J. Robert Oppenheimer died on February 18, 1967, in Princeton, New Jersey. He was sixty-two. Before his death, he had been stripped of his security clearance. He had been labeled a communist sympathizer. The man who helped build the atomic bomb became a political pariah.
Born in New York City on April 22, 1904, Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist. He graduated from Harvard. He did research at Cambridge University. He earned his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in Germany. Then he went back to the U.S. to teach at the California Institute of Technology from 1929 to 1947.
His work focused on the energy processes of subatomic particles. He trained a generation of American physicists. They looked up to him.
Then came World War II. He was named director of the army’s atomic-bomb project. This project became known as the Manhattan Project. He set up the laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. That facility remains a principal weapons-research laboratory to this day.
The case, which pitted him against Edward Teller, became a worldwide cause célèbre.
After the war, he directed the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1947 to 1966. He strongly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb. This stance cost him everything.
In 1953, he was suspended from secret nuclear research. He was considered a security risk. The accusations were severe. The case became a global spectacle. It was a clash between two giants of physics. Oppenheimer faced Edward Teller. Teller wanted the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer said no.
Why did they fire him? The answer lies in his opposition to the H-bomb and his past associations. It was a political purge disguised as security.
He was reinstated in 1963. He received the Enrico Fermi Award that same year. The apology was late. The damage was done.
He lived the rest of his years in relative quiet. He died in Princeton. The laboratory he built still operates. The weapons he helped design still exist. The question of whether he was right remains unanswered.
What happens to the men who change the world? They are often discarded by the same world. Oppenheimer knew this. He just hoped it wouldn’t happen to him.
