American Prometheus

Chapter 1
In the first decade of the twentieth century, science initiated a second American revolution. A nation on horseback was soon transformed by the internal combustion engine, manned flight and a multitude of other inventions. These technological innovations quickly changed the lives of ordinary men and women. But simultaneously an esoteric band of scientists was creating an even more fundamental revolution. Theoretical physicists across the globe were beginning to alter the way we understand space and time. Radioactivity was discovered on March 1, 1896, by the French physicist Henri Becquerel. Max Planck, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie and others provided further insights into the nature of the atom. And then, in 1905, Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity. Suddenly, the universe appeared to have changed.

Around the globe, scientists were soon to be celebrated as a new kind of hero, promising to usher in a renaissance of rationality, prosperity and social meritocracy. In America, reform movements were challenging the old order. Theodore Roosevelt was using the bully pulpit of the White House to argue that good government in alliance with science and applied technology could forge an enlightened new Progressive Era.

Into this world of promise was born J. Robert Oppenheimer, on April 22, 1904. He came from a family of first- and second-generation German immigrants striving to be American. Ethnically and culturally Jewish, the Oppenheimers of New York belonged to no synagogue. Without rejecting their Jewishness they chose to shape their identity within a uniquely American offshoot of Judaism the Ethical Culture Society that celebrated rationalism and a progressive brand of secular humanism. This was at the same time an innovative approach to the quandaries any immigrant to America faced and yet for Robert Oppenheimer it reinforced a lifelong ambivalence about his Jewish identity.

As its name suggests, Ethical Culture was not a

KAI BIRD is an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy, of McGeorge and William Bundy, Robert Ames, and President Jimmy Carter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin), which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. His work has been honored with the BIO Award for his significant contributions to the art and craft of biography. He has also written about the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Susan Goldmark.

MARTIN J. SHERWIN is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, as well as the American History Book Prize. He and his wife live in Boston and Washington, D.C.

The definitive biography.... Oppenheimer s life doesn t influence us. It haunts us. Newsweek

A masterful account of Oppenheimer s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America s own transformation. It is a tour de force. Los Angeles Times Book Review

A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer s essential nature.... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior. The New York Times

There have been numerous books about Oppenheimer but they can't touch this extraordinary book's impressive breadth and scope.   The Miami Herald

The first biography to give full due to Oppenheimer s extraordinary complexity.... Stands as an Everest among the mountains of books on the bomb project and Oppenheimer, and is an achievement not likely to be surpassed or equaled.   The Boston Globe