On
the morning of July 16, 1945, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was at the zenith of
his career. The detonation of Trinity,
the atomic “gadget,” represented a scientific milestone, and he was the
scientist who directed the work at Los Alamos.
But the post-war years for Oppenheimer were challenging—sometimes
because of his actions and sometimes because of vindictiveness. These difficulties could be characterized as
personal, professional, and, most especially, political. Oppenheimer lost his security clearance after
a dramatic hearing in 1954.
The
next eight years was Oppenheimer’s period in political purgatory. He was director at the Institute for Advanced
Study, but he was ostracized from participating in the official discussions of
the use of atomic energy. He was a
target for conservative critics who saw him as soft on communism—if not worse.
But
Oppie had friends in high places in the new administration. Arthur Schlesinger
and Dr. Glenn Seaborg, holding high-level positions, were advocating for his
redemption. Oppenheimer and his wife,
Kitty, were invited to the White House for the unparalleled dinner for Nobel
Prize winners on April 29, 1962.
Oppenheimer was the most controversial guest at the dinner, but his
attendance was approved by President John F. Kennedy.
This
was the trial balloon for the next step in Oppenheimer’s political
rehabilitation by President Kennedy. One
year later he was chosen by the president as the winner of the prestigious
Enrico Fermi Award for contributions in the field of physics. The previous year the award was given to his
nemesis Dr. Edward Teller. The ceremony
was originally scheduled for November 21, 1963, but the president was in
Dallas; President Johnson presented the award ten days later.
In
accepting the honor, Oppenheimer said, “I think it just possible, Mr.
President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this
award today. That would seem to me a
good augury for all our futures.” The
courage, however, belonged to Kennedy.
Dr.
I. I. Rabi, Oppie’s friend and a fellow guest at the Nobel dinner, said that the
award “is a righting of a great wrong done to him and to the American
people. We can rejoice, for the
significance of this act is the restoration of sanity and understanding by
people of importance.” Oppenheimer was
asked by Seaborg at the Nobel dinner whether he wanted to work to get his
security clearance restored, but he declined.
The security clearance was no long important, but the lifting of the
cloud was.
There
were some who still questioned the loyalty of the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,”
and resented him, but Oppenheimer’s position in history was now more reflective
of his great achievements. A year before
Oppie died in 1967, Arthur Schlesinger wrote to him: “You have faced more
terrible things than most men in this terrible age, and you have provided all
of us with an example of moral courage, purpose and discipline—you probably are
not aware of the meaning your life has had for my generation.”
The Oppenheimer saga is just one of the fascinating stories associated with the Nobel 1962 dinner, which is profiled in Dinner in Camelot: The Night America's Greatest Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Partied at the Kennedy White House (ForeEdge, April 3); see also: www.JosephAEsposito.
The photo of Oppenheimer, taken in 1944 near the height of his career, is from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.