Why Oppenheimer? Part 1: To Lead Development of the Atomic Bomb
On J. Robert Oppenheimer's ascent to leadership
“Oppenheimer’s worst enemy said to me, ‘Robert Oppenheimer was the best lab director I ever knew’, and then he chased me out of the house.” — Richard Rhodes quoting Edward Teller1
In high school, my AP US History teacher, Mr. Fairbanks, recommended that I read Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning classic The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and lent me his copy. He must have noticed my early interest in physics and considered that I might benefit by reading that particular tome. I took the book with me to college where it sat on my bookshelf for years without ever once being opened.
This remained the case for years after I graduated college, and after I left physics for a career in finance that was leaving me quite unfulfilled. I considered returning to Mr. Fairbanks his book after so many years, unread, before allowing my better judgment and sense of guilt to sway me into giving the book a chance.
It’s no exaggeration to say that reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb changed my life. No, I did not immediately commit to attending graduate school (that wouldn’t be a genuine consideration of mine for years to come). In the most remarkable way, however, reading Mr. Fairbanks’s book made me fall in love with physics all over again.
The book is exceptionally well written and reads like an epic novel, without compromising on any of the science. The numerous blurbs from eminent scientists attest to Rhodes’s masterful artistry and fidelity to his chosen subject.
I became enthralled. Upon finishing the book, I proceeded to read Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s excellent biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American Prometheus. Oppenheimer was the Manhattan Project’s chief scientific director, and American Prometheus provided greater depth into the man responsible for leading America’s effort in developing the world’s first atomic bomb.
Well over a decade ago, I recall sharing with some friends how this story needed to be turned into a major film. I was convinced that the story was sufficiently deep, bold, rich, dramatic, thrilling, tense, fascinating, tragic, historically important, and entertaining to more than merit its being faithfully adapted for the silver screen. Importantly, if this were to happen, a substantial budget would be necessary and only the best production team would do. Anything less would not do justice to the gravity of what had taken place, and risked cheapening its memory.
A little over a decade since and my wish has come true. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is set to be released on July 21, 2023, and it is based on Bird and Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize winning American Prometheus. A more suitable director and production team could not be desired.
The production of a motion picture telling the story of the making of the world’s first atomic bomb requires a committed effort, in the spirit of what it took to develop the original bomb itself. In other words, it requires a high degree of seriousness, focus, attention to detail, vision, and determination; all qualities Nolan embodies like few other directors. Importantly, and as a great parallel to J. Robert Oppenheimer himself, a genuine production effort also requires bold leadership over such a complex and monumental undertaking.
I strongly suspect that Nolan chose to work on this particular story, in no small part, because he understood all of this and, being as confident and ambitious as he (deservedly) is, was up to the task. For those of us who have long been hoping to see the making of the atomic bomb on the silver screen, there is no greater blessing than this.
In what follows, I attempt to provide two answers to the question posed in this piece’s title. Part 1 below explores why Oppenheimer was chosen to lead the development of the bomb, while Part 2 will explore why Christopher Nolan might have chosen this particular story to tell. Given how vast and rich Oppenheimer’s story is, I could have focused on any number of details for this piece. Instead, I chose to focus on providing greater insight into why some are chosen, or choose, to do great things.
Part 1: To Lead Development of the Bomb
“It was not obvious that Oppenheimer would be director. He had, after all, no experience in directing a large group of people. The laboratory would be devoted primarily to experiment and to engineering, and Oppenheimer was a theorist.” — Hans Bethe, Nobel Prize in Physics (1967)2
“[it seemed] a most improbable appointment. I was astonished.” — Isidor I. Rabi, Nobel Prize in Physics (1944)3
“I had no support [for appointing Oppenheimer as scientific director], only opposition from those who were scientific leaders of that era.” — General Leslie Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project4
“He couldn’t run a hamburger stand.” — A Berkeley scientific colleague5
How did J. Robert Oppenheimer go from others having these sorts of sentiments about him to successfully leading over 6,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel at Los Alamos in developing the world’s first atomic bomb? How did he manage to change peoples’ impression of him as a leader such that by the end of the project Edward Teller, as we now know, considered Oppenheimer “the best lab director [he] ever knew”?
