THE IRONY
"In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."
— J. Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Little Memorial Lecture at MIT, 1947
— J. Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Little Memorial Lecture at MIT, 1947
Oppenheimer's success ultimately became his downfall. Ironically, the weapon he had created to bring peace to a warring world had the unintended and longer consequences of threatening to destroy the very world he sought to protect. He turned his leadership against the very causes he had once used it to pursue. Upon realization of the sheer destructive power harnessed by the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer opposed and temporarily slowed the development of the hydrogen bomb as Chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the AEC.
His early affiliations with the Communist Party led to another tragic irony.
His early affiliations with the Communist Party led to another tragic irony.
"We believe a super bomb should never be produced. Mankind would be far better off not to have a demonstration of the feasibility of such a weapon."
— J. Robert Oppenheimer and fellow members of the General Advisory Committee, Report from Oct. 1949
— J. Robert Oppenheimer and fellow members of the General Advisory Committee, Report from Oct. 1949