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To: David H. Zimmer who wrote (7360)	6/29/1999 1:04:00 AM
From: TLindt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20297

OPPENHEIMER, J. ROBERT 1904-1967, physicist and father of the atomic bomb. A charismatic leader of rare good qualities and commonplace flaws, Oppenheimer brought an uncommon sensibility to research, teaching, and government service. Ushered into the American pantheon as "the father of the atomic bomb" in 1945, he was ejected during the McCarthy era as a security risk for having opposed the escalation of the nuclear arms race. His life reveals how war and politics altered science in the twentieth century. Raised in an environment of wealth and culture, Oppenheimer was educated at Harvard University. Equally brilliant in the humanities and sciences, he graduated summa cum laude in 1925, after only three years. Following an unhappy year studying experimental physics at Cambridge University, he moved to Göttingen, Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1927. In 1929, already internationally recognized as a brilliant theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer returned to the United States to accept a unique joint appointment at both the University of California at Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology. In less than a decade he established Berkeley as the major American center for the study of quantum physics. Languages, literature, music, art, and especially physics filled Oppenheimer's life until the mid-1930s when fascism in Europe and the Great Depression in America drew him into progressive politics. Although never a member of the Communist party, he was active in and contributed to many of the causes supported by the party - desegregation, better working conditions for migratory farm workers, and the Loyalist side in the Spanish civil war. In 1939, the discovery of nuclear fission and Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland linked science and Oppenheimer to the military. In 1942, overriding the protests of intelligence officers, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the officer in charge of the Manhattan Project, appointed Oppenheimer director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. His assignment: to direct the design and construction of atomic bombs for use during the war. On August 6, 1945, the destruction of Hiroshima confirmed Groves's judgment of Oppenheimer's ability, although history will forever debate the wisdom of the result. In 1947 Oppenheimer moved to Princeton, as director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Commuting to Washington, D.C., he served on numerous government committees, including the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission aec, which he chaired. In 1949, after the Soviet Union's successful test of an atomic bomb, he urged President Harry S. Truman to reject Edward Teller's proposal for a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb. He believed that instead the United States should seek an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. Although Truman rejected this advice, resentment of Oppenheimer's continuing influence spread among Teller and his allies. As the cold war developed, science and scientists were profoundly affected by the emerging political culture of conformity. Oppenheimer's opposition to the hydrogen bomb and his former communist associations were cited by his enemies as evidence of his unreconstructed sympathy for the Soviet Union. In 1954, an aec security hearing, distorted by illegal fbi telephone taps and a biased hearing board, led to the revocation of his security clearance. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer continued to direct the Institute for Advanced Study and to lecture throughout the world on science and education until his death. With respect to the most important issue of the day, the nuclear arms race, however, he had been silenced. Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds (1980); Philip Stern, The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial (1969).

To: David H. Zimmer who wrote (7360)	6/29/1999 1:05:00 AM
From: TLindt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20297

HYDROGEN BOMB When it became known in 1949 that the Soviet Union had developed the atomic bomb, thus pulling abreast of the United States in weapons capability, physicist Edward Teller, head of the Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss, and other important government and military figures urged that the United States study the feasibility of producing a "superbomb" - the hydrogen bomb. They were opposed on moral and technical grounds by a group of other scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer. But President Harry S. Truman, spurred by the growing cold war, ordered a crash program to build the hydrogen bomb in February 1950. After more than a year of work at Los Alamos, Teller, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, and other scientists solved the technical problems involved and scheduled a test of a prototype hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll. Oppenheimer and other scientists, who had been appointed to a Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, recommended that the test be postponed. They suggested that the United States approach the Russians with a proposal that both sides cease testing nuclear weapons and urged that the public be made more aware of the implications of such weapons. But Truman, told that a postponement this far in the countdown underway at the atoll would adversely affect the weapon's development, disregarded the panel's recommendation and ordered the test to proceed. The explosion on November 1, 1952, caused an island to disappear and created in its place a crater a mile wide and 175 feet deep. A deliverable bomb was subsequently developed and successfully tested in 1954. The Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb on August 12, 1953, and the British followed on May 15, 1957. The hydrogen bomb is a thermonuclear weapon capable of devastating 150 square miles by blast, with searing heat effects and radioactive fallout for more than 800 square miles, depending on the size of the weapon. Its explosions are much larger than those of atomic (fission) bombs. The hydrogen bomb explosion is produced by nuclear fusion - the collision of neutrons with the nucleus of an unstable isotope of hydrogen, either deuterium or tritium, under high temperatures. Usually an atomic bomb inside the thermonuclear device triggers the fusion reaction.