J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER & PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 9, 2020
A READER WRITES:
Jim
Thanks for your thoughtful presentations and exchanges. This most recent one touched on a personal tender spot. While I was in undergraduate school at Carnegie Mello University, and graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, I was involved in nuclear power activities with Westinghouse Electric.
There, I was receiving The Economist, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and The Progressive where The Progressive's tease was on disclosing the "secrets" of the nuclear weapon designs. The whole picture was well subsumed by the phrase "Prometheus Unbound."
Norman
I RESPOND:
Norm,
What a perceptive phrase, "Prometheus Unbound."
J. Robert Oppenheimer was, indeed, America's Prometheus. Unlike the Greek God, who was tied to a rock in the mountains by Zeus with buzzards eating his liver every day, which was regenerated every day him being immortal, the pain unending, Oppenheimer had a similar fate only he was mortal.
Triumph and tragedy were like polar coordinates to his existence. Since a boy, he was brilliant with a facility for science, philosophy, religion, the arts, and languages. He was also charismatic with a giant mind but an equally sensitive heart. Add to this he had incredible management and organizational acumen, along with a talent for assessing competence with an eye for what worked and what did not.
Given all this, the tragedy is that he allowed events to control his destiny rather for him to take charge and be his own man.
He had Nobel Prize capability in physics but allowed those in government and his discipline to persuade him to head the massive Manhattan Project even picking out the cite where it might best be conducted. Los Alamos became a community of thousands of the best minds and technicians of the world in an isolated and secret place.
One wonders while he was successfully engaged in creating the world's first atomic bomb that he naively believed it was a weapon that would never be used, especially by the American nation.
As mentioned in "An Open Mind or A Closed Mind," Truman saw him as a "cry baby," radicals and fanatics across this nation saw him as "a spy" for the Soviet Union with the paranoid buzzards making his existent miserable until he finally died.
Brilliant as he was, and yes, trusting, too, he was a man of conscience, something I have been writing about of late, which tortured him when he realized what he had created.
Were I younger, I'd make a study of J. Robert Oppenheimer in terms of a citizen of humanity who happened to be an American.
Thank you for sharing,
Jim
J. Robert Oppenheimer was, indeed, America's Prometheus. Unlike the Greek God, who was tied to a rock in the mountains by Zeus with buzzards eating his liver every day, which was regenerated every day him being immortal, the pain unending, Oppenheimer had a similar fate only he was mortal.
Triumph and tragedy were like polar coordinates to his existence. Since a boy, he was brilliant with a facility for science, philosophy, religion, the arts, and languages. He was also charismatic with a giant mind but an equally sensitive heart. Add to this he had incredible management and organizational acumen, along with a talent for assessing competence with an eye for what worked and what did not.
Given all this, the tragedy is that he allowed events to control his destiny rather for him to take charge and be his own man.
He had Nobel Prize capability in physics but allowed those in government and his discipline to persuade him to head the massive Manhattan Project even picking out the cite where it might best be conducted. Los Alamos became a community of thousands of the best minds and technicians of the world in an isolated and secret place.
One wonders while he was successfully engaged in creating the world's first atomic bomb that he naively believed it was a weapon that would never be used, especially by the American nation.
As mentioned in "An Open Mind or A Closed Mind," Truman saw him as a "cry baby," radicals and fanatics across this nation saw him as "a spy" for the Soviet Union with the paranoid buzzards making his existent miserable until he finally died.
Brilliant as he was, and yes, trusting, too, he was a man of conscience, something I have been writing about of late, which tortured him when he realized what he had created.
Were I younger, I'd make a study of J. Robert Oppenheimer in terms of a citizen of humanity who happened to be an American.
Thank you for sharing,
Jim
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