Read Online Einstein's Genius Club by Katherine Williams Burton Feldman - Free Book Online Page B

And Berkeley and Caltech had not given him that opportunity. 28
    Inside the esoteric theorist was a man of action, happy to escape into the world. His early political activities had launched him into the arena of action; at Los Alamos, he led. It must have seemed a sublimeduty, to ensure the military safety of the United States against the Nazis. He could at once hold his own with the brilliant Fermi and keep in mind every detail from the number and size of the mess halls to the need for code names for Niels Bohr and his son. He bent the rules to bring Feynman's beloved and dying wife to New Mexico. He stood up to his own strong-minded superior, General Groves, who wanted all the physicists commissioned, to keep them under strict Army regulations.
    After Hiroshima, Oppenheimer became a national hero. He was the man who had ended the war. His thin, ascetic face was everywhere, in magazines and newspapers and even on TV. To be a “theoretical” physicist suddenly seemed glamorous. Oppenheimer brought his organizational acumen to Princeton as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study. There, he quietly assisted the government in its atomic policy, armed guards watching over a safe near his office.
    But even at the height of his power and celebrity, Oppenheimer was vulnerable. With the end of World War II came the Cold War. The Soviet Union, not surprisingly, developed its own bomb (aided by the Los Alamos spy Klaus Fuchs). The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began hearings in the late 1940s. Charges began to fly. Communist subversives were said to infest the unions, own Hollywood, and have infiltrated the government. Inevitably, the Committee turned to the very laboratories that had produced the American bomb. Oppenheimer was an easy target.
    New charges were now brought against Oppenheimer for his refusal to support the hydrogen bomb effort with sufficient enthusiasm. At first, he was too popular and influential to be tackled directly. His former students could be grilled, however. One, Bernard Peters, was named by Oppenheimer himself. In a closed hearing before HUAC, Oppenheimer said that Peters called himself a Communist fighting the Nazis. Oppenheimer concluded that Peters was still “dangerous.” Peters denied the charges vigorously and wrote to his old teacher for clarification. Oppenheimer equivocated.
    Close friends reproached Oppenheimer for testifying. Victor Weisskopf wrote to Oppenheimer in dismay: “[W]e are losing something that is irreparable. Namely confidence in
you
… whom so many regard as our representative in the best sense of the word.” 29 Hans Bethe, Edward Condon, and even Edward Teller were horrified. Oppenheimer, confronted by Peters, apologized after a fashion. Writing to Weisskopf, Peters recalled: “He [Oppenheimer] said it was a terrible mistake. He was not prepared for any questions. He had never done anything as wrong.” Peters felt “sad” to see Oppenheimer in such “moral despair.” 30
    In the 1954 hearing, Oppenheimer himself was finally brought down by his pursuers. One, Lewis Strauss, was a wealthy businessman who had become a rear admiral during the war and then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Strauss was touchy and vain. Oppenheimer unwisely mocked Strauss's views before Congress. The specific reason for the hearing was to inquire about Oppenheimer's refusal to support building the hydrogen bomb, though he was scarcely the only one to voice opposition—Bethe, Rabi, and James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard, were also opposed. Oppenheimer's loyalty was not questioned, but he was nonetheless said to suffer a “susceptibility to influence.” Rabi voiced support for Oppenheimer: We built you the A-bomb, “and what more do you want, mermaids?” 31 Edward Teller, on the other hand, testified that he did not feel “comfortable” with Oppenheimer's holding a security