Oppenheimer Cleared [pdf]

I wonder if there’s a Hollywood marketing department at work.

Coming from Granholm this reads like "we have investigated ourselves, and found we did nothing wrong."

That's what the upcoming Christopher Nolan film is based on.

More tangentially related, but the main character of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed” is modeled after Oppenheimer (who Le Guin’s parents were friends with).

Yeah, right. Irrespective, of whether Oppenheimer's action in respect of David Bohm was right or wrong—and I'd reckon it was wrong—Oppenheimer was treated very badly those bastards Lewis Strauss and Edward Teller and the system failed to protect him.

Oppenheimer was left a broken man by their actions and he should not have been. Clearly, he was no saint, and he had strong views both political and scientific but that was no reason to denegate him so.

It's easy to forget that unless someone with Oppenheimer's forceful presence had been put in change of the Manhattan Project there's a damn good chance that the project would have taken much longer to complete—even in hindsight, Lt Gen Groves made absolutely the right decision. Unfortunately, Oppenheimer's high profile and personality made him enemies and the heightened and frightening politics of the era denied him a fair hearing and justice.

BTW, I say that as a great fan of David Bohm and I believe he was badly treated by Oppenheimer and others but this was more the result of personality clashes than him being out of step with scientific orthodoxy (if everyone only followed scientific orthodoxy alchemists would still 'brewing' lead and hoping for gold).

Irrespective of reason, Oppenheimer and Bohm weren't the only martyrs of that era either, Fred Hoyle should have been given the gong for the B2FH Paper/stellar nucleosynthesis but fell foul of the Nobel Committee because of his 'prickly' personality.

People's personalities and frailties ought not play a role in how we perceive and value them for their contribution to science but unfortunately that's often not how it pans out.

But distance in time often rights things: whilst it's too late for Oppenheimer, history is now putting things right in his name. Remember, such events aren't new: by reasonable accounts Issac Newton was a horrible, nasty, vindictive bit of work but we now honor him not for his personality but rather for his monumental contribution to science—and changing the world forever.

That's how it ought to be.

I do not have any facts to refute what you say about Oppenheimer, but from what little I have read and Wikipedia it seems that Oppenheimer (Bohm’s PhD supervisor at that) helped him on numerous occasions [1]. Even by recommending him for positions in the UK and ultimately Brazil when Bohm went into exile.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm#Youth_and_college

Indeed, fortunately the facts are widely known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Strauss#Strauss_and_Oppe...

Exactly, and that other disreputable—Edward Teller.