J. Robert Oppenheimer papers

Description

Correspondence, memoranda, speeches, lectures, writings, desk books, lectures, statements, scientific notes, inventories, newspaper clippings, and photographs chiefly comprising Oppenheimer's personal papers while director of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., but reflecting only incidentally his work there. Topics include theoretical physics, the development of the atomic bomb, the relationship between government and science, organization of research on nuclear energy, control of nuclear energy, security in scientific fields, secrecy, loyalty, disarmament, education of scientists, international intellectual exchange, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the relationship between science and culture, and the public understanding of science. Includes material on Oppenheimer's World War II contributions, particularly to the Los Alamos project. Also documented are his postwar work as a consultant on the technical and administrative problems of the atomic bomb, service on the Atomic Energy Commission (including his hearing before its personnel security board that resulted in the revocation of his clearance), and his association with the Federation of American Scientists, National Academy of Sciences, and other scientific organizations, and the Twentieth Century Fund, Unesco, and other humanitarian organizations. Includes a group of letters and memoranda written by physicist Niels Bohr to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter relating to the role of nuclear energy in international affairs, supplemented by Oppenheimer's correspondence with Bohr. Correspondents include Hans Albrecht Bethe, Raymond T. Birge, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Julian P. Boyd, Vannevar Bush, Pablo Casals, Harold F. Cherniss, Robert F. Christy, Sir John Cockcroft, Arthur Holly Compton, James Bryant Conant, P. A. M. Dirac, T. S. Eliot, Herbert Feis, Enrico Fermi, Lloyd K. Garrison, Leslie R. Groves, Wallace K. Harrison, Julian Huxley, George Frost Kennan, Shuichi Kusaka, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, T. D. Lee, Archibald MacLeish, John Henry Manley, Herbert S. Marks, Nicolas Nabokov, Abraham Pais, Wolfgang Pauli, Linus Pauling, Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Julian Seymour Schwinger, Emilio Segrè, Robert Serber, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Norman Thomas, John Archibald Wheeler, Yang Chen Ning, and Hideki Yukawa.

Subjects

Links

• Finding aid
• Finding aid (PDF)