The Manhattan Project

by Cynthia C. Kelly

  General Groves was a man of extraordinary ability and capacity to get things done. Unfortunately, it took more contact with him than most people had to overcome a first bad impression. He was in fact the only person I have known who was every bit as good as he thought he was. He had intelligence, he had good judgment of people, he had extraordinary perceptiveness and an intuitive instinct for the right answer. In addition to this, he had a sort of catalytic effect on people. Most of us working with him performed better than our intrinsic abilities indicated.

  “A Jewish Pan” at Berkeley

  Oppenheimer dated Jean Tatlock while he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1930s. During his relationship with Jean, he also became involved in leftist causes and associations, such as support of Loyalist Spain. These actions would later be presented as evidence that he was a potential security risk. In this excerpt, Edith Jenkins, a friend of Jean’s, vividly describes the young Oppenheimer.

  From American Prometheus

  BY KAI BIRD AND MARTIN SHERWIN

  After Jean and Oppie began dating that autumn, it quickly became clear to everyone that this was a very intense relationship. “All of us were a bit envious,” one of Jean’s closest friends, Edith Arnstein Jenkins, later wrote. “I for one had admired him [Oppenheimer] from a distance. His precocity and brilliance already legend, he walked his jerky walk, feet turned out, a Jewish Pan with his blue eyes and his wild Einstein hair. And when we came to know him at the parties for Loyalist Spain, we knew how those eyes would hold one’s own, how he would listen as few others listen and punctuate his attentiveness with ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ and how when he was deep in thought he would pace so that all the young physicist-apostles who surrounded him walked the same jerky, pronated walk and punctuated their listening with ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’”

  The Absentminded Professor

  This article appeared in the Berkeley Gazette on February 14, 1934. Several other newspapers also carried the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the absentminded professor.

  Prof Takes Girl for Ride; Walks Home

  J. Robert Oppenheimer, 30, associate professor of physics at the University of California, took Miss Melva [sic] Phillips, research assistant in physics living at 2730 Webster Street, for an automobile ride in the Berkeley Hills at 3 o’clock this morning.

  He stopped his machine on Spruce Street at Alta Street and tucked a large robe about his passenger.

  “Are you comfortable?” Prof. Oppenheimer asked.

  Miss Phillips replied that she was.

  “Mind if I get out and walk for a few minutes?” he queried.

  Miss Phillips didn’t mind, so the professor climbed from the auto and started to walk.

  One hour and 45 minutes later Patrolman C. T. Nevins found the professor’s car and Miss Phillips, still comfortable, dozing in the front seat. He woke her and asked for an explanation of her early morning nap.

  Miss Phillips told her story. Police headquarters was notified that Prof. Oppenheimer was missing and a search was launched.

  A short time later the professor was awakened from a sound sleep in his room at the Faculty Club, two miles distant from his auto, and asked to explain.

  “I am eccentric,” he said.

  THE FOUNDING PHYSICIST

  In 1927, Oppenheimer mastered the new science of quantum mechanics at Göttingen and was awarded his doctorate. At Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence welcomed him as the “house theorist” who could make sense out of the findings in nuclear physics that were pouring out of experiments at the cyclotron. By the time I met him in 1939, he was already recognized as the founder of the first school of theoretical physics in the United States, which functioned on two campuses—the University of California at Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology. Twice each year, as Oppenheimer moved from one campus to the other, his graduate students followed him.

  During the Manhattan Project, I was a group leader under Oppenheimer in Los Alamos where his extraordinary qualities of leadership enabled him to coordinate the efforts of many “prima-donnas.” He was a brilliant thinker and teacher who would have left an indelible imprint on science—and notably on physics in America—even if there had been no WWII.

  —MAURICE SHAPIRO

  “His head wreathed in a cloud of smoke”

  J. Robert Oppenheimer was a physics professor at Berkeley when Edward Gerjuoy enrolled as a Ph.D. student in 1938. In this excerpt, Gerjuoy recalls what Oppenheimer was like as a teacher.

