"AMERICA'S PROMETHEUS, 'THE FATHER OF THE ATOMIC BOMB'": J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER'S SCIENCE AND THE COMMON UNDERSTANDING, 1954, PUBLISHED THE SAME YEAR THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION REVOKED HIS SECURITY CLEARANCE, INSCRIBED BY HIM THAT SAME YEAR
OPPENHEIMER, J. Robert. Science and the Common Understanding. New York: Simon and Schuster, (1954). Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First edition, second printing issued same year as the first, of six famous lectures Oppenheimer delivered in 1953 as part of the Britain's prestigious Reith Lectures, inscribed by him in the year of publication, "Robert Oppenheimer Philadelphia October 1954," only six months after facing days of cross-examination in the AEC hearing that revoked his security clearance, with Oppenheimer declaring herein that without the "freedom to resolve difference…to let tolerance compose diversity… a part of human life… is foreclosed."
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 In the end, when his clearance was revoked, Einstein famously responded by saying that AEC should stand for "Atomic Extermination Conspiracy," and Lilienthal, the former AEC Chairman, noted: "it is sad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).
"Interestingly Lloyd Garrison, who was Oppenheimer's lawyer during the 1954 security hearing, introduced the Reith Lectures… In fact Garrison quoted and placed into the record a long excerpt from the sixth lecture" (Day, Hope and Vision, 57). There, in the book's final lecture, Oppenheimer compares science to a vast structure where "there are no locks; there are no shut doors… this open access to knowledge, these unlocked doors and signs of welcome, are a mark of a freedom as fundamental as any. They give a freedom to resolve difference… to let tolerance compose diversity." Without that those freedoms, Oppenheimer observes, "a part of human life… is foreclosed." First edition: "second printing" stated on copyright page. Contemporary penciled owner inscription above Oppenheimer's.
Book fine; only faint foxing to about-fine dust jacket. A signal work in the history of science, rare inscribed.