The Manhattan Project Cleared: J.Robert Oppenheimer’s Contribution to Atomic Bomb

One of the most contentious and essential historical research projects was the Manhattan Project. The project, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, produced the first atomic bombs that ended World War II.

Oppenheimer was charged with spying for the Soviet Union despite his assistance to the US winning the war. Nearly seven decades after the Atomic Energy Commission terminated his security clearance; his name has finally been cleared.

(Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
The words of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb, are seen written in dust on the part of a deactivated nuclear missile at the Pima Air and Space Museum on May 13, 2015, in Tucson, Arizona. Robert Oppenheimer quoted Bhagavad-Gita saying, "Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Apologies to the Man Behind Manhattan Project

Oppenheimer has been exonerated of the charges against him, but it may be too late for him to learn the good news. In a statement, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm declared the AEC's decision invalid.

As noted by Ars Technica, Granholm claimed that the decision was the outcome of a defective procedure and was against AEC's rules. Science historian Alex Wellerstein said it was time to clear Oppenheimer's name.

According to Wellerstein, it falls short of the expectations of Oppenheimer and his family and couldn't erase the harm done to the theoretical physicist. Even if it was too late, it was still a momentous occurrence.

Numerous documents describing Oppenheimer's covert hearings were declassified and made public in 2014. All of the testimony suggested that the scientist was a patriot. His reputation was destroyed by circumstantial evidence at best.

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Who is Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer was a highly esteemed scientist before the decision to remove his clearance. He studied at the University of Cambridge in England, received a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in Germany, and then entered academia at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his education at Harvard in three years.

According to his 1967 New York Times obituary, one of his first contributions to the area of physics was laying the "foundations of contemporary theory for the quantum behavior of molecules." He made the Oppenheimer-Phillips discovery a few years later, which, according to the Times, "involves the break-up of deuterons [the nuclei of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium] in collisions that had been deemed much too feeble for such an impact."

However, he is most recognized for being the director of the Manhattan Project, which was an effort to create the atomic bomb during World War II. At that time, Oppenheimer oversaw the Los Alamos Laboratory. According to his obituary, he assembled a group of roughly 4,000 top-notch scientists and finished the mission in two years, which called him an "administrative genius." Although the precise death toll is unknown, BBC News said the armament was later used to murder over 214,000 people in the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Suspicions against Oppenheimer began to emerge in the 1950s. The scientist had ties to communists, notably his brother Frank (per Yale Law School), who did so briefly from 1937 to 1941. Oppenheimer was vehemently opposed to the creation of the more powerful hydrogen bomb.

According to the Associated Press, the AEC ruled Oppenheimer a risk to the United States in 1954 after a 19-day trial and claimed he had "basic faults in his character." Oppenheimer's career was abruptly ended when his security clearance was withdrawn, cutting him isolated from the access codes he required to carry out his work.

New York Times mentioned that historians have long argued for the AEC's decision to be overturned. Experts claim the declassified trial documents released by the Obama administration in 2014 lack any indication of betrayal or criminality.