{"id":43869,"date":"2023-09-08T06:08:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T14:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=43869"},"modified":"2023-09-08T06:08:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T14:08:15","slug":"the-physicist-who-quit-los-alamos-on-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/08\/the-physicist-who-quit-los-alamos-on-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Physicist Who Quit Los Alamos, on Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/picture>\n

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Back in July 1985, when I was editor of the leading antinuclear magazine Nuclear Times<\/em>, the new issue of the venerable Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em> landed on my desk in NYC carrying a startling article by a physicist I\u2019d never heard of, revealing that he had walked away from bomb work at Los Alamos on principle.<\/p>\n

His name was Joseph Rotblat and, as it turned out, he was apparently the only scientist who resigned his position in taking a moral stand. I had wondered where he was in Christopher Nolan\u2019s Oppenheimer<\/em> but now we can view him in another film.<\/p>\n

An article today at Literary Hub<\/a> \u2013 which has published two of my Bomb-related pieces since 2020 \u2013 reminded me about Rotblat and I\u2019d like to excerpt from it below.<\/p>\n

Written by Lauren Carroll Harris, it holds the headline, \u201cBeyond Tortured Genius: Science and Conscience in Two Rediscovered Oppenheimer Films.\u201d One of the films you may know and it has drawn a lot of post-Oppenheimer<\/em> attention: The Day After Trinity<\/em>, by Jon Else, a celebrated doc on Oppie and the bomb, produced for PBS around 1980 when I first saw it. So let\u2019s stick to the second, new to me, from 2008, The Strangest Dream<\/em>, from Canada, which focuses on Rotblat.<\/p>\n

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Day After Trinity<\/em> includes a number of conscience-driven comments from Robert Wilson, who was the model for the character in Oppenheimer<\/em> who vomits in disgust outside a party celebrating the Hiroshima blast. But Wilson, despite qualms, had stuck with the first atomic bombs to their end.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll simply quote from Harris\u2019s article covering Rotblat and suggest you read it all:<\/p>\n

In films on the Manhattan Project, questions of conscience are commonly seen through the assenting viewpoint \u2013 that of the scientists who continued to work on the bomb, even after Hitler\u2019s defeat. One essential perspective is obscured, black-holed in subterfuge, even. Physicist and European refugee Joseph Rotblat made crucial discoveries in the fission process, and went on to specialize in nuclear fallout. He moved to Los Alamos in 1944 but defected from the project on grounds of conscience upon learning that the Nazis could not build such a bomb. He was the only scientist to turn his back.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf my work is going to be applied, I would like myself to decide how it is applied,\u201d Rotblat says in the 2008 Canadian documentary The Strangest Dream. Streaming on the National Film Board of Canada\u2019s platform<\/a>, the film traces his renunciation of A-bomb development and his role in the Pugwash Conferences, where scientists and statesmen gathered to discuss the reversal of nuclear proliferation. The film renders a fairly straight treatment of its quiet subject, with the visually rich backing of a vertiginous collage of disparate forms, including spooky Cold-War era footage and clips of the Trinity mushroom cloud. Oppie is not in the film, but the narrative takes place in the fissures he helped wrench open; he lurks like an ever-present ghost behind the character of Rotblat, who stands as his angelic nemesis as he tries to transform physics into a humanitarian project. Like Oppenheimer, Rotblat was also accused of espionage, but he was eventually awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the disarmament campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n

Notably, Rotblat is entirely absent from Oppenheimer, despite being described as a brilliantly offbeat individual \u2013 a \u201cmad Polish scientist\u201d \u2013 by a former student in The Strangest Dream. It\u2019s a curious historical erasure and a missed chance for a dramatic clash. Then again, perhaps Rotblat is too steady and untragic, incorruptible and unmemeable for his own big moment, let alone the blockbuster treatment. Oppie\u2019s genius wasn\u2019t just in his Faustian bargain but in the way that he spoke and the way he held himself, quoting Hindu philosophy and smoking till the end of time. I suppose film culture is more interested in the flawed, tortured luminary than the staunch, principled dissenter or the morally engaged scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n

Prosecuting the melancholic drama of the ingenuous mastermind requires substantial historical selectivity. Most cinema narratives hew to the oft-cited rationale for the A-bomb\u2019s development: its function as a deterrent to a Nazi explosive. But in his essay \u201cLeaving the Bomb Project<\/a>,\u201d Rotblat wrote, \u201cGroves said that, of course, the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets\u2026 Until then I had thought that our work was to prevent a Nazi victory, and now I was told that the weapon we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim.\u201d With more than a dash of elegiac melancholy, the working thesis of The Strangest Dream is that Rotblat\u2019s moral strength insulated him against Oppie-style tragedy.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Just published: an expanded edition of my book Atomic Cover-up<\/a>, now with several thousand words of mine re: the movie and the man <\/strong><\/em>Oppenheimer<\/strong>. And it\u2019s on sale this week as an ebook for just $3.99 ($12.95 for the paperback).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Thanks for reading Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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