It's the kind of review authors of all stripes dream of. The New York Times' review of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" - which was written by Tufts History Professor Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, a contributing editor for The Nation - contained the following accolade: "'American Prometheus' is a work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer's essential nature."
The 25-years-in-the-making biography exposes the public triumph and humiliation of Oppenheimer, who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and was later accused and convicted of being a security risk.
Sherwin said that for him, the highlight of researching the life of Oppenheimer - called "Oppie" by his friends - was finding evidence to suggest that the physicist was framed.
"We believe we have uncovered legal grounds to overturn the verdict in Oppenheimer's security hearing," Sherwin said. "We show that the FBI illegally wiretapped Oppenheimer's lawyer's phone, thus violating the lawyer-client relationship."
"This information was passed to Lewis Strauss and to the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] prosecutor, Roger Robb, who used this illegally obtained information against Oppenheimer," Sherwin said. "Furthermore, during the hearing itself, Robb violated federal regulations that govern the conduct of security hearings. For example, he showed Edward Teller some of Oppenheimer's confidential testimony before Teller testified. He did this to be sure Teller testified against Oppenheimer."
"Also, we have evidence that suggests that Strauss virtually bribed one of the Atomic Energy Commissioners to swing his vote against Oppenheimer," Sherwin said. "The whole proceeding was - as the dissenting member of the hearing board wrote - 'a black mark on the escutcheon of our country.'"
Sherwin believes that the gravity of nuclear weapons must be thoroughly recognized - as did, paradoxically, his subject.
"Oppenheimer urged us to do everything possible to minimize our reliance on nuclear weapons and to work toward eliminating them," Sherwin said. "He understood that the world is better off - safer, really - without nuclear weapons. He believed that we should work for the international control of all forms of atomic energy, as he did in the postwar period. He saw that unilateralism was not in America's interest."
According to Sherwin, Oppenheimer also saw that the proliferation of atomic weaponry was not in America's interest, either.
"In 1946, he proposed what became known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Plan (it was really the Oppenheimer plan) which proposed the creation of an international atomic authority with sovereign control over all aspects of the nuclear industry," Sherwin said. "A small part of this plan has been put in place: the International Atomic Energy Authority with headquarters in Vienna, Austria. But the heart of the plan, which would eliminate nuclear weapons, has obviously been neglected."
Sherwin's April 2005 publication of this biography is largely a reflection of his influences here on the Hill. According to Sherwin, the term of former Tufts President Jean Mayer allowed Sherwin to expand both his and the University's relationships with the global community.
It was Mayer's vision to turn Tufts into a university that focused on supporting professors' continual individual research. According to former University Provost and current German, Russian, and Asian Languages Professor Sol Gittleman, Mayer's support of Tufts faculty members' research allowed Sherwin to "explode and take off" in his own academic quests.
With Mayer's support, Sherwin established Tufts' Nuclear Age and Humanities Center, which provides an objective forum for the public to better understand the diplomatic and political ideologies initiated in the Cold War.
Two years later, in 1988, through a joint teaching venture, Sherwin enabled students at Tufts and at Soviet universities in Moscow to connect via satellite television and simultaneous interpretation four times a year. This work required Sherwin to frequently travel to Moscow.
While in Moscow, Sherwin was able to collect extensive information for a soon-to-be-published documentary that will cover the research and public and private life of Igor Kurchatev, the creator of the Soviet nuclear bomb. Sherwin had the opportunity to meet with Kurchatev's close friends, former KGB agents and Soviet scientists.
"American Prometheus" is not Sherwin's first literary publication on American Cold War policies. While lecturing in the history department at Princeton University in 1975, Sherwin published "A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race."
The life of Oppenheimer fascinated Sherwin for many reasons. Foremost, the fact that so much of Oppenheimer's pre-public life was hidden attracted Sherwin, who said that he wished the public could have a greater knowledge of "the real Oppie."
In 1993 Sherwin returned to his alma mater, Dartmouth College, to take over the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. In 1995, back at Tufts, he realized that he had to do something dramatic to "re-start and complete this Oppenheimer biography." As a result, he teamed up with Bird to finish "American Prometheus."
Sherwin considers his and Bird's work together to be a "great collaboration." Sherwin met Bird in the early 1980s while collaborating on several articles related to the controversy at the Smithsonian Museum about the ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit.
This Wednesday, Sherwin will be at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge to talk about and sign copies of his work. This summer, he plans to continue touring with Bird to promote "American Prometheus."
