American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

Oppie once remarked to Leo Nedelsky, “I know three people who are interested in politics. Tell me, what has politics to do with truth, goodness and beauty?” But after January 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, politics began to intrude into Oppenheimer’s life. By April of that year, German Jewish professors were being summarily dismissed from their jobs. A year later, in the spring of 1934, Oppenheimer received a circular letter soliciting funds to support German physicists as they attempted to emigrate from Nazi Germany. He immediately agreed to earmark for this purpose three percent of his salary (about $100 a year) for two years. Ironically, one of the refugees who may have been assisted by this fund was Robert’s former professor in Göttingen, Dr. James Franck. When Hitler first came to power, Franck, who had won two Iron Crosses during World War I, was one of the few Jewish physicists permitted to keep his post. But a year later he was forced into exile when he refused to dismiss other Jews from their jobs. By 1935, he was teaching physics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Similarly, Max Born was forced to flee Göttingen in 1933 and ended up teaching in England.