Authors: Brian Van DeMark
But while Szilard’s proposals were farsighted, he lacked both the subtlety necessary to influence the Washington establishment that would have to carry them out and the patience for the bureaucratic scramble that preceded and followed decisions. He habitually moved outside established channels to try to get things done. His actions invited suspicion in Cold War America. FBI agents kept him under surveillance long after the Manhattan Project. Still his influence reached official channels, at least indirectly. One route ran through the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), where colleagues sympathetic to Szilard’s ideas had access to the White House. “Szilard kept us interested in the subject of arms control,” recalled Bethe, who was a PSAC member, “and later on that committee, in turn, sponsored the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a part of the government.”
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Szilard clashed often with Teller during these years; he was one of very few people to whom Teller would seriously listen when there was a disagreement. The two debated on national TV in the fall of 1960. They agreed that the danger of nuclear war was great, noted Szilard, “but Teller meant this danger is great if the U.S. government should listen to me, and I meant the danger was great if the U.S. government should listen to him.” As their argument deepened, Szilard suggested, “I think, Teller, we should shake hands because maybe later on we don’t.” The studio audience laughed and applauded, but this did not keep the two from sparring more aggressively. During one heated exchange, when Teller accused Szilard of “irresponsible trustfulness” toward the Russians, Szilard in turn blamed Teller for his “irresponsible distrust.”
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Around this time Szilard was diagnosed with bladder cancer, considered terminal by most doctors. But true to character, Szilard did the unexpected: he did not die. He took control of his medical treatment, demanding that a detailed course of radiation worked out by him and his wife, Trude, be administered. The doctors followed his orders, and he was thoroughly cured, although his recovery took the better part of a year. During that time, his hospital room became his office and the hospital solarium his receiving room. Not surprisingly, when Szilard was discharged, the hospital was even more relieved to be rid of Szilard than Szilard was to be rid of the hospital.
When Compton learned of Szilard’s bladder cancer in early 1960, he wrote his onetime Met Lab colleague—who had caused him so much trouble with Groves and others in Washington—a nostalgic and moving letter, so open in its emotions that it touched its usually gruff recipient:
Dear Leo:
First let me tell of my deep and sincere sorrow at the news of your serious illness.
Let me further say that with the passing years I have become more clearly aware of the sincerity and earnestness and effectiveness of your efforts to turn the development of nuclear energy to the preservation of freedom and the meeting of man s human needs throughout the world.
It is true that we have not always seen eye to eye as to how these humane ends could best be achieved. But of the sincerity of your intent I have never had a doubt. Also your clear understanding of human reactions is impressive to me, and has led you to foresee with unusual clarity, some trends of history.
May I venture the prediction, which neither of us will probably be able to test, that history will see you not only as one of the important initiators of the “atomic” age but also as one who labored bravely to make of that age a condition of life under which men could enjoy an increasing degree of safety and mutual confidence, in spite of the threats of war.
With sincere friendship
,
Arthur C
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Two years later, while on a speaking visit to Berkeley, Compton died of a cerebral hemorrhage on March 15, 1962. He was sixty-nine.
As for Szilard, he continued to fight for the issues he cherished, and to struggle with the nuclear fears that haunted him. One night in October 1962 friends saw how deeply he suffered. The Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height. Russian ships were plowing through the Caribbean toward Cuba, American naval vessels waiting to confront them. Szilard sat in his hotel room on Dupont Circle in Washington in the depths of despair. He viewed himself as the inventor of a monster which soon might destroy the world. “What can be done?” a visitor asked. “Nothing,” Szilard answered, his face pale with fear. “It is hopeless.” He had failed—he had created a Frankenstein. The next day he packed his bags and flew to Switzerland to ride out the coming disaster.
Oppenheimer’s exile had eased gradually with the passage of years. When John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, Oppenheimer’s friends, such as McGeorge Bundy and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., moved into high posts in the administration and began seeking ways to restore the physicist’s reputation. In 1962 Oppenheimer was invited to a White House dinner for Nobel laureates. Although he was not a laureate himself, Oppenheimer stood out among the honorees who shared the evening with him. During the event, AEC chairman Glenn Seaborg approached Oppenheimer and asked if he would like to have another security hearing to restore his clearance. “Not on your life,” replied Oppenheimer with utter certainty.
Since Oppenheimer could not regain his clearance without a new hearing, the best alternative was the Fermi Award, the highest honor the U.S. government could bestow for service in the field of nuclear energy. On April 5, 1963, the White House announced that the Fermi Award would go to Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer immediately issued a statement. “Most of us look to the good opinion of our colleagues, and to the goodwill and the confidence of our government. I am no exception.” There was some residual opposition among Oppenheimer’s old enemies, but most reaction was positive. “In Victor Hugo’s tale,” wrote one admirer, “they first decorated the hero, and then shot him. Happily in your case, the order is reversed.” Rabi wrote him:
Dear Robert,
You must feel like a voyager on a ship when after a long journey the sailor on the crow s nest cries, Land, Land!
I wish the reaction to the award could have been a simple Congratulations but there is too much history for simple rejoicing. The dismal years when injustice, paranoia and hypocrisy seemed to prevail remain all too vivid in the memory.
Now in addition to our gratification perhaps we can hope for better things to come.
A handwritten note also arrived from Edward Teller:
Dear Oppie,
I just heard on the radio that you are getting the Fermi Award of 1963. This makes me happy for many reasons.
One is the memory of our work together in Berkeley in 1942. The other is your proposal which had become known as the Baruch Plan and which is the only honest and effective suggestion in this field that was ever made.
I had been often tempted to say something to you. This is the one time I can do so with full conviction and knowing that I am doing the right thing.
