J Robert Oppenheimer The Cold War And The Atomic West

In 1922, the teenage son of a Jewish immigrant ventured from Manhattan to New Mexico for his health. It was the first of many trips to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a western retreat where J. Robert Oppenheimer would eventually hold pathbreaking discussions with world-renowned scientists about atomic physics. Oppenheimer came to feel at home in the American West, and while extensive studies have been made of the man, this is the first book to explicitly link him with the region. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West explores how the West influenced Oppenheimer as a scientist and as a person—and the role he played in influencing it. Jon Hunner’s concise account of Oppenheimer’s life and the emergence of an Atomic West distills a vast literature for students and general readers. In this brisk, engaging biography, the author recounts how Oppenheimer helped locate the atomic weapons research lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and helped establish leading physics departments at the University of California–Berkeley and Caltech. By taking part in moving atomic physics west of the Mississippi, Oppenheimer bolstered the establishment of research labs, uranium mines, nuclear reactors, and more, bringing talented people—and billions of dollars in federal contracts—to the region. Interwoven into this atomic tale are insights into the physicist’s troubled growing-up years, his marriage and family life, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer’s eventual downfall. After the first atomic bomb burst over the New Mexican desert in 1945 and as the Cold War developed, the American myth of the Wild West expanded to encompass atomic sheriffs saving the world for democracy—even as powerful opponents began questioning Oppenheimer’s place in that story. Against the backdrop of the physicist’s life twining with the region’s history, Hunner explores the promise and peril of the Atomic Age.

Desert saint or destroyer of worlds: Oppenheimer biographies -- Under the sun: Oppenheimer in history -- History imagined: Oppenheimer in fiction -- The ghost and the machine: Oppenheimer in film and television -- "The bony truth": Oppenheimer in museums -- In his own worlds: Oppenheimer's writing

This groundbreaking Cold War history reveals the government conspiracy to bring down America’s most famous scientist. On April 12, 1954, the nation was astonished to learn that J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing charges of violating national security. Could the man who led the effort to build the atom bomb really be a traitor? In this riveting book, Priscilla J. McMillan draws on newly declassified U.S. government documents and materials from Russia, as well as in-depth interviews, to expose the conspiracy that destroyed the director of the Manhattan Project. This meticulous narrative recreates the fraught years from 1949 to 1955 when Oppenheimer and a group of liberal scientists tried to head off the cabal of air force officials, anti-Communist politicians, and rival scientists, who were trying to seize control of U.S. policy and build ever more deadly nuclear weapons. Retelling the story of Oppenheimer’s trial, which took place in utmost secrecy, she describes how the government made up its own rules and violated many protections of the rule of law. McMilliam also argues that the effort to discredit Oppenheimer, occurring at the height of the McCarthy era and sanctioned by a misinformed President Eisenhower, was a watershed in the Cold War, poisoning American politics for decades and creating dangers that haunt us today.

At the end of World War II, J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of America's preeminent physicists. For his work as director of the Manhattan Project, he was awarded the Medal for Merit, the highest honor the U.S. government can bestow on a civilian. Yet, in 1953, Oppenheimer was denied security clearance amidst allegations that he was "more probably than not" an "agent of the Soviet Union." Determined to clear his name, he insisted on a hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission's Personnel Security Board.In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer contains an edited and annotated transcript of the 1954 hearing, as well as the various reports resulting from it. Drawing on recently declassified FBI files, Richard Polenberg's introductory and concluding essays situate the hearing in the Cold War period, and his thoughtful analysis helps explain why the hearing was held, why it turned out as it did, and what that result meant, both for Oppenheimer and for the United States.Among the forty witnesses who testified were many who had played vitally important roles in the making of U.S. nuclear policy: Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Vannevar Bush, George F. Kennan, and Oppenheimer himself. The hearing provides valuable insights into the development of the atomic bomb and the postwar debate among scientists over the hydrogen bomb, the conflict between the foreign policy and military establishments over national defense, and the controversy over the proper standards to apply in assessing an individual's loyalty. It reveals as well the fears and anxieties that plagued America during the Cold War era.

"Oppenheimer reveals its subject as both an expert working on behalf of the state and an intellectual with broad cultural and moral authority. Oppenheimer played a crucial role not only in defining the task of the physicist as nuclear weaponeer, but also in expounding the wider cultural meanings and moral responsibilities associated with that task. The controversy over the hydrogen bomb and Oppenheimer's public fall from grace in the 1954 loyalty-security hearings, Thorpe argues, revealed fundamental tensions at the heart of the modern technoscientific state, raising questions about the responsibility scientists should take for the technologies of death they produce." "Oppenheimer maps out changes in the roles of scientists and intellectuals in twentieth-century America, ultimately revealing transformations in Oppenheimer's persona that coincided with changing attitudes toward science in society."--BOOK JACKET.

2004 marked the centennial of the birth of J Robert Oppenheimer, and brought historians and scholars, former students, nuclear physicists, and politicians together to celebrate this event. Oppenheimer's life and work became central to 20th century history as he spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb that ended World War II. This book provides a spectrum of interpretations of Oppenheimer's life and scientific achievements. It approaches the extraordinary scientist and teacher from many perspectives, chronicling the years from his boyhood through his role as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and afterwards. The book also discusses Oppenheimer's connection to New Mexico, which hosted two of the Manhattan Project's most crucial sites, and addresses his lasting impact on contemporary science, international politics, and the postwar age.

This book makes clear how, and why, after World War II American diplomats tried to make the atom bomb a winning weapon," an absolute advantage in negotiations with the Soviet Union. But this policy failed utterly in the 1948 Berlin crisis, and at home the State Department opposed those scientists who advocated international cooperation on nuclear matters. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

When he discovers that his father worked on missiles for a defense contractor, Jeff Porter is inspired to revisit America’s atomic past and our fallen heroes, in particular J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The result, Oppenheimer Is Watching Me, takes readers back to the cold war, when men in lab coats toyed with the properties of matter and fears of national security troubled our sleep. With an eye for strange symmetries, Porter traces how one panicky moment shaped the lives of a generation.