Perhaps the finest biography I have ever read.
Robert wrote a friend wistfully, “My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.”
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“Had Oppenheimer gone one step further and compiled his lectures and papers,” argues one colleague, “his work would have made one of the finest textbooks on quantum physics ever written.”
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He was not seeking to escape to a purely spiritual realm. He was not seeking religion. What he sought was peace of mind. The Gita seemed to provide precisely the right philosophy for an intellectual keenly attuned to the affairs of men and the pleasures of the senses.
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“He’s a genius,” Groves later told a reporter. “A real genius. While Lawrence is very bright, he’s not a genius, just a good hard worker. Why, Oppenheimer knows about everything. He can talk to you about anything you bring up. Well, not exactly. I guess there are a few things he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t know anything about sports.”
*
No one can be certain of Oppenheimer’s reaction had he learned that on the eve of the Hiroshima bombing, the president knew the Japanese were “looking for peace,” and that the military use of atomic bombs on cities was an option rather than a necessity for ending the war in August. But we do know that after the war he came to believe that he had been misled, and that this knowledge served as a constant reminder that it was henceforth his obligation to be skeptical of what he was told by government officials.
*
No one left the auditorium that night unmoved. Oppie had spoken to them on intimate terms, articulating many of their doubts, fears and hopes. For decades afterwards, his words would resonate. The world he had described was as subtle and complicated as the quantum world of the atom itself. He had begun humbly, and yet, like the best of politicians, he had spoken a simple truth that cut to the core of the issue. The world had changed; Americans would behave unilaterally at their peril.
*
one day when Oppenheimer happened to be up on Capitol Hill he stepped into an elevator and saw Senator McCarthy. “We looked at each other,” Robert later told a friend, “and I winked.”
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Einstein, of course, didn’t think America was Nazi Germany and he didn’t believe Oppenheimer needed to flee. But he was truly alarmed by McCarthyism. In early 1951 he wrote his friend Queen Elizabeth of Belgium that here in America, “The German calamity of years ago repeats itself: People acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the forces of evil.” He now feared that by cooperating with the government’s security board, Oppenheimer would not only humiliate himself but would lend legitimacy to the whole poisonous process.
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IN THE LONG RUN, however, Strauss’ strategy backfired; the transcript revealed the inquisitorial character of the hearing, and the corruption of justice during the McCarthy period. Within four years, the transcript would destroy the reputation and government career of Lewis Strauss.
*
Afterwards, John F. Kennedy’s grieving widow sent word that she wanted to see Robert in her private quarters. Robert and Kitty went upstairs and were greeted by Jackie Kennedy. She said she wanted him to know just how much her late husband had wanted to give him this award. Robert, in describing the moment later, confided that he had been deeply touched.
*
Senator Fulbright gave a speech on the floor of the Senate, and said of the late physicist, “Let us remember not only what his special genius did for us; let us also remember what we did to him.”
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