I enjoyed getting the Fermi prize last year. If you had gotten it first it might have been perhaps better. But I am glad that the announcement was made early, so you have more time for the pleasure.
With sincere wishes for good luck—which we all need,
Edward
Oppenheimer responded to Teller with a short, conciliatory note of his own:
Dear Edward:
Thank you for writing to me. I am very glad that you did.
With good wishes,
On the morning of November 22, 1963, the White House announced President Kennedy’s intention to present the award personally to Oppenheimer on December second. Less than twelve hours later, Kennedy was dead in Dallas. On the appointed day—twenty years after Oppenheimer had left Berkeley for Los Alamos and ten years after a “blank wall” had been placed between him and government secrets—President Johnson awarded him the Fermi Medal in the cabinet room of the White House. Once remarkably youthful for his years, Oppenheimer was now, at fifty-nine, painfully thin, gray, and wearied. Overcome with emotion, he grasped Kitty’s hand as the president spoke. Oppenheimer silently reflected on the situation and the medal for a few moments and then, turning to Johnson, he said, “I think it is just possible, Mr. President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this award today. That would seem to me a good augury for all our futures.” His eyes shone with unshed tears as he spoke.
After the ceremony, Oppenheimer and Teller posed in a handshake of reconciliation. Both behaved with scrupulous politeness. The former adversaries tried to put the past behind them, to close the wound between them. Teller told the press, “I respect Robert Oppenheimer. There are many things that I admire in him.” Oppenheimer, who always found it hard to keep a feud going and was prone to forgive anyone who showed him affection—whatever he really thought of them and their politics—said, “For a long time I thought of Edward Teller as a friend. I do not think of him as an enemy.”
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Kitty would have none of it. The cold look on her face as she watched her husband shake Teller’s hand told an entirely different story.
The world still in one piece, in early 1964 Szilard and his wife moved to La Jolla, California, a picturesque seaside village north of San Diego, where he accepted a fellowship at the new Salk Institute for Biological Studies. His bout with bladder cancer had left him thinner and his shock of brown hair had turned gray. He bought a small cottage on Torrey Pines Road, a winding, two-lane coastal road with stunning views of the blue sea below. Most afternoons he sat in a deck chair on the open veranda of the Salk Institute, staring at the sunlight dancing across the Pacific, thinking and churning. He had a rich inner world that engaged him, but his worries about the bomb kept him restless. He died in his sleep on the night of May 30, 1964, at the age of sixty-six, taken by a massive heart attack.
*
“Leo Szilard was a very complex personality,” Bethe said in summing up his colleague’s extraordinary life. “His mind worked quickly and profoundly, and he was able to come to ideas that most of us appreciated only after many hours of talk. He was always ahead of his time.”
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Indeed, Szilard propounded ideas which initially were scoffed at as ridiculous, but had an odd way of looking like hard-headed realism within a few years. He had, of course, been the first scientist to imagine a chain reaction and realize that an atomic bomb was thus possible. During the war, while others toiled at making the bomb a reality, his mind was already exploring what the world would be like after the bomb had been made. This ability to see things honestly and perceptively made him a sage observer of human affairs. His vision of the future applied to politics as much as it did to science, as he once made clear:
Politics has been defined as the art of the possible. Science might be defined as the art of the impossible. The crisis which is upon us may not find its ultimate solution until the statesmen catch up with the scientists and politics, too, becomes the art of the impossible.
This, I believe, might be achieved when statesmen will be more afraid of the atomic bomb than they are afraid of using their imagination, because imagination is the tool which has to be used if the impossible is to be accomplished.
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The Fermi Award symbolized Oppenheimer’s redemption in official circles. His return to Los Alamos the following spring marked a different kind of redemption, a sentimental homecoming among old friends. In May 1964 Oppenheimer returned to the Hill for his first public appearance there since the war. Much had changed in nineteen years. The Los Alamos he knew no longer existed. Few of the old buildings remained. Most of the original Tech Area had been demolished and the laboratory had been shifted across Los Alamos Canyon. A bridge now separated the vast laboratory from the town, which by 1964 had become a good-sized city, a key component of America’s sprawling Cold War military-industrial complex. Oppenheimer was also different, now a skeleton of skin and bones. Yet in other—more important—respects, he had not changed: his voice still resonated and his mind was as sharp as it had ever been.
Oppenheimer had come to Los Alamos to give a memorial address in honor of Niels Bohr and to reconnect with an important place from his past. It was an emotional occasion for the man who had founded the desert laboratory and had learned so much from Bohr. The cavernous auditorium of Los Alamos High School—which had not even existed when he left in 1945—was jammed when Norris Bradbury introduced Oppenheimer and noted that he had built Los Alamos by the sheer force of his personality and character. Bradbury’s next sentence was drowned out by applause that rippled from the front row and gathered to a prolonged, standing ovation.
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Oppenheimer was deeply moved by the outpouring of respect and affection. A sensitive man who hated to show emotion, he fought back his tears. He ruminated on the passage of time and all that had happened to him. His mind went back to his walks around Ashley Pond with Bohr, where the two had first discussed how the atomic bomb they were making would change the world. A tiny figure at the podium of the auditorium, Oppenheimer told his audience that the nuclear arms race that Bohr had feared, and struggled to avert, had reached mindless proportions. America and Russia each possessed not tens or hundreds but thousands of nuclear bombs, an arsenal of unimaginable destruction made infinitely more dangerous by each country’s suspicion and distrust of the other. New means of delivery and use made command and control of these weapons a nightmare fully known only to those responsible; they had added accident to anger as another potential cause of catastrophe. What Bohr and Oppenheimer had learned first, and some in government had learned since, all people should know and every government should understand: if another major war occurred in which nuclear weapons were used, no country could count on having enough living to bury their dead.