Theoretical Physicist J Robert Oppenheimer led the team of scientists, who developed the atomic bomb that was used to end the Second World War. Whatever your views on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there is no doubting the key role Oppenheimer played in bringing the Manhattan Project together and making sure it achieved its goal. But Oppenheimer was a complex Man full of contradictions, A brilliant scientist who was once so overwhelmed by emotion. He tried to strangle a friend and poison his college tutor. Today I’m exploring the extraordinary life of Robert Oppenheimer the father of the atom bomb. The new Christopher Nolan movie conveyed all the urgency and intensity of the Manhattan project. But I want to focus on Oppenheim’s Early years to understand the man behind the headlines. The man who was faced with perhaps the most complex moral dilemma that anyone has ever had to consider. The man who for a Time held the future of humanity in his hands.

Early Life

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1904. His father was a German Jewish immigrant who arrived in the country Panelist and made a fortune as a textile importer. His mother was a painter and he grew up in a Swanky New York apartment with Picassos and Vincent Willem van Gogh painting hanging on wall. At school, he was precocious and streets ahead of his classmates. At nine he said to a cousin to ask him a question in Latin and he can answer it in Greek.

This didn’t make him particularly popular but he didn’t mind he was more interested in his rock collection. He became so knowledgeable on the subject he corresponded with geologists and was invited to speak at the age of 12 to the prestigious New York Mineralogical Club. He described himself as an unctuous repulsively good little boy. He skipped several grades at school read the classics in the original language and the greats of 19th-century literature. At the age of 14 hoping to embrace the outdoors, he went on a summer camp and even though he was mercilessly bullied. He never complained or asked to come home. Although he was most at home with a book, he also enjoyed sailing as a passion. His father indulged by buying him a 28-foot ship which he would take out even in Stormy Weather oblivious of the danger.

Education

He decided to major in chemistry at Harvard, but before starting he had to take a year out because of a bad case of Dysentery caught on a geology trip. He recovered his strength on a friend’s ranch in New Mexico and launched himself at Harvard with his customary gusto. He took six classes per term and moved on to Advanced physics through independent study. He even threw in a few courses of Latin and Greek studied Eastern philosophy and wrote poetry. He was noticeably different to most of the other students.

Habits and Interest

He had a peculiar diet of chocolate beer and artichokes. He never read a newspaper or showed any interest in politics or worldly affairs. He had a very restricted circle of friends and once said to his brother, also a physicist that he need physics more than friends. Another thing he showed no interest in throughout his time at Harvard was Dating. He was certainly interested in women and even wrote A Few raunchy poems but he was too in love with ideas to fall in love with a person.

Internship

He graduated after only three years but what to do next never shared. He wrote to Nobel Prize winner, Sir Ernest Rutherford, head of the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge University, at the time the leading nuclear research establishment in the world asking if he could come and work there. He had a recommendation from his Harvard Professor extolling his virtues but acknowledging his clumsiness in the lab and suggesting he was most suited to a role in theoretical physics. Oppenheimer arrived in Cambridge in 1925 and immediately struggled with being away from home. Rutherford wasn’t impressed but he was given a bench in the basement laboratory and tasked with work he considered beneath him. The work required dexterity and patience and attention to detail none of which he had at times. He would work himself up into such a state he would roll around on the floor in tears. He wrote to a friend that, he was having a pretty bad time. The lab work is a terrible bore and he was so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that he learning anything in an effort to help him. Improve his practical laboratory skills.

Jealousy

Oppenheimer was assigned a tutor Patrick Blackett. Just a few years older to mentor him Blackett had served in the Royal Navy in the first world war. He was good looking Suave and self-assured. He was witty friendly and had recently married a beautiful vivacious and Brilliant woman and together they were considered the handsomest and happiest couple in Cambridge. All this Perfection stirred something up in Oppenheimer. He was painfully aware of his shortcomings and he wasn’t used to feeling second best to anybody. So what did he injected an apple with Cyanide and left it on black its desk. Yes you read correctly. The man responsible for developing Mankind’s most lethal weapon once resorted to the Snow White tactic of using a poisoned Apple.

Although Blackett it never ate the apple and was unharmed, the University wanted to report the matter to the police as an attempted murder. But Oppenheimer’s parents who were fortunately over on a visit persuaded. The authorities to give him another chance. There was a condition however that he should see a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with Dementia Praecox, the old name for schizophrenia which emphasizes its relentlessly progressive nature and the belief at the time that it would inevitably lead to permanent insanity and dementia.