  From “Oppenheimer as a Teacher of Physics and Ph.D. Advisor”

  BY EDWARD GERJUOY

  I was enrolled as a graduate student in the Berkeley physics department from August 1938 to January 1942. Actually when I arrived in Berkeley I knew practically nothing about Oppenheimer beyond his name, even though I had come to Berkeley intending to get my Ph.D. with him. But I immediately became well acquainted with him via the introductory quantum mechanics course he gave that I took in my first semester at Berkeley. I took his electromagnetic theory course in my second semester, and in succeeding years took his advanced quantum mechanics and field theory courses. In each of these courses he manifested the same distinctive teaching style, many aspects of which merit detailed description.

  First, and most significantly, he obviously always came to class well prepared, although he equally obviously could have winged it with ease had he not devoted some advance time to planning what he intended to present. I would not say anything nearly as complimentary about the professors who gave any of the other non-Oppenheimer physics graduate courses I took at Berkeley. At least one of these other professors usually came to class unprepared and floundered at the board; the remainder were well prepared but, in contrast to Oppenheimer, did not always have the course subject matter at their fingertips and could be rattled by questions.

  Oppenheimer gave no final exams or any other tests. He did assign numerous homework problems, however, many of which were highly instructive and nonroutine. These homework problems always were graded by Oppenheimer himself, again unlike the practice of a number of other Berkeley physics professors. I still have the homework solutions I submitted in his advanced quantum mechanics course, with his handwritten comments in the margin.

  He did not designate a textbook for any of his courses that I took, nor did he assign readings or homework problems from any textbook. In fact he only rarely explicitly cited any sources for the classroom material he presented. If we students desired alternative or otherwise clarifying presentations, we generally had to locate them on our own. I add that Oppenheimer’s failure to assign a textbook in his electromagnetic theory course is revealing of his instructional bent. Much of the material he presented, though unquestionably classical electromagnetic theory, unmistakably was intended to serve as an introduction to the newly formulated, indeed still-developing-at-the-time, quantum theory of radiation; such hypermodern material, though standard textbook fare today, simply could not be found in any of the then-available electromagnetic theory textbooks. His failure to assign textbooks for his quantum mechanics course is not revealing and requires no comment. At the time, barely a decade after Schrödinger’s formulation of his wave equation, there weren’t any English language texts for him to assign.

  Each class hour literally was a lecture, delivered at high speed. The oral delivery was accompanied by numerous equations written on the board at correspondingly high speed, along with (when appropriate) equally rapidly performed, rarely erroneous calculations. The speed was such that the only way I possibly could grasp the material was to take hastily scribbled notes as he spoke, from which scribblings I would prepare more complete notes as soon as possible after the lecture, while it was still fresh in my mind; there was no textbook to consult, I remember. I am quite certain that every other serious student in those courses of Oppenheimer’s that I attended did the same as I; indeed, I remember numerous occasions when several of us would argue at a blackboard about precisely what he had imparted. Preparing tho
se course notes took a lot of time; certainly I spent more time on each of Oppenheimer’s courses than I did on any of the other courses I took in graduate school. On the other hand, I undoubtedly learned far more physics from each of Oppenheimer’s courses than I did from any other graduate courses I took…

  I have no memory of him ever initiating any sort of Socratic dialogue with the class, nor do I recall him pausing in any calculation to ask the class for suggestions on what to do next. In so stating I am not implying that he would not take questions. If at any time during the lecture there was something a student didn’t understand, said student could feel free to interrupt Oppenheimer with a question. I recall no indications that Oppenheimer minded such interruptions; rather he generally would answer patiently unless the question was manifestly stupid, in which event his response was likely to be quite caustic. Unfortunately his patient answers often were not illuminating; seemingly, Oppenheimer did not have the gift of putting himself in a student’s place and recognizing what was evident to him might not be evident to the student. A student who persisted after receiving Oppenheimer’s initially patient answer could expect to find himself on the receiving end of the same sort of sarcasm that an obviously stupid question would elicit. I also must say, however, that I never saw any indications that he bore any grudges at students who momentarily had taxed his patience.

