. “The President had read Oppie’s essay and had found himself to be in general accord with its argument” (pg 468) #Strauss was enraged36. Strauss and the anti-Oppenheimer hawks went after Oppie (ultimately he “collapsed on his bathroom floor”) (pg 484) #pressure 195337. Einstein, not impressed, thought Oppenheimer “a man who was easily hurt and intimidated” (pg 498) #fair assessment38. “The Oppenheimer hearing thus represented … the narrowing of the public forum during the early Cold War” (pg 550)39. “It achieved just what his opponents wanted to achieve; it destroyed him” -I.I. Rabi (pg 551) #195440. “How can the independent experimental mind survive in such an atmosphere?” -The New Statesman (pg 556) #195441. “By the early 1960s, with the return of Democrats… Oppenheimer was no longer a political pariah” (pg 574) #JFK42. “I think it is just possible Mr. President that is has taken some charity and some courage to make his award” (pg 574)43. “In 1963, Oppenheimer learned that President Kennedy gave him the prestigious Fermi Prize” (pg 575) #validation44. “In 1965, Oppie visited his doctor for a physical… 2 months later his smoker’s cough became noticeably worse” (pg 581)45. “Robert has cancer” -Kitty (pg 582) #196646. Oppenheimer’s Memorial Service was in Princeton on February 25, 1967 (pg 588)47. “Kitty took her husband’s ashes in an urn to Hawksnest Bay… and dropped the urn overboard” (pg 588) #St.John48. “That’s where he wanted to be” -Kitty (pg 588)This book typifies the complexity of the human mind but, at the same time, simplifies the predictable behavior of politicians. In many ways Oppenheimer’s story reminds us how fragile our freedoms can become.KM

⭐Arguably the ‘tell’ in this admirable and epic inquiry into the enigma that was Robert Oppenheimer comes early. “My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things”, he reminisces, and his sheltered home life offered him “no healthy way to be a bastard.” If only the boy ‘Oppie’ had got more dirt under his finger nails and learned to be that ‘bastard’! Then he might have foreseen the high probability that his delivery of the first atomic bomb would open a Pandora’s Box to the scary but so far futile nuclear arms race we’ve survived these last near 80 years. And then he might have been prepared for, or at least grown a thicker skin against the character assassination that almost tarnished his entire reputation. For no less brilliant Los Alamos amigos like John Von Neumann and Edward Teller ‘got it’. The former partly by applying his game theory to global politics; the latter, well, because he appears to have been pretty much a ‘bastard’.Charitably, it appears Oppie’s real world naivety might be excused in two ways. First, he was as much a man of theory not practice in physics (the opposite of his nemesis Ernest Lawrence) as he was in politics (admiring the ideals of communism despite the mounting evidence of despicable practice in the USSR he can hardly have not known about). He was, if you like, the apocryphal ‘absent minded professor’ (so long as you forget that almost everyone who knew him, including his enemies, rated him as a polymath unique in science). Second, because the boy blinkered by that ‘sheltered home life’ grew into the Brahmin floating above the grubby concerns of mere mortals. There’s a long quote near the end from an essay published about a year after his security ‘trial’ which exposes this other-worldliness, or patronising default position. It’s about “the problem about doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown” in politics and science. Oppenhiemer claims “the means by which it is solved is sometimes called style.” It’s style, he argues, that “makes it possible to act effectively, but not absolutely…it is style which is the deference that action pays to uncertainty; it is above all style through which power defers to reason.” Replace ‘style’ with ‘class’ and I think you’d be nearer the essence of Oppenheimer.Since ‘Oppenheimer: American Prometheus’ was first published in 2005 fears of existential threat have come to dominate our lives perhaps more thoroughly than even the Russian atomic menace during the Cold War. Whether it’s terrorism, distant climate apocalypse, epidemics, the common thread in the response of policy and elites to these ‘unknowns’ has been the so-called ‘precautionary principle’. Ie that attempted prevention at almost any cost is justified. Strange then, from today’s vantage point, how someone as visionary as Oppenheimer never once, it appears, was troubled by the risk that ‘doing nothing’ while the Soviets (in all likelihood) built up their atomic cache might be fatal, literally.And again with hindsight, you might ask whether the McCarthy ‘witch hunts’ of the 1950s, which claimed Oppenheimer as trophy-sized collateral damage, have anything on the cancelling today of anyone evincing a view of history, sociology, the arts, even science which does not adhere to the single acceptable narrative. In his summation, Oppenheimer’s lawyer Garrison might have been surveying the current censorious orthodoxy: the security apparatus was now behaving “like some monolithic kind of machine that will result in the destruction of men of great gifts…America must not devour her own children.” Perhaps it’s this time bomb we have most to fear?

⭐If you buy this book, and I recommend that you do, to complete your coffee table design. Make sure its a strong one. This is one big book, not only in size but in its wealth of fact. It`s a journey through the ignorance of political and social leader and the struggle of knowledge held and understood by only a few. In favour one minute then discarded the next and labelled a evil man.Fascinating book, of an extraordinary time and person.It was too big a book to carry around so I bought the kindle version as well.A fine investment.

⭐A very insightful and well researched book, that presents itself as exciting and interesting, pulling in various aspects of the time. Always coming across as fresh and interesting. I would classify this as not just a book, but a tome. It is a rather large book, and I’m not as far as I would like to be. I’m sure other reviewers have done the book more justice than I can here, but if you are interested in Physics and that time period, this is definitely a book worth reading!

⭐A well written account of the father of the Atom Bomb. I enjoyed it although the big tragedy is all about how he was put before a commission and then had his security clearance revoked. The most interesting bit is that Einstein told him the best thing to do was to take his bat home and not play ball with the boys again. If he had listened then the tragedy would have been averted. Once again, Einstein comes across as the genius he truly was.

⭐The best book on the life and work of one of the 20th century’s greatest scientific Giants

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