J. Robert Oppenheimer

Physics in the Contemporary World

Dr. Oppenheimers authority to speak on the relation of physics to the contemporary scene derives from his years of experience as a teacher of physics, his leadership in the Manhattan Project and his current position as Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The following remarks formed the 1947 Arthur D. Little Memorial Lecture and are reprinted from THE TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, February, 1948, edited at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A World Without War

[...] in an important sense, the sciences have solved the problem of communicating with one another more completely than has any human enterprise. To retell an old story, thirty-five years ago, Dirac and I were in Gottingen. He was developing the quantum theory of radiation, and I was a student. He learned that I sometimes wrote a poem, and he took me to task, saying, “In physics we try to say things that no one knew before in a way that everyone can understand, whereas in poetry... ”

Tradition and Discovery

[...] when columbus sailed on his first voyage, his first voyage of discovery, it is told that the first evening with the ship standing out to sea he opened the pages of what would later be the log of this voyage, and on it he wrote Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via.

Functions of the International Agency in Research and Development

The following report is a slightly condensed version of the testimony given by Dr. Oppenheimer before the Control Committee of the UN Atomic Energy Commission on April 29 concerning international research and developmental activities. Dr. Oppenheimer was wartime director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and a member of the committee that prepared the Acheson-Lilienthal Report on the international control of atomic energy. Dr. Oppenheimer, Professor of Physics at California Institute of Technology and at the University of California, is about to assume his new duties as head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

On Science and Culture

we live in an unusual world, marked by very great and irreversible changes that occur within the span of a man’s life. We live in a time where our knowledge and understanding of the world of nature grows wider and deeper at an unparalleled rate; and where the problems of applying this knowledge to man’s needs and hopes are new, and only a little illuminated by our past history.

Encouragement of Science

We present here a group of articles dealing with the participation of scientists in public life. The first in the series is by an eminent nuclear physicist (wartime director of Los Alamos Laboratory, now director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton) who has played a leading part in the efforts to achieve the international control of atomic energy. Later in this issue we publish reports from several organizations of scientists whose objectives lie in the realm of public rather than professional affairs.

A Letter to Senator McMahon

This letter from one of Americas most distinguished scientists to the Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, was introduced at the Committee hearings on the AEC fellowship program on May 17.

The Consequences of Action

[...] in the recent past much has changed. Our troops are at war in Korea. We are in a state of emergency, and are mobilizing. Many of the views of the American people have sharpened and altered. Errors that were prevalent six months ago are obvious as errors today. There is a deep anxiety about war, about the prevention and limitation of war, and about the defeat of our enemies should war break out. I thus thought it only right that I should address myself largely, though not exclusively, to the role of the atom in military matters, to the public aspects of this question, of which obviously not all aspects can be or are public. [...] This is a field in which there are many handouts and many classified lies, in which the wholesome give and take of question and answer are much needed. Where I can, I shall try to respond to these questions of concern and curiosity.

To Live with Ourselves

[...] i use the word “science” to mean really all those areas of human knowledge, still a small part of human life, all those areas of human knowledge where we can tell each other what we have done and what we have found. This knowledge is historical, sociological, economic, mathematical, anthropological, astronomical, among many other forms. It is in just such fields that you have been working. I know that the word “humanities” can be used to talk about the whole range of expression that men give to their experience. I think the analogies that bind archaeology to astronomy are not very much more remote than those that bind anthropology to astronomy; I speak to you in this sense as fellow scientists.

The Open Mind

a few weeks ago the president of a college in the prairie states came to see me. Clearly, when he tried to look into the future, he did not like what he saw: the grim prospects for the maintenance of peace, for the preservation of freedom, for the flourishing and growth of the humane values of our civilization. He seemed to have in mind that it might be well for people, even in his small college, to try to take some part in turning these prospects to a happier end; but what he said came as rather a shock. He said, “I wonder if you can help me. I have a very peculiar problem. You see, out there, most of the students, and the teachers too, come from the farm. They are used to planting seed, and then waiting for it to grow, and then harvesting it. They believe in time and in nature. It is rather hard to get them to take things into their own hands.” Perhaps, as much as anything, my theme will have to do with enlisting time and nature in the conduct of our international affairs: in the quest for peace and a freer world. This is not meant mystically, for the nature which we must enlist is that of man; and if there is hope in it, that lies not in man’s reason. What elements are there in the conduct of foreign affairs which may be conducive to the exercise of that reason, which may provide a climate for the growth of new experience, new insight and new understanding? How can we recognize such growth, and be sensitive to its hopeful meaning, while there is yet time, through action based on understanding, to direct the outcome?