  I haven’t yet mentioned probably the most distinctive feature of his lectures, namely his chain-smoking. He spoke quite rapidly, and puffed equally rapidly. When one cigarette burned down to a fragment he no longer could hold, he extinguished it and lit another almost in a single motion. I still can visualize him in his characteristic blackboard pose, one hand grasping a piece of chalk, the other hand dangling a cigarette, and his head wreathed in a cloud of smoke.

  U.S. Department of Energy

  J. Robert Oppenheimer directed the scientific laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where atomic bombs were developed.

  “A psychiatrist by vocation and a physicist by avocation”

  Isidor I. Rabi was a physicist and the associate director of the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, responsible for work on radar during World War II. He turned down Oppenheimer’s request that he work at Los Alamos, asserting that the development of radar was more important to the war effort, but he agreed to serve as a senior consultant for Oppenheimer and frequently visited Los Alamos.

  From Portrait of an Enigma

  BY JEREMY BERNSTEIN

  You know Oppenheimer. Once he gets into something, he gets into it with both feet. He becomes a leader. He was like a spider with this communication web all around him. I was once in Berkeley and said to a couple of his students, “I see you have your genius costumes on.” By the next day, Oppenheimer knew that I had said that. He was practically running the local teachers’ union. [Wolfgang] Pauli once said to me that Oppenheimer was a psychiatrist by vocation and a physicist by avocation. He had this mystic streak that could sometimes be very foolish. Sometimes he made foolish judgments and sometimes he just liked to tell tall stories. He was a very adaptable fellow. When he was riding high he could be very arrogant. When things went against him he could play victim. He was a most remarkable fellow.

  The Most Compelling Man

  In this excerpt, Jennet Conant describes Robert Oppenheimer through the eyes of two women who were central figures in his life. One was Dorothy McKibbin, who has been called the “Gatekeeper to Los Alamos.” All new arrivals to Los Alamos were instructed to first proceed to her office in Santa Fe, at 109 East Palace Street, where McKibbin arranged for housing and directed them up to the laboratory. The other was his secretary, Priscilla Greene.

  From 109 East Palace

  BY JENNET CONANT

  There was something about the man, that was all there was to it. He was six feet tall and very slender, and had on a trench coat and a porkpie hat, which he wore at a rakish angle, so that people, women in particular, could not help taking notice. His face had a refined quality, with closely cropped black curls framing high cheekbones and startling blue eyes that radiated a strange intensity. He stuck out in Santa Fe like a sore thumb. But it was not his unusual looks, his city clothes, or even the pipe that he waved about in one hand while talking that caught Dorothy McKibbin’s attention. It was something in his bearing, the way he walked on the balls of his feet, which “gave the impression he was hardly touching the ground.”

  Someone might have mentioned his name when they were introduced, not that it would have meant anything to her at the time. She had done little more than shake his hand, but she felt instinctively that their meeting was about to change everything about her quiet life. She had never intended to make a decision so quickly. She had only planned to come in for an interview, but she was so struck by the man’s compelling personality that she blurted out the words “I’ll take the job” before she had any idea what she was saying. In less than a minute, she had agreed to go to work for a complete stranger, for some kind of government project no one in Santa Fe seemed to know a thing about, doing God only knew what. She was forty-five, a widow with a twelve-year-old son, and flustered as a schoolgirl.

  At his request, she plunged herself into the clandestine wartime project. She did not have the slightest idea what he was doing in the high country, or what would be asked of her. She did not care, she wrote, “if he was digging trenches to put in a new road.” He was the most compelling man she had ever met, and she would have done anything to be associated with him and his work. Perhaps the desert had worked its cure on her a second time, and she was strong again. Her heart, like her scarred lungs, had healed. Maybe after so many years the town had become a bit too small, and she felt the stirrings of an old restlessness. It may also have been that her father’s spirit of adventure ran deeper in her than she knew, and she was ready to see what else life held in store for her. Oppenheimer asked her to start right away, and she agreed.

