Free 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant

unlikely that Lawrence would have been easily persuaded to leave his own laboratory to go off and collaborate on such a questionable venture under quasi-military auspices. Instead, Lawrence recommended one of his protégés, Edwin McMillan, who was an outstanding theorist but a somewhat reticent person and not the sort of commanding figure Groves had in mind. Teller favored his close friend Hans Bethe, who, he argued, was “unquestionably a superior theoretician,” not to mention considerably more popular than Oppenheimer. But as Bethe was a foreign national, Groves, of course, considered him out of the question.
    The selection process continued, with Groves meeting with small groups to talk over a short list of names. As the end of October drew near, Oppenheimer clearly emerged as his candidate to head the new laboratory. It promised to be an extraordinarily difficult job, and as Compton and Groves concurred, one that required unique qualifications. There were not only the massive scientific and technical challenges to consider, but as Compton looked ahead, extremely difficult experiments would have to be conducted under conditions of “almost unprecedented seclusion.” What’s more, the leader of this enterprise would have to be “a person of such human understanding that he could keep a group of high-strung specialists working smoothly together while largely separated from the outside world.” Not only was Oppenheimer a specialist in the problems of nuclear physics, but in Compton’s view, “he was one of the very best interpreters of the mathematical theories to those of us who were working more directly with the experiments.”
    Both Compton and Groves were well aware of Oppenheimer’s left-wing sympathies, including his attendance at a number of Communist Party meetings and anti-fascist rallies, and his Teachers’ Union work. They had also reviewed the thick FBI file enumerating his many “pink” associations, including a former fiancée, Jean Tatlock, who had encouraged his nascent political activism and remained a close friend and confidante; his new wife, Kitty, who had joined the Communist Party in solidarity with her second husband, a party organizer; and his brother Frank and Franks Canadian wife, Jacquenette (Jackie) Quann, both of whom had joined the party in the late 1930s. Many of Oppenheimer’s Berkeley protégés had similar ties to leftist politics, including Robert Serber, whose wife, Charlotte, was the daughter of Morris Leof, a Russian Jew and prominent Philadelphia physician who ran a sort of liberal political-literary salon whose habitués included the playwright Clifford Odets and the journalist I. F. Stone. Compton knew firsthand of Oppie’s participation in “certain Communist activities” in the late 1930s but, after talking those over with him, was satisfied by Oppie’s explanation that they had only been attempts to educate himself. “He felt that a responsible citizen ought to have reliable knowledge of this growing new movement,” Compton recalled in his memoir, and he gave Compton reason to believe he had come to regard it as “dangerous.”
    Despite people’s expressed concerns about Oppenheimer’s past radicalism, Lawrence had vouched for him in the embryonic days of the atomic program and had insisted on his being included in top-level meetings. Oppenheimer was, in a sense, his man, and in the end, Lawrence backed him, with the condition that the new laboratory be an administrative extension of the University of California, which also presided over Lawrence’s lab. By 1942, Compton had also come to the conclusion that Oppie was far too knowledgeable to allow himself to be entangled in the “Communist net.” “The important matter now,” Oppenheimer had assured him, “is the nation’s defense. I’m cutting off all my Communist connections. For if I don’t the government will find it difficult to use me. I don’t want to let anything interfere with my