American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Content Warning: This section discusses death by suicide.

In November 1942, Oppenheimer and Groves selected Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site for a new national laboratory. Groves, recently promoted to Brigadier General, regarded the isolated location as conducive to security. The Army began building a small town where none had existed, while Oppenheimer began recruiting people to work in the laboratory, which he expected to become operational for the first group of scientists by mid-March 1943. Bird and Sherwin note that, until then, Oppenheimer “had never supervised anything larger than his graduate seminars” (208). Colleagues previously skeptical of Oppenheimer’s administrative abilities, however, discovered that at Los Alamos he was both organized and flexible.

By September 1943, 1,000 scientists, engineers, and staff members lived and worked in the ultra-high-security Los Alamos environment, and that number had more than tripled a year later. Initially, Oppenheimer appeared receptive to Groves’s suggestion that Los Alamos scientists should become military officers; the physicist took the work seriously, regarding it as part of his patriotic duty. After a small rebellion among scientists resistant to military discipline, however, Oppenheimer deftly negotiated a compromise with Groves. Isidor Rabi’s principled refusal to join the bomb project disappointed Oppenheimer, though Rabi agreed to serve as a visiting consultant.