  To people in town, she remained the same sweet widow, working at a nondescript office around the corner from her old job and spending all her free time with her boy. She was told to attract as little attention to herself and her new position as possible, and she did as she was asked, sticking carefully to the daily rhythms of her previous life. No one, not even her son, was aware of what she was really doing. To people inside the project, however, she became Oppenheimer’s loyal recruit, his most inspired hire, and the indispensable head of the Santa Fe office. For the next twenty-seven months, she would lead a double life, serving as their confidante, conduit, and only reliable link to the outside. She would come to know everyone involved in the project and virtually everything about it, except exactly what they were making, and even that she would guess in time. One of the few civilians with security clearance, she was on call night and day. As she soon discovered, she would learn to live with that one word—“security”—uppermost in her thoughts at all times. Everything was ruled by “secrecy, the conditions of secrecy,” she wrote. “One’s life changed. One could not speak of what one was doing, not even in the smallest detail, to one’s family or friends. Every scrap of paper used in the office was burned every evening before closing.” This was a well-known wartime practice, but part of a whole new world to her.

  “We were all completely under his spell.”

  Standing a few feet away in the lobby of La Fonda, Oppenheimer’s twenty-three-year-old secretary, Priscilla Greene, watched him work his magic on Dorothy McKibbin. The meeting could not have lasted more than a few minutes, but she had no doubt of the outcome. Dorothy appeared to be bright, lively, and intelligent, with rosy cheeks and fine-boned features topped by a mass of curls. She had an engaging manner, a gentle, assured way about her that was very attractive. Oppenheimer would like her, and there was no question of her liking him. In the short time she had worked for him, Greene had observed that it was the rare individual who was not beguiled by his Byronic looks, quick mind, and grave, courteous manner. “I don’t think he really interviewed her. He just offered her
the job,” she recalled, “and she didn’t hesitate for a minute to accept.”

  Priscilla Greene understood this all too well. She had fallen for Oppenheimer almost as quickly as Dorothy McKibbin had. Scarcely a year earlier, in February 1942, Greene had landed a job working for Ernest Lawrence, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. Not long after she had started, Lawrence had doubled her workload by loaning her out on a part-time basis to his good friend “Oppie,” yet another tall, handsome, flirtatious physicist. Oppenheimer (who had picked up the nickname “Opje” during a postdoctoral stint in Europe and would sign personal letters that way for the rest of his life, though the nickname eventually became Americanized as “Oppie”) was head of Berkeley’s theoretical physics department and had an office in Le Conte Hall, the same administrative building where Lawrence worked. Oppenheimer had been asked to hold a special wartime science conference that summer and needed a hand getting it organized. As it turned out, he had needed a lot of help, and Greene was delighted to find herself in the employ of such a dynamic figure.

  At the time, Oppenheimer was thirty-seven, and had a reputation on Berkeley’s campus as an inspiring lecturer. He was also known to be impatient, arrogant, and possessed of a razor-sharp tongue—and as a young teacher had been infamous for terrorizing anyone in his classroom he found plodding, dull-witted, or in any way crass. He was considered one of the very best interpreters of mathematical theory, and study with him guaranteed the ambitious a fast-track career in theoretical physics. Many people were intimidated by him, though those who knew him better claimed that he had mellowed in the decade since he had come to Berkeley in 1929 after a sojourn in Europe, where he had studied with a small colony of world-class physicists, including James Franck and Einstein’s friend Paul Ehrenfast [Ehrenfest], and been a recognized participant in the quantum theory revolution. But there was always the sense with Oppenheimer that the mediocre offended him and that he did not regard the denizens of a West Coast university as quite his equals. John Manley, a refreshingly low-key experimental physicist at the University of Illinois whom Compton assigned to assist Oppie on the wartime physics project, recalled that when he met Oppenheimer for the first time, he was “somewhat frightened of his evident erudition” and “air of detachment from the affairs of ordinary mortals.”