How Oppenheimer succeeded in radically transforming others’ opinion of his leadership ability is a story I am eagerly looking forward to Nolan telling. In the meantime, we can glean for ourselves how Nolan might approach his telling by referencing the various sources Nolan has relied upon.6
On Oppenheimer’s Beastliness
To get a sense of the extent of Oppenheimer’s transformation into becoming a leader we consider the following character flaws observed by others prior to Oppenheimer’s selection, as detailed by Richard Rhodes:
“Although [1959 Physics Nobel Laureate Emilio] Segrè found Oppenheimer ‘the fastest thinker I’ve ever met,’ with ‘an iron memory … brilliance and solid merits,’ he also saw ‘grave defects’ including ‘occasional arrogance … [that] stung scientific colleagues where they were most sensitive.’ ‘ Robert could make people feel they were fools,’ Bethe says simply. ‘He made me, but I didn’t mind. Lawrence did. The two disagreed while they were both still at Berkeley. I think Robert would give Lawrence a feeling that he didn’t know physics, and since that is what cyclotrons are for, Lawrence didn’t like it.’ Oppenheimer recognized the habit without diagnosing it in a letter to his younger brother Frank: ‘But it is not easy—at least it is not easy for me—to be quite free of the desire to browbeat somebody or something.’ He called the behavior ‘beastliness.’ It did not win him friends.”7
Adding to this characterization, Rhodes reveals that “In the classroom, if someone made a stupid mistake, he would just chew them out”, and that:
“He was nasty to people all of the time in a way that bothered a lot of people. [1968 Physics Nobel Laureate] Luis Alvarez…really didn’t get along with Oppenheimer at all because Oppenheimer was so condescending to everyone. And Luis was kind of a hothead and he didn’t like people condescending to him. Oppenheimer never won a Nobel, Luis did.”8
It is clear that Oppenheimer would have to address these various shortcomings in order to successfully lead the scientific and engineering efforts at Los Alamos.
An Overweening Ambition
Director of the Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves, pointed out that Oppenheimer:
“… had almost no administrative experience of any kind, and he was not a Nobel Prize winner. Because of the latter lack, he did not then have the prestige among his fellow scientists that I would have liked the project leader to possess…There was a strong feeling among most of the scientific people with whom I discussed this matter that the head of Project Y [as the Los Alamos Laboratory was code named] should also be one.”9
Oppenheimer’s lack of any significant leadership or administrative experience was certainly going to be an obstacle to his appointment.
Curiously, and despite appearances, his lack of a Nobel Prize may ultimately not have been. To understand this, we need to look into the connection between Oppenheimer’s nastiness and his lack of a Prize.
Richard Rhodes makes the following, enlightening, observation:
“There was this layer of Oppenheimer being waspish all the time, which was his insecurity. And his insecurity extended to physics in that rather than dig deep into one problem, Rabi said later he just didn’t have the sitzfleisch; he couldn’t sit down and focus on one problem because he always wanted to be someone who always knew everything that was going on in physics. You can call that someone who is a very sophisticated and knowledgable scientist or you can call it someone who is superficial, and he was superficial.”10
Importantly, by no means should Rhodes’ characterization of Oppenheimer as superficial be misconstrued as his denigrating Oppenheimer or his contributions. Indeed, and with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that Oppenheimer would have likely merited a Nobel Prize for his astrophysical work on neutron stars11 and black holes12, of which there is little doubt now regarding their empirical existence13.
It is true that, unlike those who tended to win a Nobel Prize, Oppenheimer tended to have broader interests. These interests went beyond physics as well, as I. I. Rabi relates:
“Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields, which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was.”14
Oppenheimer was not unique in these respects. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, was another excellent physicist who also never won a Nobel. As Rhodes relates:
“Bethe noticed then and later that despite their many outward differences Teller and Oppenheimer were ‘fundamentally … very similar. Teller had an extremely quick understanding of things, so did Oppenheimer…. They were also somewhat alike in that their actual production, their scientific publications, did not measure up in any way to their capacity. I think Teller’s mental capacity is very high, and so was Oppenheimer’s but, on the other hand, their papers, while they included some very good ones, never reached really the top standards. Neither of them ever came up to the Nobel Prize level. I think you just cannot get to that level unless you are somewhat introverted.”15
Like Oppenheimer, Teller enjoyed pursuits beyond physics:
“Both Oppenheimer and Teller wrote poetry; Oppenheimer pursued literature as Teller pursued music.”16
Some say Oppenheimer:
“… never quite pulled himself together as a human being, and as is true of many people with that kind of a personality structure, he was a superb actor. He could play lots of different roles and he did… [Oppenheimer] was someone who was more broad rather than deep. He was someone who was really good at playing roles…”17
So how did any of this help Oppenheimer to be selected to lead the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and to ultimately lead that project successfully? According to Groves biographer Robert Norris:
“That Oppenheimer and Groves should have worked so well together is really no mystery. Groves was especially perceptive in sizing people up, usually within a matter of minutes and knowing whether they could do a job or not. In Oppenheimer he saw an ‘overweening ambition’ that drove him. He understood that Oppenheimer was frustrated and disappointed; that his contributions to theoretical physics had not brought him the recognition that he believed he deserved and craved. This project could be his route to immortality. Part of Groves’ genius was to entwine other people’s ambitions with his own. Groves and Oppenheimer got on so well because each saw in the other the skills and intelligence necessary to fulfill their common goal, the early completion and use of the bomb. The bomb in fact would be the route to immortality for the both of them.”18
Whatever truth lies behind this sort of speculation, it will be interesting to see Nolan’s interpretation of these dynamics on the big screen.
