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Oppenheimer Writes Secretary About Recent Meeting of Physicists and Los Alamos History
Oppenheimer Writes Secretary About Recent Meeting of Physicists and Los Alamos History
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Description:

Robert Oppenheimer
Berkeley, CA, Ocober 10, 1947
Oppenheimer Writes Secretary About Recent Meeting of Physicists and Los Alamos History
ALS

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, Autograph Letter Signed, to Elizabeth Bryan, October 10, [1947], Berkeley, CA. 1 p., 8.5" x 11". Expected folds; light toning; very good.

In this brief and extremely rare letter, J. Robert Oppenheimer writes to a secretary at Los Alamos, New Mexico, about funds for travel to the Shelter Island Conference of physicists that he attended in August 1947 and about a draft of the history of the atomic research at Los Alamos written by Robert Davis. Oppenheimer had resigned as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in October 1945 and returned to California.

The letterhead is from the University of California, Berkeley, Physics Department, where Oppenheimer established and operated a school of theoretical physics from 1929 to 1943. He also taught at the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s and 1940s. After resigning from Los Alamos, he returned to teaching at Berkeley and Caltech. In September 1947, Oppenheimer became the third director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Complete Transcript
Elizabeth Bryan
Los Alamos–
Dear Betty
Did you get the copys of the Conference Report? I turned it over about a month ago to the courier.
Two things for me have been long delayed: The draft of the Los Alamos History, that Bob Davis wrote he had started on its way Sept 27 & that has not yet come. Security says it will leave next Monday; will you check? The second thing is any species of money for my August trip. Does it always take that long? I should have made Dyhre pay me while I was there.
Don't be too astonished if you read an item of good news—in these months of gloom—before too long.
With all warm good wishes.
Robert Oppenheimer
Oct 10

Historical Background
In August 1947, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer attended the first post-war Shelter Island Conference, a meeting of two dozen leading physicists on Shelter Island, near the eastern end of Long Island, New York. This group of physicists met to explore quantum field theory, and more specifically, quantum electrodynamics (QED).

Albert E. Dyhre (1898-1984) served as the business manager for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1946 to at least 1959. He joined the University of California in 1924 and served as a purchasing agent for the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. He wrote the original purchase orders for establishing the Los Alamos Laboratory for the Army's Manhattan Project in 1943. He moved to Los Alamos in 1946.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was born in New York City into a Jewish family and graduated from Harvard University in 1924 with a degree in chemistry and advanced studies in physics. After studying at Cambridge, Oppenheimer received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1927 from the University of Gottingen. He accepted a position at the University of California, Berkeley, and he developed a particular love of the desert southwest of New Mexico. He served as advisor to a generation of students in physics and worked closely with Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron experiments. For his scientific work, he was three times nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics between 1945 and 1967 but never won. Essentially apolitical before the mid-1930s, Oppenheimer became more concerned about politics and international affairs at that time. He supported liberal causes and some later labeled as communist. Though he never joined the Communist Party, many of his associates were active in the party in the 1930s and 1940s. After General Leslie R. Groves Jr. was appointed director of the Manhattan Project in September 1942, he selected Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory. Oppenheimer supported the use of the atomic bomb against Japan but believed the second bomb used against Nagasaki was unnecessary. After the war, Oppenheimer briefly returned to the California Institute of Technology before accepting a position as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in September 1947. He remained as director until resigning in 1966 because of ill health. He also served as chair of the General Advisory Committee for the Atomic Energy Commission. In December 1953, Oppenheimer's security clearance was suspended, and he requested a hearing. The confidential hearing focused on Oppenheimer's ties to Communists in the 1930s and 1940s, including scientists working on the Manhattan Project, and resulted in his loss of security clearance.

Marion Elizabeth "Betty" Love Bryan Kyriacopulos (b. 1915) was born in Illinois. While visiting friends at a ranch in New Mexico, she learned of the Manhattan Project and applied for a job. She served as the confidential secretary to the project director at Los Alamos Laboratory. On January 19, 1947, she married John C. Kyriacopulos (1912-1989), a civil engineer for the Zia Company, which furnished construction and maintenance services for the community of Los Alamos.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8.5" x 11"
  • Medium: ALS

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