cover image J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY

David C. Cassidy, . . Pi, $27.95 (462pp) ISBN 978-0-13-147996-8

With a host of high quality biographies already written about Oppenheimer, one would think there isn't much need for yet another. Hofstra University professor Cassidy (Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg ) has, however, crafted a book that addresses critical issues about the relationship between science and public policy. While he focuses on Oppenheimer, Cassidy does a superb job of examining how theoretical physics came of age in America during the early part of the 20th century and how many of the country's greatest scientists permitted science to be subsumed by a military-industrial complex more interested in the direct benefits of applied research than in the possible future benefits of pure research. The issue, as Cassidy presents it, is not so much why Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists built the atomic bomb. It is, rather, how they lost control of the next generation of nuclear weapons while being marginalized from critical political discussions about international arms control and how they were turned into technicians by governmental insiders interested in stifling all voices diverging from the dominant political paradigm. Oppenheimer is shown to have been a brilliant, complex and troubled individual whose personal failings helped shape the way science and government have interacted ever since. As Cassidy points out, the similarities between some aspects of current events and the way Oppenheimer's reputation was destroyed in the 1950s are chilling. (Sept.)