Talk:J. Robert Oppenheimer

Citations needed for the assertion that he did not contribute much to the Manhattan Project beyond management and that he associated with communists, as well as about the relativity stuff.--John 13:22, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Sources would be nice.

This article is about as extreme an example of spin as I can imagine, but it looks to me like facts seen in a funhouse mirror... but facts.

The association with Communists is true enough, I think; Jean Tatlock in particular. That can probably be sourced to Findings and Recommendations of the Personnel Security Board in the Matter of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. I don't think Oppenheimer denied associating with Communists. The security report says

Dr. Oppenheimer in his testimony before this Board admitted having associated with Jean Tatlock from 1936 until 1943. He stated that he saw her only rarely between 1939 and 1943, but admitted that the association was intimate. He admitted having seen Jean Tatlock under most intimate circumstances in June or July of 1943, during the time when he was Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and admitted that he knew she had been a Communist and that there was not any reason for him to believe that she was not at that time still a Communist. He named several Communists, Communist functionaries or Communist sympathizers whom he had met through Jean Tatlock, or as a result of his association with her.

I assume that that Oppenheimer really did say what the report says he said. Whether he was disloyal or a security risk a very, very different matter.

"high-level manager" is interesting, too. It's been a while since I've read a biography of Oppenheimer, but I would have thought "charismatic leader who was able to recruit stellar scientific talent through scientists' personal confidence in him" and "kept a herd of independent-minded academics focussed, on track, and got them to actually deliver working weapons, unlike Heisenberg in Germany" would be more like it. But "did little of the theoretical or actual experimental work" sounds reasonable.

I don't know if it's fair to call him "the man who built the atomic bomb," and in fact I'd like to see a source for that characterization. If you had to pick one person to fit that phrase, I'd have thought it would have been General Leslie Groves. But I don't believe for a moment that the U. S. would have built the bomb without both of them. And I think that afterwards the nation was shockingly ungrateful to both of them. Dpbsmith 14:28, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Yes, the article needs a little more balance. I don't think that there is any doubt that Oppenheimer's strong communist connections made him a security risk. Whether or not he was actually a Soviet spy is a matter of some debate. Some stuff should be moved to a separate article on the atomic bomb. RSchlafly 15:16, 5 March 2007 (EST)

!!! Who has ever suggested that he was a Soviet spy? Dpbsmith 16:07, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Apparently Lewis Strauss thought he was, but he was wrong:

"It was clear to Strauss that there must have been someone else at Los Alamos during the war passing secrets, besides Klaus Fuchs. And indeed there was: a young physicist named Theodore Hall, an American physicist. But Strauss didn't know about Hall at that point, and he thought it must have been Oppenheimer." [1] Dpbsmith 16:36, 5 March 2007 (EST)

REPLY: Observations of lack of accomplishment do not need a citation. For example, "Bill Clinton did not advance the field of physics." No citation is possible or necessary for that. Ditto for similar observations about Oppenheimer on this content page.

By the way, the editors at Wikipedia misunderstand and misuse citations. It adds nothing to cite the opinion of a journalist, for example. That's not an authority in any meaningful sense, and the journalist would be the first to admit it. Yet most citations on Wikipedia, including its entry about Conservapedia, are to journalist opinions.--Aschlafly 17:12, 5 March 2007 (EST)