Illness

In the 1920s there were no effective treatments and it was considered incurable. There is no evidence that Oppenheimer ever experienced hallucinations or Paranoid Illusions the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia. However there was thought to be a subtype of Schizophrenia called Simple Schizophrenia defined as a reduction in external attachments and interests and by the impoverishment of Human relationships without conspicuous delusions or hallucinations. It seems likely to me that his doctor may have been thinking of this as otherwise it is hard to see how he could have made such a diagnosis. We don’t know any details about what was discussed in his sessions. But it was the era when psychoanalysis was taking off and Oppenheimer with his usual enthusiasm embarked on reading up on the topic almost certainly in German. He remained depressed and confused with everything going on in his life .

During the Christmas break, he went to France and walking along a beach in Brittany depressed and alone he thought about ending his life. Trying to be positive he went to Paris to meet up with an old school friend who could see he was not well. To lift his spirits his friend told him that he was getting married whereupon Oppenheimer leapt on top of him and tried to strangle him with a luggage strap. Although his friend easily pushed him off, it was clear to them both that Oppenheimer had some serious Psychological troubles. His parents were also in Paris and for some reason. He decided to lock his mother in her hotel room. When she got out she insisted he to see a Psychiatrist in France.

The root of Oppenheimer’s problem was immediately recognized as Blue-balling and he was prescribed a woman whether he was able to fill his prescription. So to speak we don’t know But he could hardly have been in a better place to do so. He was a very intense young man, tall, thin and constantly fidgeting. He chained smoked to cover up his Restless energy. He was shy and socially awkward and would often have periods of losing himself in deep thought and at these times he would neglect to eat. He was not unaware of his problems and had a dark sense of humour describing his daily routine at Cambridge. Back in Cambridge he saw a third psychiatrist but eventually gave up on him as he decided he knew more about Psychoanalysis through his reading than his doctor did. After a miserable year at Cambridge he was invited by Max Bourne to study at the University of Goettingen in Germany, 200 miles from Berlin. There he met some of the greatest Minds in theoretical physics Niels Bohr, Verna Heisenberg and Enrico Fermi.

Research and Lectures

Amongst others, he developed a reputation for being loud and over exuberant in seminars to the extent that some of his fellow students presented Bourne with a petition threatening to boycott them unless Oppenheimer was instructed to calm down. This enthusiasm was also evident in the oral Examination for his Doctorate after which one of the examiners Nobel Prize Winner James Frank said that he was glad that’s over he was on the point of questioning him.

Oppenheimer then returned to the U.S to do postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology working with Linus Pauling one of the few people to win two Nobel prizes. But their collaboration ended when Oppenheimer made a misjudged clumsy pass at his wife. In 1928 he visited Paul Ehrenfest Institute at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands where he gave lectures in Dutch an example of his extraordinary ability to pick up new languages. He also spent time with Wolfgang Paoli in Zurich Switzerland before returning to take up an associate professor post at the University of California at Berkeley. Skills some of his students found he had no idea at what level to pitch his lectures assuming way too much knowledge even those who were more positive said they had to repeat his classes as they were so challenging.

But his Brilliance began to attract a following of devoted acolytes for those in his inner circle. He was supportive and he could do no wrong in their eyes. But others found him a show-off arrogant and unnecessarily blunt. It’s time the world of physics was buzzing with new ideas about quantum mechanics and relativity. What all this meant and could mean for the universe and Humanity was still being worked out. Oppenheimer was at the center of all of this working on everything from Subatomic particles to black holes. This tendency to LEAP from topic to topic in his research frustrated Oppenheimer’s colleagues.

Marriage and Politics

At times he would even jump to subjects unrelated to physics reading Proust or learning Sanskrit. His mind worked so fast he would rush through calculations on his papers without taking the time to double check and he developed a reputation for careless errors. In 1936 he met Jean tatlock a student at Stanford Medical School and over the next four years they came close to marrying. It was Jean who introduced him to the politics of social reform and got him involved in anti-fascist activities. It was this involvement that would get him into trouble later in the post-war McCarthy era, when even the faintest tinge of red in someone’s past was enough to get them deemed un-American.

