American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin – Book
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I chose to read the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin before I knew that it had been made into a movie. Cormac McCarthy’s book The Passenger led me to hunt for a book about Oppenheimer. McCarthy’s characters in The Passenger and in Stella Maris are Bobby and Alicia Western, a brother and sister whose (fictional) parents were part of the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. These two knew the work of all the famous theoretical physicists of the era. Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and Paul Dirac are names shared by the Oppenheimer biography and McCarthy’s fictional story.
Imagine learning that what your often missing-in-action parents were up to in your childhood was making a weapon that would be too powerful to use again after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What would you think when you were grown and understood that this scientific product of a partnership between science and government would hang over the world and be used as a threat of total annihilation by any nation that happened to understand the physics, build the appropriate equipment, and collect the raw materials – the uranium and the plutonium – that could build such a bomb?
The biography that Bird and Sherwin wrote is a voluminous and detailed story of Oppenheimer’s life, and it is a history text, as well as the story of this famous American physicist. Oppenheimer lived through several important eras in American history so as we learn about Oppy’s life, and as that life of science also becomes entangled in the world of government, we get an interesting spyhole into the events he lived through.
Although Oppenheimer was born to a well-to-do family, he was slow to mature and had some worrisome quirks. One ill-considered action could have made him a murderer if the results had been different. In the various schools Robert’s parents sent him to and in college, Robert had problems with socializing. He also had similar problems in his early adult years in Germany where the predominant theoretical physicists were to be found at the time. By the mid 1930’s he was at the University of California at Berkeley where he felt at home. He was far more mature and consequently more productive and confident than previously. However, Berkeley is also where he and other intellectuals joined the Communist Party or at least attended meetings sponsored by the Communist Party,
Oppenheimer’s friendships with American communists (including his brother Frank who did join the Communist Party), the money he gave to local communist causes for humanitarian activities and because of his sympathies in the Spanish American War, all his actions before the Manhattan Project were used by a powerful enemy of Oppenheimer to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation after his work at the head of the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was the director at Los Alamos, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was built and successfully tested. While originally praised for his accomplishment in leading the project to a successful conclusion, Oppenheimer’s loyalty to America and his security clearance were soon under examination, and the possibly illegal proceedings that followed turned against him.
Achieving the distinction of both conquering the physics of atomic fission and seeing the horrifying repercussions of its use as a weapon of war, it would seem normal to feel both celebratory and aghast at what your efforts had wrought. If you see the possible repercussions of some new knowledge, should you do all you can to keep that knowledge locked away from the world? Compare this to our present arguments about the ethical considerations of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Given the circumstances of Hitler in Germany and the bombing of Pearl Harbor it had seemed easy to justify making the bomb. Oppenheimer assumed, as did others in the project, that several nations were trying to make a working atomic bomb, and Oppenheimer believed that they would eventually make such a bomb. America needed to be first, everyone (the scientists, the military, the government) agreed. It was, as we know, a race to be armed. Oppenheimer won and he also lost. It’s a great and awful story.
Isn’t it possible to believe that any Communist leanings Oppenheimer might have had were turned by circumstances into total loyalty to America and a dedication to winning World War II. But the things we do that we think are in the past can come back to haunt us. Although Joe McCarthy did not lead the case against Oppenheimer, America was soon to witness the Black Lists and the show trials that hounded anyone who ever expressed any sympathies that leaned too far to the left (at least anyone who was famous).
We are asked by the title to remember Prometheus, the god who gave fire to mankind against the wishes of the rest of the Mt. Olympus crew. Prometheus was tied to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains and everyday an eagle came and ate part of his liver. Then each night the liver would regrow, which meant he had to endure his punishment for eternity. (As Google tells it). The parallels are obvious. Revered scientist creates the bomb he is requested to deliver and then receives his punishment from someone he ticked off along the way. But Oppenheimer’s life does not end there, and of course, his liver was never attacked so he finds a new chapter in his life in which he learns to sail and spends part of his year on a harbor on St. John (Virgin Islands) and giving lectures at the invitation of admirers.
My six degrees of separation moment with Oppenheimer – we both spent an entire week watching the TV coverage in the aftermath of the assassination of John F Kennedy. I was 19, Oppenheimer was 58. He was scheduled to be awarded a medal by President Kennedy; I was not. Oppenheimer won the Fermi Award, I, of course, did not. End of the degrees of separation saga.
There is no way that I can do justice to this incredibly detailed and readable book. There are just too many people mentioned to enumerate out of context without driving you to commit seppuku. There are the wives and lovers, surprising as Oppenheimer’s life focus was not sensual in the least. He tended to fall in love with intelligence in females, which most men felt intimidated by. I guess it made him quite lovable to those few smart women he singled out. There are his students, many who considered him a mentor for life. There are all the meetings, conventions, parties, and dinners. It’s amazing to immerse yourself in someone’s life with so much depth, but it’s not fodder for a brief commentary on the book. I understand the movie does an excellent job and I look forward to seeing it. As to my own love affair with all things physics and the physicists who understand the science, I haven’t a clue why I find the subject so enticing. I used to tell my students that physics is the science that explains the movement of nonliving things. That is what helped me understand how the inorganic sciences are related to each other.
As I read this book, American Prometheus, I could not help going back to McCarthy’s book The Passenger, wondering if J. Robert Oppenheimer is the passenger missing from the mysteriously undisturbed aircraft sitting underwater that Bobby Western enters when his diving service is hired to investigate its disappearance. Everyone on the flight died, except one passenger who is not still aboard the plane. Who was that passenger? What did Bobby know about him? Was the FBI following Bobby because of the money he had found buried in his grandparent’s basement? Were they the tax men? Or was the government in possession of some secret about the passenger that they didn’t want Bobby to reveal? Bobby went back once to the site of the underwater plane, and he went beyond the plane and ended up on an island which showed signs of someone being dragged and of footprints. All signs ended abruptly. Weird. Oppenheimer died on the island of St John and was cremated, his urn buried at sea. Oppenheimer was hounded by the FBI and later by the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission (he was a member of the board until Lewis Strauss had him thrown off).
Oppenheimer ended up repeating a sentence from the Bhagavad gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The Passenger ended with Bobby Western telling anyone who will listen that neither math nor physics will give us the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Douglas Adams said that the meaning of life is 42. Mr. Natural said, “It don’t mean she-eit.” None of these sources bode well for anyone who likes to believe there is a prime mover and a plan and that we will either somehow end up with “the best of all possible worlds,” or at the apocalypse or the Rapture depending on the state of your spiritual side. This is a biography that inspires deep thoughts.
Note: I am having some problems with my eyes so I listened to this book on Audible.
