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xii, [2, 1084, [4] pages. Footnotes. Name Index. Subject Index. Minor corner bumping and cover wear. Foreword by Philip M. Stern. This may have been published as a trade paperback and rebound. It is in a library style binding with not publisher listed on the spine. J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer; April 22, 1904 - February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb". Oppenheimer earned a bachelor of arts degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, where he studied under Max Born. He joined the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became a full professor in 1936. He made significant contributions to theoretical physics, including achievements in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics such as the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and early work on quantum tunneling. In 1942, Oppenheimer was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and in 1943 he was appointed director of the project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, tasked with developing the first atomic bombs. He was instrumental in the project's success. On July 16, 1945, he was present at the first test of the atomic bomb, Trinity. In 1947, Oppenheimer became the director of the Institute for Advanced Study. This publication brings back into print the complete testimony, as released by the AEC in 1954, of the hearing called to determine if Oppenheimer was a "security risk." But the importance of the document goes far beyond the considered question of whether to terminate his security clearance: The testimony spans Oppenheimer's personal life from the 1920s to the 1950s, reflects the broader political and scientific stirrings of this period, and raises issues that remain central today. The document develops all these themes, it is a compelling human portrait, an eyewitness history of some of the most important events of the century, and a flashback to one of the points of origin of our present concerns with the arms race and government decision making, conscientious dissent and national loyalty. The testimony is inherently dramatic. In the title role, Oppenheimer reveals himself as a man of Hamlet-like complexity, by turns humble and arrogant, naïve and knowing, candid and reserved, witty and deadly serious. His final greatness makes itself felt in that joining of resignation to resolution with which he accepts the adverse outcome of his case and its tragic implications for the nation. As background, the testimony carries the reader through a number of settings: the revolution in physics of the late 1920s; the depression, the rise of Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, and the American left's fascination with another sort of revolution; the war years, the building of the atomic bomb, and the decision to use it; the simultaneous opening of the U.N. and the Cold War, and the failure to bring atomic weapons under international control; and the heyday of McCarthyism with its patriotic hysteria, suspicion, and repression. The abiding relevance of this document is obvious. It is addressed to a nation loudly debating politics, military-industrial-governmental power, the question of loyalty, the limits of dissent, and the right of a person to define for himself or herself, in conscience, what the "national interest" is or should be, as Oppenheimer did in opposing the creation of the hydrogen bomb. Among those called to give witness in these matters are Fermi, von Neumann, Bethe, Rabi, Teller, Gen, Groves, McCloy, Lilienthal, Karl Compton, Bush, and Conant. For the first time, the transcript has been provided with an index. Reprint Edition. Presumed first printing thus. [ If rebound. Seller Inventory # 87463
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