American Prometheus (105 page)

Over the many years that this book has been in preparation many scholar-friends have sent us unsolicited Oppenheimer documents discovered while doing their own research. For these acts of generosity and fellowship we wish to thank Herbert Bix, Peter Kuznick, Lawrence Wittner, and Poland’s eminent historian and Ambassador to the United States, Przemyslaw Grudzinski. We also acknowledge the many kindnesses that Peter, Charles and Ella Oppenheimer and Brett and Dorothy Vanderford extended to us in the course of our research. We are grateful to Barbara Sonnenberg for permission to reprint some of her Oppenheimer family photographs. The current owners of One Eagle Hill in Berkeley, Dr. David and Kristin Myles, graciously gave us a tour of Oppenheimer’s lovely home overlooking San Franciso Bay.

There is also a long list of interviewees on pages 697–699 to whom we are deeply indebted. Thank you for your time, your stories and your patience with us; this book could not have been written without your help.

Scholars cannot live on documents alone and this book could not have been written without the financial support of numerous foundations. Martin is grateful for the support extended to him by Arthur Singer and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim foundation, Ruth Adams and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Tufts University and the George Washington University President’s James Madison Fund. Kai wishes to thank the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Cindy Kelly of the Atomic Heritage Foundation; and Ellen Bradbury-Reid, executive director of Recursos in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We both wish to acknowledge the percipiency of Susan Goldmark and Ronald Steel, who independently and simultaneously suggested to us that “American Prometheus” would be an excellent title for our book.

NOTES

Our research files—including those designated in the notes as the “Bird Collection” and “Sherwin Collection”—will be distributed to appropriate archives and libraries. The details of this distribution will be posted on our websites,
www.HistoryHappens.net
and
www.AmericanPrometheus.org
.

ABBREVIATIONS

AEC Atomic Energy Commission
AIP American Institute of Physics (Niels Bohr Library)
APS American Philosophical Society
Caltech California Institute of Technology
CU Clemson University Archives
CUL Cornell University Library
DCL Dartmouth College Library
DDEL Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
ECS Ethical Culture Society archives
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation Reading Room
FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States, U.S. State Department
HBSL Harvard Business School Library
HHL Herbert Hoover Presidential Library
HSTL Harry S. Truman Presidential Library
HU Harvard University archives
HUAC U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee
IAS Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)
JFKL John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
JRO J. Robert Oppenheimer
JRO FBI File J. Robert Oppenheimer FBI file number 100-17828
JRO Hearing United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert
Oppenheimer: Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board
and Texts of Principal Documents and Letters. Forward by Philip M.
Stern. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971.
JRO Papers J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, Library of Congress
LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives
LBJL Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library
LOC Library of Congress (Manuscript Reading Room)
MED Manhattan Engineer District
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives
NA National Archives
NBA Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen
NBL Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics
NYT
New York Times
PUL Princeton University Library (Mudd Manuscript Library)
SU Stanford University Libraries
UC University of Chicago Archives
UCB University of California at Berkeley (Bancroft Library)
UCSDL University of California at San Diego Library
UM University of Michigan Library
WP
Washington Post
WU Washington University archives
YUL Yale University, Sterling Library

Preface

xii “We have had the bomb”: E. L. Doctorow, “The State of Mind of the Union,” The
Nation,
3/22/86, p. 330.

Prologue

3
The Nobelists included:
Murray Schumach, “600 at a Service for Oppenheimer,” NYT, 2/26/67.

4
“He did more than”:
Ibid.

4
“Such a wrong”:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
October 1967.

5
“In the dark days”:
Schumach, NYT, 2/26/67; Abraham Pais,
A Tale of Two Continents,
p. 400.

5
Oppenheimer was an enigma:
Jeremy Bernstein,
Oppenheimer: Portrait of an
Enigma,
pp. vii–xi.

5
“a symbol of the tragedy”:
NYT, 2/20/67.

5
“very wise”:
I. I. Rabi, interview by Sherwin, 3/12/82, p. 11.

5
“a Faustian bargain”:
Freeman Dyson, interview by Jon Else, 12/10/79, pp. 5, 9–10.

Chapter One: “He Received Every New Idea as Perfectly Beautiful”

10
“an almost medieval”:
Oppenheimer family tree, folder 4–24, box 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB; JRO interview by Kuhn, 11/18/63, APS, p. 3. The third brother also immigrated to New York but returned permanently to Germany after a brief stay. One of the three sisters came to the United States at some point but returned to Germany, where she died. Hedwig Oppenheimer Stern, the youngest of the three sisters, immigrated to the United States in 1937 and settled in California. (Babette Oppenheimer Langsdorf, interview by Alice Smith, 12/1/76, Sherwin Collection.) Babette, Emil Oppenheimer’s daughter, was a couple of years younger than Robert Oppenheimer. The U.S. Census of 1900 records, perhaps incorrectly, that Julius Oppenheimer was born in August 1870, and emigrated from Germany in 1888; Julius listed his occupation as traveling salesman. (1900 Census, New York, N.Y., roll 1102, vol. 149, enumeration 455, sheet 8, line 27, NA.)

10
“You have a way”:
Ella Friedman to Julius Oppenheimer, undated, circa March 1903, folder 4–10, box 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB.

