Martin J. Sherwin

“Frank himself is a sweet, lovable person,” observed the physicist Leona Marshall Libby, a friend of both brothers. She called him a “delta function,” a mathematical device used by physicists in which delta is defined as zero—except at a specified place or time, at which point it becomes infinity. When called upon, Frank always possessed an infinite reservoir of goodwill and cheer.

Another graduate student in physics at Caltech, William “Willie” Fowler, used to say that the reason he was a physicist was that he didn’t want to have to worry about people—and now he was upset because he was being forced by the Depression to do just that.

Bethe had an inkling of Oppenheimer’s political loyalties, so he was struck one evening when his friend gave a “beautifully eloquent speech” about how the fall of Paris to the Nazis threatened all of Western civilization. “We have to defend Western values against the Nazis,” Bethe recalled Oppenheimer saying. “And because of the Molotov–von Ribbentrop pact we can have no truck with the Communists.”

He needed special treatment, and by God, Oppie was going to give it to him. It showed a great deal of love, sympathy and human understanding.” The student in question, Weinberg reported, went on to do distinguished work as an applied physicist.

When asked years later whether he thought Oppenheimer had been a member of the Party, Hawkins replied, “Not that I know of. But you know, again, I would say it wouldn’t have mattered very much. In a sense, it’s not an important question. He was clearly identified with many of these left-wing activities.”

This, too, appealed to the engineer in Groves, who found himself nodding in agreement when Oppenheimer pitched the notion of a central laboratory devoted to this purpose, where, as he later testified, “we could begin to come to grips with chemical, metallurgical, engineering, and ordnance problems that had so far received no consideration.”

Rabi also gave a less practical but more profound reason for not joining: He did not, he told Oppenheimer, wish to make “the culmination of three centuries of physics” a weapon of mass destruction. This was an extraordinary statement, one that Rabi knew might well resonate with a man of Oppenheimer’s philosophical bent.

From the beginning, Oppenheimer and Groves had agreed that everyone’s salaries were to be pegged according to each recruit’s previous job. This resulted in wide disparities since a relatively young man recruited from private industry might well be paid much more than an older, tenured professor. To compensate for this inequality, Oppenheimer decreed that rents would be pro-rated according to salary.

On one occasion, someone threw a theme party: “Come As Your Suppressed Desire.” Oppie came dressed in his ordinary suit, with a napkin draped over his arm—as if to imply that he wished merely to be a waiter.

The idea, endorsed by Oppenheimer and administered by the Army, was that such maid service would allow the wives of project scientists to work as secretaries, lab assistants, schoolteachers or “computing-machine operators” in the Tech Area. This in turn would help the Army keep the population of Los Alamos to a minimum and support the morale of so many intelligent and energetic women. Maid service was assigned largely on the basis of need, depending on the importance and hours of a housewife’s job and the number of young children, as well as on occasions of illness. Not always perfect, this bit of army socialism greatly eased life on the mesa and helped to turn the isolated laboratory into a fully employed, effective community.