Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk

Robert Oppenheimer A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk

I have just finished reading this monumental study of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, best known as the overseer of Project Manhattan, the highly secretive program that produced the first atomic bomb. I was lucky enough to get it for $7 at the Bookgrocer in Moonee Ponds. What a bargain for a hardcopy book of this standard.

At nearly 700 pages, it is minute in its detail and is followed by 70 pages of footnotes and 21 pages of bibliography. Published in 2012 by Ray Monk, the Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, this must be the definitive biography of Oppenheimer. See an extended lecture in 2013 by Monk on Oppenheimer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh7qYV-JZ7U. 

In this lecture, Monk tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Institute for Advanced Study's third Director (1947-66), in the context of the momentous developments in which he played a leading part. It describes the community in which he was brought up, his development as a physicist, his involvement in left-wing politics in the 1930s, and his unlikely choice as director of the laboratory in Los Alamos that produced the world's first atomic bomb. It also describes his attempts after the war to secure international control over atomic energy, his opposition to the hydrogen bomb, and the security hearing of 1954 that stripped him of his security clearance. As the lecture shows, however, by the time he died in 1967 his reputation - as a scientist, a statesman, and a loyal U.S. citizen - had been truly re-established.

The dustcover blurb says it all

Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis in the race to develop the first atomic bomb—a breakthrough that was to have eternal ramifications for mankind and that made Oppenheimer the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But with his actions leading up to that great achievement, he also set himself on a dangerous collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunters. In Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, Ray Monk, author of peerless biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, goes deeper than any previous biographer in the quest to solve the enigma of Oppenheimer’s motivations and his complex personality. 

The son of German-Jewish immigrants, Oppenheimer was a man of phenomenal intellectual attributes, driven by an ambition to overcome his status as an outsider and penetrate the heart of political and social life. As a young scientist, his talent and drive allowed him to enter a community peopled by the great names of twentieth-century physics - men such as Niels Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, and Albert Einstein - and to play a role in the laboratories and classrooms where the world was being changed forever, where the secrets of the universe, whether within atomic nuclei or collapsing stars, revealed themselves.

But Oppenheimer’s path went beyond one of assimilation, scientific success, and world fame. The implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos weighed heavily upon this fragile and complicated man. In the 1930s, in a climate already thick with paranoia and espionage, he made suspicious connections, and in the wake of the Allied victory, his attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race led many to question his loyalties.

Through compassionate investigation and with towering scholarship, Ray Monk’s Robert Oppenheimer tells an unforgettable story of discovery, secrecy, impossible choices, and unimaginable destruction.

Great book review at https://physicsworld.com/a/making-sense-of-oppenheimer/.

What a wonderful read. It probably took me 3-4 weeks. I do most of my reading in bed before lights out and, sometimes when the topic is a solid one, I must admit I do doze off. I was more interested in Oppenheimer the Scientist than in the history behind Oppenheimer's fight with the McCarthy era witch hunts. And I was not disappointed, as Monk digs into the science and offers clear concise explanations of complex topics. He paints a wonderful picture of the development of 20th century physics, especially in the areas of atomic and quantum physics, areas in which Oppenheimer excelled. 

Oppenheimer was what we call a polymath.  Educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Gottingen University, Oppenheimer was fluent in French, German, Dutch and even Sanskrit. He read extensively in French literature and poetry and wrote his own poetry. He liked to quote Baudelaire in French, and his famous quote 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds' from the Bhagavad Gita comes from his reading it in the Sanskrit. And he was a formidable physicist, able to quickly grasp ideas that the common man would find impossible. 

A complex peraonality and sometimes his own worst enemy, he was still a charismatic figure and a wonderful project leader and facilitator. In his day, he was the second most well known scientist in the world, behind Albert Einstein. 

As a theoretical physicist, he was amongst the best. His achievements in physics included the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays. As a teacher and promoter of science, he is remembered as a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics that gained world prominence in the 1930s. After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

The common consensus if that if had not died so young, he would have been eventually awarded the Nobel Prize for Science. 

More must have been written about the Manhattan Project and the rise of nuclear physics than just about any other 20th century project. In my own library, I have an extensive subset of books

Science

Danger and Survival: Choices about the bomb in the first fifty years by McGeorge Bundy (1988)

Day of Trinity by Lansing Lamont (1966)

Brighter than a Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk (1965 edition)

The Energy Question by Gerald Foley with Charlotte Nassim (1978 edition)

The Age of Radiance by Craig Nelson

Bigraphies

Enrico Fermi, Physicist by Emilio Segrè (borrowed from library and read - I do not actually have this one)

The Life and Times of Albert Einstein by Ronald W. Clark

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman! as told to Ralph Leighton

Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk

Novels

The Prometheus Crisis by Thomas M Scortia and Frank M Robinson

Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon

To get some idea of the charismatic nature of the man, you can't do better than to view the 30 minute video of Season 4 Episode 13 from the Ed Murrow Series "See It Now" , titled "A Conversation with J. Robert Oppenheimer" (4 Jan. 1955). This particular interview is discussed in the book on pages 657-658. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVCL3Rnr8xE. Monk talks of Oppenheimer's "mesmerising performance" and I can't help butg agree.

It is also worthwihile viewing the 2009 documentary/film American Experience The Trials of J Robert Oppenheimer by writer and directory David Grubin. You can see it in full on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtqEav3FOPE.