Signs of Growth
Beyond Oppenheimer’s resentment-fueled ambition, he began to show signs of growth as well. Rhodes shares the following observations from Bethe:
“though Oppenheimer had been a poor teacher when he began…he had ‘created the greatest school of theoretical physics that the United States has ever known.’ Bethe’s explanation for that evolution reveals the seedbed of Oppenheimer’s later administrative leadership: ‘Probably the most important ingredient he brought to his teaching was his exquisite taste. He always knew what were the important problems, as shown by his choice of subjects. He truly lived with those problems, struggling for a solution, and he communicated his concern to his group…. He was interested in everything, and in one afternoon [he and his students] might discuss quantum electrodynamics, cosmic rays, electron pair production and nuclear physics.’”19
Rhodes continues:
“During the same period Oppenheimer’s clumsiness with experiment evolved to appreciation and he consciously mastered experimental work—hands off. ‘He began to observe, not manipulate,’ a former student notes. ‘He learned to see the apparatus and to get a feeling of its experimental limitations. He grasped the underlying physics and had the best memory I know of. He could always see how far any particular experiment would go. When you couldn’t carry it any farther, you could count on him to understand and to be thinking about the next thing you might want to try.’”20
All of this reflects growth with respect to various relevant aspects of the sort of leadership he would be called upon to muster, only on the grandest scale, at Los Alamos.
The Generalist
Groves likely also understood that what may have been holding Oppenheimer back from winning a Nobel, namely his broad curiosity (or his “superficiality” as Rhodes puts it), was vital for leading at Los Alamos.
Prior to Oppenheimer’s appointment, much of the scientific research was being conducted at various disjoint institutions that collectively spanned the entire country. This was preferred, partly, for security reasons (it was easier to control, and to limit the amount of close communication between disparate entities participating in the project). The military, which inherited the project from the civilian Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), generally agreed with this assessment.
As Rhodes details:
“The system that Groves had installed around the country…was called compartmentalization, for secrecy, and basically it was ‘you’re only allowed to know just enough to do your job and not the overall picture of what your job might be for’.”21
Yet progress was slow under these circumstances, as one might expect. Ultimately, it became apparent that in order for there to be any real hope of a breakthrough, and to accelerate the development of the bomb, compartmentalization of the development effort needed to be relaxed, at least with respect to the principal scientific researchers involved. Few understood this better than J. Robert Oppenheimer:
“I became convinced, as did others, that a major change was called for in the work on the bomb itself. We needed a central laboratory devoted wholly to this purpose, where people could talk freely with each other, where theoretical ideas and experimental findings could affect each other, where the waste and frustration and error of the many compartmentalized experimental studies could be eliminated, where we could begin to come to grips with chemical, metallurgical, engineering, and ordnance problems that had so far received no consideration.”22
We thus see the generalist in Oppenheimer revealed. True, scientists are generally well aware of the importance of open communication for furthering scientific discovery. Beyond this, it’s important to glean Oppenheimer’s operational concerns relating to project efficiency, as well as his keen awareness of the various relevant, disparate elements needed to successfully develop the bomb.
Already, he is thinking more broadly than most physicists tend to think. He is considering an industrial process. Most (but not all!) theorists and experimentalists (but particularly theorists) tend to be too invested in their particular pet problem to have any broader considerations. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. Particularly when their research fulfills a partial goal; as opposed to when it is an end in itself, as it tends to be. However, when a wider goal requires disparate contributions from various physicists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers, technicians, and administrators, whoever leads their efforts will not only need to understand, and be able to coordinate, their relative relations and efforts, he will need to become sufficiently competent in each of these subfields as well. This is, indeed, a task too daunting for too many of even our most accomplished physicists.
Yet, Oppenheimer eagerly embraced this challenge. He may have felt as though he had something to prove, but he also understood that he possessed within himself traits and abilities that, although they might have hindered him (to some degree) in fulfilling his maximum potential as a physicist, made him uniquely capable of succeeding as a leader and as a project manager on the grandest scale.
