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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Scientific American
The "American Century" was a concept put forward in 1941 by publisher Henry Luce, who declared that in the years ahead the U.S. must "exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purpose as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." The eminent theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, as director of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, had much to do with forging the alliance between science and government that contributed greatly to the realization of Luce's concept. Cassidy, professor in the natural sciences program at Hofstra University, covers this ground admirably in his thoughtful biography of Oppenheimer. Telling the story against a background of the events of the time, he takes Oppenheimer from a cosseted childhood through his distinguished career as a scientist and science administrator to disgrace in 1954 when the Atomic Energy Commission withdrew his security clearance after politicized hearings on his loyalty and leftist affiliations. "The Oppenheimer case," Cassidy writes, "cast in stark relief the subservient position imposed on civilian research, especially physics, during the darkest days of the Cold War. It was not primarily about Oppenheimer as an individual but about the existence of free inquiry in a 'garrison state,' and what role a scientific adviser might have within a system of militarized science beyond providing weapons of ever greater destructive power."
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Scientific American
The "American Century" was a concept put forward in 1941 by publisher Henry Luce, who declared that in the years ahead the U.S. must "exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purpose as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." The eminent theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, as director of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, had much to do with forging the alliance between science and government that contributed greatly to the realization of Luce's concept. Cassidy, professor in the natural sciences program at Hofstra University, covers this ground admirably in his thoughtful biography of Oppenheimer. Telling the story against a background of the events of the time, he takes Oppenheimer from a cosseted childhood through his distinguished career as a scientist and science administrator to disgrace in 1954 when the Atomic Energy Commission withdrew his security clearance after politicized hearings on his loyalty and leftist affiliations. "The Oppenheimer case," Cassidy writes, "cast in stark relief the subservient position imposed on civilian research, especially physics, during the darkest days of the Cold War. It was not primarily about Oppenheimer as an individual but about the existence of free inquiry in a 'garrison state,' and what role a scientific adviser might have within a system of militarized science beyond providing weapons of ever greater destructive power."
Editors of Scientific American
See all Editorial Reviews
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