War

With the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Europe was plunged into war, Albert Einstein, then working in Princeton and others wrote to President Roosevelt warning of the danger to the world should the Nazis be the first to make a nuclear bomb. It is this letter that launched the race to beat them to, it the race to harness the terrible power of a new weapon through the Manhattan Project. But back in Berkeley Oppenheimer was oblivious to all this he was getting married to Kitty Puening, also involved in left-win politics who had been married twice before and was now pregnant with his child. Their son was born in May 1941 and a daughter followed in 1944. But family life was complicated as Kitty was quite a complex character in her own right. Oppenheimer continued to see Jean Tadlock and he also started a relationship with psychologist Ruth Tallman who was 11 years his senior and married to a friend and fellow Caltech Physicist.

Lab and Innovations

Early work on developing a nuclear bomb went on at various sites in the U.S and independently in Britain but Oppenheimer’s role was initially a minor one. In 1943 the U.S army wanted to set up a New laboratory to get the project to completion and it needed a leader. The obvious candidates were doing essential work elsewhere and general Leslie Groves was forced to consider Oppenheimer in spite of his somewhat suspect friends. In the end, he was persuaded that Oppenheimer was the man for the job and he personally waived the security concerns. Oppenheimer suggested the plateau of Los Alamos near Santa Fe New Mexico as the location for the new lab and under his leadership the international team of scientists overcame all the obstacles and exploded. The first nuclear device on the 16th of July 1945. The war in Europe was over the Germans having surrendered two months previously but the war in Japan was not. Little bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6th of August and the more powerful fat man plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on the 9th of August.

Aftermath

Japan surrendered on the 15th of August and two days later Oppenheimer travelled to Washington to hand deliver a letter to Secretary of War Henry L Stimson expressing his concerns and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned. In October he met President Harry S Truman to hand in his resignation saying that he felt that he had blood on his hands. The remark infuriated Truman who ended the meeting and told his staff, he didn’t want to see that son of a crybaby scientist in his office ever again. Oppenheimer returned to Princeton to become head of the Institute for Advanced Study and he was appointed chairman of the general advisory committee of the U.S Government’s Atomic Energy Commission. However, when the development of the much more powerful hydrogen bomb was being discussed in 1949 he openly expressed his opposition to the plans. This led to accusations of disloyalty even that he was a Russian spy.

Criticism

A Security hearing in 1954 ruled that although he was not guilty of treason he should no longer have access to military secrets. This was at least in part due to the negative testimony of Edward Teller his former subordinate at Los Alamos. Lost his security clearance and his role as a government advisor was over. But teller was heavily criticized and shunned by the scientific Community whereas Oppenheimer received support from scientists around the world. He continued in his role at the Institute for Advanced study but published little research after the war. He was plagued by guilt over his role in the atom bomb project and the humiliation of losing his security clearance. He spent a lot of time away from the public eye on Saint John in the Virgin Islands and retired in 1966, dying of Throat Cancer the following year.

In 2014 the full declassified transcript of the 1954 Security hearing was released which will reinforce the perception that Oppenheimer’s career had been cut short by a mixture of professional jealousy and hysterical 1950s McCarthyism. There is no doubt that Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist, he became an inspiring teacher with many of his collaborators and students going on to win the Nobel Prize. Manhattan proved he was an able administrator. But what about his personality?

Precocious with a restricted range of interests over-enthusiastic and difficult to stop when talking about his interests. Difficulties seeing things from the perspective of others rigid and Perfectionist. Lacking in Social awareness with a tendency to make rude comments only to realize later with regret how rude they were poor awareness of danger all of these can be seen in people on the Autistic Spectrum and perhaps it will come as no surprise that a scientist who preferred physics to friends might be considered autistic.

But we have to be careful in assessing information from published biographies, I’ve used this book ‘The highly respected’ 700 page American Prometheus 'The Triumph And Tragedy Of J Robert Oppenheimer’ but there are a dozen other biographies all with their own tale to tell. All biographers have to decide which version of their subject story they are going to present and select information that supports the premise of their book and make it different from others. This selection bias makes it difficult to draw conclusions about a person’s mental health from published biographies. So although I would say that there is much to suggest that Oppenheimer may have been autistic. We lack information on his developmental history and don’t know whether he had any of the other features of autism so a firm diagnosis cannot be made or excluded.

There is also an increasingly vocal lobby that would say it is wrong to think of autism as a diagnosis anyway as it is not a mental disorder at all. But simply a variation of normality an aspect of natural human diversity I think that debate is too big to get into here. But what we can say is that for all of Robert Oppenheimer’s Brilliance as a scientist, he clearly had major difficulties coping with his emotional state at Cambridge and this led into attacking at least two people.

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