Somewhere along the way, Groves must have come to appreciate much of this as well. He must have also come to trust Oppenheimer enormously in order to look past Oppenheimer’s various associations with former members of the Communist Party, including his former fiancé, his brother, and his wife. Importantly, Groves must have also sensed that Oppenheimer was capable of suppressing his beastliness. As Bethe told Rhodes:
“Before the war Robert really could be cruel, he would pounce on a mistake you made…before the war, after the war, but not during the war. During the war he was this superb kind of wise lab director”23
Rhodes suspects that Oppenheimer was capable of making this change:
“… because, unlike most scientists, he was not only a physicist of high class but he really was psychologically astute as a human being, as I think insecure people often are because they gotta scope out what’s going on.”24
And scope out, he did. As Oppenheimer’s friend from Berkeley, Harken Chevalier, remarked, Oppenheimer:
“… was always, without seeming effort, aware of, and responsive to, everyone in the room, and was constantly anticipating unspoken wishes.”25
A Real Stroke of Genius
Altogether, though apparently not the obvious choice from the start, Oppenheimer was entrusted to lead the development of the bomb because he managed to correct many of his legitimate shortcomings, leaned into some of these when he became aware that they might serve him in accomplishing a new set of goals, and perhaps most importantly, because Leslie Groves’ view of Oppenheimer was that:
“He’s a genius … A real genius…. Why, Oppenheimer knows about everything. He can talk to you about anything you bring up. Well, not exactly. I guess there are a few things he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t know anythings about sports.”26
Groves’ gamble would ultimately pay off. Victor Weisskopf, who was Group Leader of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, explains how Oppenheimer ultimately succeeded in delivering on Groves’ expectations:
“The task facing Oppenheimer and his collaborators was stupendous. When the work started at Los Alamos not much more was known than the fundamental ideas of a chain reaction. What happens in a nuclear explosion had to be theoretically predicted in all details for the design of the bomb since there was no time to wait for experiments; no fissionable material was available yet. The details of the fission process had to be understood. The slowing down of neutrons in matter and the theory of explosions and implosions under completely novel conditions had to be investigated. Nuclear physicists had to become experts in fields of technology unknown to them such as shock waves and hydrodynamics. Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the real sense of the words. Here his uncanny speed in grasping the main points of any subject was a decisive factor; he could acquaint himself with the essential details of every part of the work.” 27
Weisskopf continues:
“[Oppenheimer] did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.”28
In the end, Oppenheimer received the Medal of Merit from President Truman in 1946:
“for his great scientific experience and ability, his inexhaustible energy, his rare capacity as an organizer and executive, his initiative and resourcefulness, and his unswerving devotion to duty . . .”29
Who could have guessed at this seemingly unlikely result? The answer to this question wasn’t lost on I. I. Rabi who, as we noted above, was originally “astonished” by Oppenheimer’s “most improbable appointment”:
“… it was a real stroke of genius on the part of General Groves, who was not generally considered to be a genius.”30
In Part 2, which will be released shortly, I will explore why Christopher Nolan might have chosen this particular story to tell.
Rhodes, Richard. Interview, Dwarkesh Patel, youtu.be/tMdMiYsfHKo
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster, 1986. 448 pp.
Rhodes, Ibid., 449 pp.
Bird, Kai, and Sherwin, Martin J. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 186 pp.
Bird and Sherwin. Ibid., 186 pp.
It is known that Nolan has heavily relied on Bird and Sherwin’s excellent biography in determining his script and that he has also relied on Richard Rhodes for consulting during filmmaking
Rhodes. Ibid., 444 pp
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid.
Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962. 62 pp.
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid.
J. R. Oppenheimer and G. M. Volkoff, Phys. Rev. 55, 374 (1939)
J. R. Oppenheimer and H. Snyder, Phys. Rev. 56, 455 (1939)
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration et al 2019 ApJL 875 L1
Hijiya, James A. “The ‘Gita’ of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144, no. 2 (2000): 123–67.
Rhodes, Ibid., 453 pp.
Rhodes, Ibid., 454 pp.
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid.
Norris, Robert S. Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man. South Royalton: Steerforth Press, 2002.
Rhodes, Ibid., 447 pp.
Rhodes, Ibid., 447 pp.
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid
Rhodes, Ibid., 447-448 pp.
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid
Rhodes, Interview. Ibid.
Rhodes, Ibid. 444 pp.
Rhodes, Ibid. 448-449 pp.
Bethe, Hans A. "J. Robert Oppenheimer. 1904–1967." Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 14 (1968): 390–416 pp.
Bethe, Ibid. 390-416 pp.
Bethe, Ibid. 390-416 pp.
Rhodes, Ibid. 449 pp.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb the best book I have read. Thank you for this post & looking forward to pat II