Science and the Common Understanding.

OPPENHEIMER, J. Robert.

Item Number: 119667

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954.

First edition of this classic work by the father of the atomic bomb. Octavo, original cloth. Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Peter Hollander.

In 1953 Oppenheimer came to the attention of Joseph McCarthy when Roy Cohn approached the FBI with the idea of "calling in Oppenheimer and launching an investigation." But Admiral Strauss, soon named AEC Chairman, "was determined to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance and did not want his carefully laid plans ruined" by McCarthy's broad brush (Monk, Robert Oppenheimer, 615). That November Oppenheimer was in London to present these six lectures as part of the prestigious BBC Reith Lecture series. Back home, a few days before Christmas, he received a letter from AEC Chairman Strauss that announced the suspension of his clearance and called for his resignation. Oppenheimer decided, instead, to seek a hearing. With that, "the ordeal that would end his career of public service and, ironically, both enhance and secure his legacy, had begun… He was America's Prometheus, 'the father of the atomic bomb'… Like that rebellious Greek God Prometheus—who stole fire from Zeus and bestowed it upon humankind—Oppenheimer gave us atomic fire" (Bird & Sherwin, American Prometheus, ix-xiii). Science and Common Understanding was soon published, appearing the same year as the controversial April 1954 AEC hearing where he faced nearly 30 hours of cross-examination. In the end, when his clearance was revoked, Einstein famously responded by saying that AEC should stand for "Atomic Extermination Conspiracy," and Lilienthal, the former AEC Chairman, noted: "it is sad beyond words… terribly wrong." In this timely work Oppenheimer offers his own uniquely "philosophic estimate of modern physics… In tracing developments in atomic physics from Newton to Rutherford and then to Bohr, Schrodinger and Einstein… [he] exhibits a keen historical sense of the transition of science from mechanism to relativism… physics, in Oppenheimer's view, necessitates an essentially pluralistic approach to social life" (Horowitz, Persuasions and Prejudices, 93-4).