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or rank. One of the first tasks the group tackled was to relate the
theoretical calculations of nuclear reactions to the experimental data,
thereby allowing an estimate of the critical mass of the fission weapon,
and its efficiency. Interlacing of the theoretical and experimental
aspects was complete under Oppenheimer's influence, and natural for
all who worked with him. Moreover, Oppenheimer, the experimental–
ist
manque,
was able to keep informed about both theory and experi–
ment, to stretch and supplement his expertise from nuclear physics to
metallurgy and ballistics, and by assignment and example help others
to do the same. His taste and skills across this whole spectrum provided
the essential glue that held the enterprise together. Some roots of this
success-for better or worse-were evidently forming in the early
period of Oppenheimer's life, as the letters document.
In
other ways, Oppenheimer and Heisenberg were rather similar,
not least in their unwillingness to oppose military authority, and in
not asking or allowing too many questions about the use of a super–
weapon in wartime. The final irony was that after the war Oppenhei–
mer became the victim of a group in the military who wanted him to be
even more subservient to their projects, whereas Heisenberg emerged as
the nice chap who succeeded in making most people believe he had not
really tried to make a nasty bomb.
For further illumination on'Oppenheimer in the period after Los
Alamos we shall have to wait for researchers to dig their way through
the documents from that period, which Oppenheimer gave to the
Library of Congress. Smith and Weiner, in editing their book, wisely
decided to stop at the point where Oppenheimer became a public
figure and in available letters could no longer afford to reveal his true
state of mind.
In
what has been set before us now, he shows himself not
yet able to hide the melancholia and the turmoil of character formation
during the period-as he put it in one of his letters written shortly after
he had passed through the worst of it himself-that is hardest on "men
who combine a certain weakness, timidity, hesitancy of character with
a quite robust vanity-or, perhaps more accurately, with an urgent
desire for excellence."
