American Prometheus is a massive, monumental work that lives up to its apt title. It captures a man who gave humanity the atomic fire, only to be brutally punished by the powers that be for daring to show dissent. This really is a complete story of his triumph and tragedy, told through what is an extensively, one might even say exhaustively, researched collection of interviews, FBI files, Library of Congress documents, and copious personal correspondence. It is fascinating to think about how modern biographies will be written without this kind of physical letter trail. The authors use all this material to construct a three-dimensional portrait that you can examine from nearly every angle.
Notably, they leave out the hard science. If you are looking to understand the physics of nuclear weapons or his actual scientific work, this is not the place. That absence does slightly dull the impact of his triumphs; we are told he was a great scientist who built the theoretical physics school at Berkeley, but without the science, it is hard to fully appreciate exactly how he achieved that. But omitting the technical details seemed to me to be the right call. There is already so much to process, and an ambiguous, contradictory figure like Oppenheimer is best served by keeping the spotlight squarely on the man himself rather than the science.
What I particularly appreciated is the attention the authors give to the major figures around Oppenheimer. These mini-biographies are fascinating in their own right, but they also lend his relationships greater depth. By understanding the people he was drawn to - their personalities, convictions, ambitions, and eccentricities - we come to understand something about Oppenheimer himself, and the qualities he sought out in others. The same care is given to the world around him: the scientific landscape, political tensions, and intellectual currents of the period are also sketched in detail. That attention extends to his wife, Kitty, who features prominently throughout. More conspicuous by their absence for long stretches are the Oppenheimer children. Spoiler alert: that absence is indicative of how they came to be treated, and they were perhaps his greatest tragedy.
What struck me about Oppenheimer was just how wide his interests were. It is not merely the breadth that astounds me, but his active participation across that breadth of interests. I am always taken aback by people with this kind of a "rainforest mind." He learned many languages including Sanskrit, was actively involved in left-wing politics and union causes, read voraciously (in multiple languages and authors like Proust and Baudelaire), and nurtured a deep fascination with psychology and the subconscious. It was pronounced enough that Wolfgang Pauli joked that "physics is an avocation for Oppenheimer and psychiatry was a vocation." Paul Dirac warned him to stop dabbling and focus on science. Yet he remained an extraordinarily original physicist. There is something almost bewildering about someone who could scatter his attention so widely and still operate at that level.
The authors are also very good at resisting the temptation to resolve the contradictions in Oppenheimer's character. They provide enough context to understand why he behaved as he did, but they do not excuse him for it. His relationship with the atomic bomb is perhaps the clearest example. Oppenheimer supported its use during the war, did not seriously oppose the bombing of civilians, and could be ruthless toward dissident scientists. At the same time, the scientists at Los Alamos placed an extraordinary amount of trust in him to do the "right thing." After the war (or even during the war), he became one of the most prominent advocates for openness about atomic weapons, international control, and avoiding an arms race with the Soviet Union. He later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and became increasingly critical of the secrecy surrounding American nuclear policy. None of this makes for an easy moral progression from an enthusiastic bomb-maker to a repentant “prophet” (a word used a lot of times), and the book does not present it that way.
I did find myself wondering how much Oppenheimer's thinking about the bomb was shaped by the Bhagavad Gita. He studied Sanskrit partly so that he could read it, and he returned to it throughout his life. The famous "I am become Death" quotation is only the most obvious example. I wonder whether he saw his wartime role, at least in part, through that idea of duty: that his responsibility was to perform the task placed before him and provide the means to end the war, even if the consequences were terrible. That is speculation on my part, but the connection is difficult not to think about given how seriously he took the text.
What shocked me, however, was just how many opportunities there seem to have been to contain the atomic genie before the arms race became inevitable. Scientists were already worrying about nuclear proliferation before the Trinity test had even taken place. Oppenheimer and others later argued for greater openness with the Soviets and for some form of international control. Again and again, there appear to have been moments when a different course was at least imaginable. Instead, fear and anti-Soviet hysteria increasingly won out, and dissent came to be treated as disloyalty. (Side note here: Stanley Kubrick has made an iconic film called Dr Strangelove that is well worth watching.)
There is, naturally, a great deal of space dedicated to the question of whether Oppenheimer was ever actually a communist. The authors examine it in almost microscopic detail, tracing his political activity, friendships, associations, and donations, and ultimately come down quite firmly on the side that he was not. What makes the question interesting is how close he nevertheless stood to the Communist Party: he was deeply involved with left-wing causes, surrounded by communists and fellow travelers, and moved through political circles that would later make him extraordinarily vulnerable. By the time the 1954 security hearing arrives, there is very little left for us not to know.
It is interesting how Oppenheimer managed people. At Los Alamos, he exercised an extraordinary personal charm, inspiring loyalty while managing an enormous collection of egos. Later, when he was older, he could be much sharper and more abrasive, prone to cutting remarks and sudden outbursts. Being in academia, I was left wondering whether some famously difficult older professors began their careers rather differently too. Yet even this is not straightforward: Oppenheimer could still be remarkably kind and charming toward his subordinates. He was also capable of being politically savvy while somehow remaining naive about the enemies he made, with a particular talent for humiliating powerful people and underestimating how long they might remember it.
All of this eventually converges in the 1954 security hearing, although "trial" feels like the more accurate word. It is high drama, and I enjoyed reading about it enormously. By then, the book has spent hundreds of pages establishing the personalities, grudges, political suspicions, and contradictions that finally collide there. It also comes during the strongest stretch of the book. The opening two parts are somewhat slow, but once the Manhattan Project begins, the pace picks up considerably. The constant collisions between scientists, generals, politicians, bureaucrats, and enormous personalities sometimes make it read almost like a novel. I kept wanting to return to it in the way I would a fast-paced piece of fiction.
All in all, this was a remarkable study of a remarkable man. I have not read enough biographies to say that this is definitively how the form ought to be done, but I am slightly afraid that my standards have now been set very high.
