American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.
• Position: Book Review

AMERICAN PROMETHEUS The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

BY KAI BIRD AND MARTIN J. SHERWIN ALFRED A. KNOPF 2005, 720 PAGES, $35

What a book! This tome is revealing, readable, and riveting. A biography of "the father of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer, it gives readers an insight into the fame of this outstanding theoretical physicist as well as his fall from grace. We are privy to his sense of responsibility for what he helped to create and the subsequent guilt that attended upon it. Despite his genius, we are left with the conviction that here was a person struggling with his humanity.

Oppenheimer's father was a German immigrant who became a successful, well-to-do businessman, setting up a trust for his children from which they could draw freely. His mother was a quiet, protective person who gave birth to Robert in 1904. She almost smothered him with concern. Some friends even sensed an almost Oedipus situation. Oppenheimer enrolled in a private New York City school called the Ethical Culture Society. Smacking of the elite, the teachers were committed intellectuals. Its mission was "not to see the way things are, but the way they could be." This was to be a lifelong influence on Robert and his younger brother Frank and instilled in them a search for social justice. (Frank eventually went into science and worked with his brother at Los Alamos.)

Robert attended Harvard and Cambridge and found his calling, not in laboratory work, but in theoretical physics. Up until now, Newtonian physics ruled the roost, but a new approach took over the sub-atomic world in the form of quantum physics. The proponents were all young. Indeed, at Los Alamos, the average age of the scientists was 25. Oppenheimer was among the brightest of the bright, but had a habit of being acerbic, even with those well-established in the profession. He experienced bouts of depression and, for a time, was under psychiatric care. Adept in various languages, he even did some translations of Sanskrit.

He became a social activist and associated with leftist causes to the point of making financial contributions to them. Jean Tatlock, a Communist Party member and a paramour of four years, persuaded him in this direction. Frustrated with the political...