It may be of interest to those who followed Oppenheimer's rise and fall to read
Freeman Dyson's comment on the quote. In the KQED video production, "The Day
After Trinity" Dyson shares the quotation and says, "...It became a kind of
motif for the whole community of physicists. And there were violent arguements,
many people who had been at Los Alamos were very angry. They said Oppenheimer
had no right to weep in public for our sins. What we were doing was an honest
piece of technical work to win the war. We were no more guilty than anybody else
who built weapons in order to win the war. And he has no right to talk to talk
about our having sinned..."
For those of you that have the video, it's about 1 hour into the show.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the video, it has three
themes...(1)The development of the Bomb and the experiences of the engineers and
scientists that worked on it. (2) The response of those who worked on it when it
was actually used on humans. (3) The rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
I use this video, and I think copies are still available (contact PBS or KQED in
San Francisco) to give a break in the curriculum. I use it to stimulate dialogue
on such subjects as "Ethics and Science, The Social Responsibility of Science,
Is Science isolated from Politics, etc." It provides a good break for a couple
of days and gives the liberal arts students a chance to use their skills.
A brief aside. Edward Teller played a prominent role in the suspension of
Oppenheimers security clearance. In 1991 I had a chance to hear Dr. Teller at
Lawrence Livermore Labs. I was in a 2 week workshop for High School Science
Teachers, developing curriculum to use the LLL Cray that had been dedicated to
educational use. It was a small group. Dr. Teller came and visited us and gave a
talk that was both philosophical and technical. He talked about education and
connections between science and society. There was a question and answer period
and I asked him if, based upon Hussain's trying to build nuclear weapons, he
felt that the proliferation of nuclear weapons was a threat and what he thought
we should do about it. He said..."outlaw or at least limit secrecy." Later on he
said, "In my opinion the first step toward a secure world willbe an open world."
This was the credo of J. R. Oppenheimer that was bitterly fought by Dr. Teller.
The talk was video taped and luckily I have a copy so the quotes are accurate.