11
“an exquisitely beautiful”:
Dorothy McKibbin, interview by Jon Else, 12/10/79, p. 21. McKibbin is quoting Katherine Chaves Page. See also Miss Frieda Altschul to JRO, 12/9/63, describing Ella’s eyes.

11
The glove covering:
Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner,
Robert Oppenheimer:
Letters and Recollections,
p. 2; Frank Oppenheimer, interview by Alice Smith, 3/17/75, p. 58.

11
“a gentle, exquisite”:
Lincoln Barnett, “J. Robert Oppenheimer,”
Life,
10/10/49.

11
Upon her return:
Frank Oppenheimer oral history, 2/9/73, AIP, p. 2.

11
“I do so”:
Ella Friedman to Julius Oppenheimer, 3/10/03, folder 4–10, box 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB.

11
“Julius Robert Oppenheimer”:
FBI File 100–9066, 10/10/41, and File 100–17828–3, citing Oppenheimer’s birth certificate, no. 19763.

11
Sometime after Robert’s:
Frank Oppenheimer, interview by Alice Smith, 3/17/75, p. 34; 1920 U.S. Census.

12
Over the years:
Frank Oppenheimer, interview by Alice Smith, 3/17/75, p. 54; Else Uhlenbeck, interview by Alice Smith, 4/20/76, p. 2. Oppenheimer’s cousin Babette Oppenheimer Langsdorf later described Ella as a “talented painter” and a “connoisseur” (Mrs. Walter Langsdorf to Philip M. Stern, 7/10/67, Stern Papers, JFKL; George Boas to Alice Smith, 11/28/76, Smith correspondence, Sherwin Collection; Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 138). Julius acquired Van Gogh’s
First Steps
(
After Millet
) in 1926, and Frank Oppenheimer inherited it in 1935. For the provenance of the Oppenheimer family’s Van Gogh collection, see “Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Works,” a CD-ROM database, copyright David Brooks (Sharon, MA: Barewalls Publications, 2002). Julius bought Picasso’s
Mother and Child
in 1928, and Frank Oppenheimer sold it in 1980 for $1,050,000 (see Dr. Joseph Baird, Jr., to Frank Oppenheimer, 4/12/80, folder 4–46, box 4; Jack Tanzer to Frank Oppenheimer, 5/13/80, folder 4–46, box 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB).

12 “My mother didn’t”: JRO, interview by T. S. Kuhn, 11/18/63, p. 10. The 1920 U.S. Census listed three live-in maids in the Oppenheimer household: Nellie Connolly, age 87, of Ireland; Henrietta Rosemund, age 21, of Germany; and Signe McSorley, age 29, of Sweden (1920 Census, vol. 244, enumeration 702, sheet 13, line 37, roll 1202, NA).

12
“It was lovely”:
Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 34; Frank Oppenheimer, interview by Alice Smith, 3/17/75, p. 26.

12
“Robert was doted”:
Harold F. Cherniss, interview by Sherwin, 5/23/79, p. 3.

12
“He [Julius] was jolly”:
Francis Fergusson, interview by Sherwin, 6/8/79, p. 7.

13
A family friend:
Julius Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, 3/11/30, folder 4–11, box 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB; Boas to Alice Smith, 11/28/76, Smith correspondence, Sherwin Collection.

13
Ella, by contrast:
Fergusson, interview by Alice Smith, 4/23/75, p. 10.

13
“She [Ella] was a very”:
Peter Goodchild,
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
p. 11.

13
Four years after:
Jeremy Bernstein,
Oppenheimer,
p. 6; Frank Oppenheimer, oral history, 2/9/73, p. 4, AIP.

13
Ella encouraged Robert:
Frank Oppenheimer to Denise Royal, 2/25/67, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, carton 4, UCB.

13
“Julius’s articulate and”:
Ruth Meyer Cherniss, interview by Alice Smith, 11/10/76; Herbert Smith, interview by Charles Weiner, 8/1/74, pp. 12, 16–17.

14
“Just as I do”:
Oppenheimer may indeed have had a brief bout of polio. See Alice Smith to Frank Oppenheimer, 8/6/79, carton 4, Frank Oppenheimer Papers, UCB; Peter Michelmore,
The Swift Years,
p. 4.

14
“It was clear”:
JRO, interview by Kuhn, 11/18/63, APS, pp. 1–4;
Time,
11/8/48, p. 70.

14
Robert recounted that:
JRO, interview by Kuhn, 11/18/63, p. 1.

14
From the ages of:
Denise Royal,
The Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer,
p. 13.

15
“They adored him”:
Quotes in this paragraph are taken from Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 5; JRO, interview with Kuhn, p. 3; Babette Oppenheimer Langsdorf to Philip M. Stern, 7/10/67, Stern Papers, JFKL.

15
At some point:
Frank Oppenheimer, oral history, 2/9/73, AIP, p. 1.

15
“If we had”:
Frank Oppenheimer, oral history, 2/9/73, AIP, p. 4.

15
“I repaid my parents’ ”:
Denise Royal,
The Story of J. Robert Oppenheimer,
p. 16.

16
He and Ella:
Board of Trustees, 1912, Ethical Culture Archives, New York Society for Ethical Culture.

16
“Deed, not Creed,”:
Time,
11/8/48, p. 70.

16
“Man must assume”:
Richard Rhodes, “I Am Become Death . . .”
American Heritage,
vol. 28, no. 6 (1987).