Access to Oppenheimer, In His Own Words

For several decades, AIP’s Niels Bohr Library & Archives has preserved in its Oral History Collections three oral history interviews with J. Robert Oppenheimer. At the time they were acquired by the NBLA, archival practice was more restrictive and pre-dated the digital tools that enable access for researchers today. An informal and somewhat ambiguous governance policy born of this era has required frequent correspondence between NBLA staff and the Oppenheimer family to regulate individual access and use permissions for these remarkable interviews. This dated approach has greatly limited their discovery by the history of science community. Through a shared commitment to encouraging research, access, and education in the history of science, AIP’s Niels Bohr Library & Archives and the Oppenheimer family have worked together to revise and clarify the permissions and use agreements that govern the interviews. We are excited to share that these three vital oral histories are now available for public research access and non-commercial use through AIP’s online repository.

In the course of serving the physical sciences community and working to preserve its history, the American Institute of Physics and Niels Bohr Library & Archives has appreciated a longstanding relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer, both during his lifetime, and, later, with members of his family. Oppenheimer provided pivotal early endorsement of AIP’s NBLA, speaking at the library’s opening in 1962 where he emphasized his belief in the importance of its mission to preserve and make known the history of the physical sciences.

Reflections on the Resonances of Physics History: Talk Presented at the Dedication Ceremony of AIP's Niels Bohr Library

Read full transcript of J.R. Oppenheimer’s speech .

The connection between Oppenheimer and AIP’s work in promoting the physical sciences enterprise was further expressed by the selection of a photo of Oppenheimer’s signature porkpie hat as the cover image for the very first issue of Physics Today in 1948.

His brother, Frank Oppenheimer, also a physicist, participated in an oral history interview with AIP’s History program in 1973, where he discussed his own personal life, political and scientific work, and efforts to promote science education. This interview, conducted over two sessions, was added to the NBLA’s Oral History Collection , one of the institution’s most valuable and heavily utilized collections of unique historical narratives of 20th- and 21st-century science. The newly opened J. Robert Oppenheimer interviews will now be available for research in the AIP digital repository, alongside his brother’s interview and those of many others whose stories intertwine to form the history of 20th-century science.

The newly available interviews with J. Robert Oppenheimer were conducted in 1960, 1963, and 1966 by three different interviewers with three very different purposes, each shining light on a wide spectrum of fundamental elements from the life of Oppenheimer, his work, the forces that shaped his experiences, and perspective on his place in the greater history of physics. The provenance of each of interview also present fascinating narratives of how materials come to be a part of AIP’s collections and illuminate essential context to the conversations which prompted Oppenheimer’s thoughts and recollections.

1960

The earliest interview in NBLA’s collection was not conducted by AIP’s oral history program but rather is a transcript of a recorded conversation with Oppenheimer by the journalist Robert Cahn in February 1960. At the time, Cahn was composing an article on the development of the first atomic bomb and events of the Trinity Test as a freelancer for the Saturday Evening Post. In the transcript, Oppenheimer provides a narrative of the time surrounding the Trinity Test and reflects on the infamous events.

Cahn’s article, “Behind the First A-Bomb,” was published in the July 16, 1960 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . Interestingly, Cahn did not utilize direct quotes from his personal interview, nor acknowledge his first-hand source of the details enhancing his story. The article’s detailed, narrative-style retelling of the events surrounding the detonation of the first atomic bomb underscored a continued, popular fascination with Oppenheimer and the transformative events of the Manhattan Project that shaped politics, society, and science in the subsequent decades.

Eventually, Cahn taught courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he presumably provided the transcript of the Oppenheimer interview to the renowned physicist, Dr. Albert Allen Bartlett , a professor in the UC Boulder Department of Physics and veteran of the Manhattan Project . As President of the American Association of Physics Teachers (1978) and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Barlett had many connections with AIP and significant knowledge of its library and history programs. Over time, he donated to the NBLA a variety of historically significant material, including a series of papers pertaining to the unsuccessful nomination of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward U. Condon, and George Gamow for the 1967 Nobel prize in physics. Eventually, it was through Bartlett that the transcript of Cahn’s interview with Oppenheimer found its way to the NBLA, although the audio tape was not included in the deposit and may have remained with Cahn.

Several questions regarding the transcription of the original audio remain mysterious in the story of the material’s provenance. It is unclear if Cahn transcribed the tape (or hired a transcriber) after he conducted the interview in 1960, or if Bartlett transcribed it from Cahn’s lent audio tapes. Furthermore, there are numerous handwritten markups and corrections in the document which may have been added by Cahn, Bartlett, contributed by both men, or marked by a third party. Some marginalia do appear to be signed “AbB,” which would indicate Barlett’s interventions.

1963

While Cahn’s 1960 interview drew out information relevant to popular interest in the Manhattan Project, the 1963 interview in NBLA’s collection was conducted by historian Thomas S. Kuhn to capture essential details of Oppenheimer’s life in his own words for the historical record. Recorded over two days on November 18 and 20, 1963, the tapes and subsequent transcript, approximately 60 pages, were archived with AIP as part of its participation in a wider initiative to record the history of quantum physics through the international, multi-institutional “Archive for the History of Quantum Physics” project . Its inclusion in the AHQP catalog and the detailed perspective provided by Oppenheimer of his early life, his education, and participation in the exciting development of quantum physics in Europe and the United States have made this interview an essential primary resource and resulted in frequent requests for access and use by researchers. Notably, the interview was directly quoted multiple times by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin in their Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer , which served as a basis for the 2023 blockbuster film Oppenheimer.

Previously, such utilization in a book would have required extensive effort on behalf of the researcher to formally submit multiple requests for access and then request additional permission for use. However, the newly established agreement makes such vital records directly available for research online and streamlines their non-commercial use. The AHQP project collected a vast array of such valuable materials from key figures including Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born, and Maria Goeppert Mayer, amongst many others.

1966

The final Oppenheimer interview in AIP’s collections was conducted not for the primary purpose of recording Oppenheimer’s life but to understand his thoughts and perspectives on his Manhattan Project colleague, Enrico Fermi. Under the auspices of Harvard Project Physics , a national science education reform project initiated in 1962 to develop and establish a high school physics curriculum, the interview was conducted as a piece for the educational documentary film, The World of Enrico Fermi (1970) .

Interviewed on November 1, 1966 by Charles Weiner, director of AIP’s Center for the History of Physics, Oppenheimer provided his personal and professional impressions of Enrico Fermi and Fermi’s impact on physics.

He further described Fermi’s role in atomic research, including the importance of Fermi’s later contributions in areas such as meson physics and the development of Fermi’s theory of beta decay. He additionally reflected on the migration of European scientists, such as Fermi, to the U.S. in the 1930s and the role they played in closing the gap between European and American physics.

The World of Enrico Fermi (1970)

At the end of the interview, Oppenheimer considered the differences between the physics community of the early 20th century and that of the 1960s.

Four months after the 1966 interview was recorded, Robert Oppenheimer passed away due to throat cancer on February 18, 1967. His complex legacy as the leader of the Manhattan Project and the scientist who brought forth the United States as a worldwide center of quantum physics places him as an essential figure in the history of modern science. While his contributions can be traced through many archival sources, increased research access to these interviews ensures that we may also have a better understanding of Oppenheimer in his own words. In American Prometheus, Kai Bird emphasizes the importance of accessing such personal, historical accounts in describing his approach to writing the biography, “a person’s public behavior and his policy decisions (and in Oppenheimer’s case perhaps even his science) are guided by the private experiences of a lifetime.”