Although I lived in the same small town as he did for nearly four years, I never saw him nor did I look for him. I may have had some vague idea of his importance to twentieth century history, but J. Robert Oppenheimer was hardly at the forefront of my consciousness.

I don’t remember what I knew about him when I was in college. I was probably aware that he was director of the Institute for Advanced Studies and that he had headed the group that developed the first atomic bomb. It was only after graduation, however, that I learned more details about the Manhattan Project.. I learned then that the Project comprised a colorful group with antagonistic personalities and huge egos. (Perhaps my favorite was the Hungarian Leo Szilard, who seemed like a real jerk and spent hours each day soaking in a tub where he said he accomplished his important thinking.) Oppenheimer was not only an important theoretical physicist but also had to be a skillful administrator to get the scientists, technicians, and support staff to work effectively together.

In college I may have known that Oppenheimer had been stripped of his security clearance in a proceeding that many thought unfair. Only much later did I learn that the hearing came to what seems contradictory conclusions: Oppenheimer was a loyal American but also a security risk. As Richard Gid Powers wrote in Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (2004), Oppenheimer lost his security clearance because of his associations, ideas, and public positions, “not because of any proof of disloyalty.”

While Oppenheimer’s security hearing came during the McCarthy era, its roots went back decades earlier. Although Americans elites had denounced radical movements since the nineteenth century, World War I and its immediate aftermath brought increased denunciations of “communism,” “bolshevism,” “anarchism,” and “socialism.” Those isms were soon used to discredit all sorts of ideas and their proponents—the income tax, birth control, opponents of prohibition, advocates of evolution, unions. The labels implied foreign control and ideas. In the 1930s, with the failure of our economic system apparent, many leftist groups sprouted that flirted with, or even kissed, the idea of communism. Oppenheimer, who before the Depression had little political consciousness, was drawn to such groups. Furthermore, his brother and sister-in-law were communists, and his wife had been married to a communist. Although Oppenheimer’s loyalty had been checked and rechecked by FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission, at the time of his security hearing, it was not farfetched to call him a fellow traveler.

Mostly, however, Oppenheimer came to be seen as a security risk for views he espoused after World War II. While the government was becoming increasingly secretive, he wanted more openness so that nuclear policies could be discussed sensibly by a wide range of knowledgeable people. He objected to the secrecy surrounding decisions about the hydrogen bomb and believed that concealing information about the bomb increased the dangers of international misunderstandings. To many, however, secrecy and security were coupled. Thus, to oppose secrecy, as Oppenheimer did, was equivalent to undermining national security.

Oppenheimer also questioned the wisdom and morality of what was becoming our basic defense rationale in a nuclear war: massive retaliation or mutually assured destruction. John Lewis Gaddis says in The Cold War: A New History (2005) that Oppenheimer opposed the hydrogen bomb arguing that such an apocalyptic device could never meet “the Clausewitzian standard that military operations must not destroy what they were meant to defend.” Oppenheimer’s biographers said, “He wanted to encourage open democratic debate on whether the United States should adopt genocide as its primary defense strategy.” In the eyes of government officials, Oppenheimer was a security risk not because he was sending secrets to foreign governments but because his views could weaken our resolve to defend this country in the only way it could be defended. The phrase was not yet used, but Oppenheimer was the victim of a cancel culture designed to send a wider message. Those biographers, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), say, “One scientist had to be excommunicated. But all scientists were now on notice that there could be serious consequences for those who challenged state policies.”

Since I knew little of this history in my college days, it’s not surprising that I was not on the lookout for Oppenheimer as I know I would have been for Einstein ten years earlier. However, I am surprised by what I have learned about Oppenheimer’s funeral. I thought that I was aware of all big events, and most small ones, that happened on campus. Oppenheimer died in February of my senior year, and his funeral was held at a famous campus building a week later. It was a big event. Among the six hundred attending were Nobel Prize winners, diplomats, politicians, novelists, musicians, and dance maestros. It must have been big news, and I read the papers. It occurred only a few hundred yards from my dorm, but I have no memory of it. I doubt that the ceremony was open to students, but it would have been worth a try. At a minimum, it would have offered a chance at a unique red carpet-like experience. Perhaps I was so taken up by finishing my senior thesis, or by thoughts of entering a wider world, or attending more parties that this collection of notables completely escaped my notice.

Now the movie Oppenheimer, based on American Prometheus, is opening. I hope that the movie is a success. It would be welcome to have a blockbuster not just about a comic book hero or its equivalent but about a real, complex polymath (how many people do you know who learned Sanskrit to be able to read Bhagavad Gita in the original?) whose life was at the core of many crucial chapters in 20^th century American history. I plan to see it, but it is three-hours long, and a man my age usually needs breaks in that long of stretch. I may have to wait until it streams.

Perhaps first I will see Barbie.