By 1943, however, Oppenheimer had long since turned his back on union organizing. He did so not because he had changed his political views but because he had come to the realization that unless he followed Lawrence’s advice he would not be allowed to work on a project that he believed might be necessary to defeat Nazi Germany. During their arguments in the autumn of 1941 over his union-organizing activities, Lawrence had told him that James B. Conant, the president of Harvard University, had rebuked him for having discussed fission calculations with Oppenheimer, who was not then officially in
...more
