Book Review: American Prometheus

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

The Triumph of Oppenheimer

I knew little about Oppenheimer before reading this book. Known as “the father of the bomb” for his role as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory which created the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was a fascinating individual and regarded as such by virtually everyone who knew him – scientists, generals, and politicians among them.

A brilliant, independent, charismatic, and controversial (though not as controversial as some wanted to believe) physicist, he was a real renaissance man whose interests went beyond physics and including poetry, philosophy, politics, and likely many other things. Not only were his interests broad, but also his knowledge and understanding of them was deep, being able to converse in a surprisingly meaningful way with experts outside of his field.

Though he is most well known for his role in creating the atomic bomb, he also made many significant contributions to physics. The authors indicate that the reason he never won a Nobel Prize may have been because he did not spend enough time on any one of his papers’ topics to really nail-down the details. Instead he worked fast, publishing on a wide range of topics, if not in great detail, with great insight and making small breakthroughs that led to others getting the Nobel. Oppenheimer also made Berkeley a leading center of quantum physics in its day, and later achieved similar notoriety for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

Oppenheimer was also full of contradictions.  By all accounts one of the most elegant and persuasive extemporaneous speakers that anyone had heard, he nonetheless had the habit of saying bizarre and self-incriminating things when under pressure.  As a teacher and leader his generosity of spirit and intelligence garnered the utmost respect from his friends and subordinates, yet he could publicly cut-down his peers in an embarrassing and even cruel way.  He was a shy and sensitive young man, but he grew up to be the life of the party who could charm the pants off of anyone.

The Tragedy of Oppenheimer

Upon the successful explosion of the atomic bomb at the Trinity site, he was heard quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” It was not a boast, but a lament. The father of the bomb would try for most of the rest of his life to dismantle the nuclear threat by pushing for open and honest international dialogue and exchange of information about the bomb. He was unsuccessful.

The “tragedy” referred to in the book’s title refers to the fact that Oppenheimer’s enemies – one of them being the FBI – thought he was a security risk. He was kept under constant (and often illegal) surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and was made to go through a thoroughly unjust and humiliating security hearing. I was so aggravated at the unfairness he received that I was often kept up at night from reading the book. I do not want to spoil all the details for you, but I am glad to say that even at the time many realized how unjustly Oppenheimer was treated. Though his spirit was perhaps broken by the ordeal, he was maybe held in higher regard by not only his friends, but also the public. He was even termed a modern-day Galileo – an accurate analogue, I think.

Final Thoughts

Bird and Sherwin’s biography is the product of twenty-five years of research, and as a result it is very thorough. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. I read it because I love scientist biographies of this sort, but science is not at the focus. The value of reading this is in its description of America during and leading up to the McCarthy era. I now have a much greater appreciation for the hysteria of the time, as well as the decisions and thought processes of the scientists, generals, and politicians surrounding the development and use of the atomic bomb, and the development of international relationships that would outlast the lifetimes of those responsible.