Robert Oppenheimer, Communism, Secular Humanism, and the Nuclear Bomb

While J. Robert Oppenheimer was only one of the outstanding scientists whose work made the atomic bomb possible, his singular combination of managerial, scientific, and technical brilliance made him the most important. The eponymous film, released on Friday, has returned public attention not only to Oppenheimer’s life and achievement, but also to the controversy surrounding him, which culminated in the revocation of his security clearance due to his Communist sympathies. In her review, the New York Times’s Manohla Dargis concludes from the movie that its protagonist was a victim “anti-Communist attacks” who eventually fell prey to “political gamesmanship, the vanity of petty men, and the naked anti-Semitism of the Red scare.”