When “American Prometheus” was published in 2005, I wrote a review for The New York Sun pointing out that too often J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life became a morality tale about the perfidy of McCarthyism, obscuring the implications of Oppenheimer’s political commitments and his unwillingness to confront his complicity in anti-American rhetoric and Communist propaganda that may have compromised his security clearance. Christopher Nolan’s new film, “Oppenheimer,” based in large part on “American Prometheus,” needs to be viewed in a context that is much larger than the martyrology of McCarthyism. 

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‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer’
By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Knopf, 721 pages

Is it possible to reject the premises of a biography and yet accept its portrait of the subject? If the biographer has not cheated — that is, skewed the evidence to prove a point; if the full complexity of the biographical figure is rendered with sensitivity; if, as in a novel, the narrative does justice to the dynamic of events, then the answer is yes. It is possible to embrace the biographer’s story while resisting his assumptions.

“American Prometheus” provides a framework for interpreting J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life that seems fallacious. Yet it is also an exquisite portrayal of the man, founded (as Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman avow) on 25 years of painstaking research. Read this wonderfully researched biography for a fascinating account of Oppenheimer’s remarkable intellect — one that encompassed not merely modern physics but literature, philosophy, and art as well.

The troubling aspect begins with its title. Certainly Oppenheimer, a genius and important figure, deserves a grand epithet. But Prometheus was punished for stealing fire from the gods and giving this godlike invention to man. Oppenheimer stole nothing, and his punishment was not Promethean. On the contrary, Oppenheimer is the American Frankenstein, or as Mary Shelley put it in the subtitle to her novel, “The Modern Prometheus,” one whose nemesis was himself.

A troubled child genius with homicidal and suicidal tendencies, Oppenheimer cured himself by reading Proust — much as John Stuart Mill, another child genius, recovered from his breakdown by reading Wordsworth and Coleridge. Called “the father of the atomic bomb,” Oppenheimer wanted to run away from this world-shattering invention as soon as it exploded. Like Victor Frankenstein, he came to believe he had created a monster.

Oppenheimer objected to the invention of the hydrogen bomb. His desire to share the secrets of the atomic bomb with other countries and to place international controls on nuclear development, while seeming a noble sentiment to some, also made him the target of a suspicious postwar government, which had already seen its security jeopardized by scientists at Los Alamos who conveyed crucial data to the Soviet Union.

To Messrs. Bird and Sherwin, Oppenheimer was a victim of McCarthyism, an honorable man done in by the hysteria of the anti-communist cause. Oppenheimer was no spy, no security risk, insofar as he did not collaborate with the Soviets. But the term “security risk” implies more than accusations of espionage. What the FBI and other government agencies wanted to know was whether Oppenheimer was fit for government work — whether, indeed, by his actions he deserved a continuing prominent role in policymaking.

His biographers honestly and thoroughly document their subject’s past, one rife with communist associations. They cannot say Oppenheimer was a party member, but they concede he was never forthcoming about his relationship with the Communist Party. Again, some would say, so what? Did he not have a right to remain silent? A right, yes, but one that had considerable consequences. The outrages of McCarthyism have become such an ingrained part of the American mythos that it is difficult to remember that, in the sum total of what we still need to know about the presence of communist and communist-inspired ideas in American life, McCarthyism is a very small part.

To put it another way, if Oppenheimer did not lie about his political affiliations and convictions, he was economical with the truth — a point apparent in this comprehensive biography but one its authors cannot quite digest. Thus, after showing Oppenheimer’s many links to the party and party members, they conclude: “The most relevant political fact about Robert Oppenheimer was that in the 1930s he was devoted to working for social and economic justice in America, and to achieve this goal he chose to stand with the left.”

On the contrary, the “most relevant political fact” is that he chose never to confront the consequences of allying himself to a movement whose interests — no matter how many civil-rights marches and pro-working-man events the party staged — were antithetical to American values.

Arthur Miller, whom many regard as a hero for invoking the First Amendment and refusing to testify about his politics at a House Committee on Un-American Activities hearing, later explored in “After the Fall” the consequences of not naming names. In effect, the communists got a free ride from those one-time leftist allies who treated HUAC as the only villain of the piece. That Miller chose Elia Kazan, who did name names, to direct his play is telling: Miller not only had forgiven his old friend but saw the point of Kazan’s desire to be truthful about his own political past. Not to be truthful made it easier for others to lie about their own communist activities.

Oppenheimer was the kind of genius who could see the flaws in his own ideas. This trait made him a gadfly unwilling to work out the implications of his greatest discoveries — one reason he never received a Nobel Prize. He is a tragic figure, as well, not so much because of McCarthyism but because he was never willing to confront the darker implications of his political past. To have done so would have cost him his role in public affairs. Not having done so led to the same consequences — but with less honor to the man.

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Mr. Rollyson’s review of “American Prometheus” first appeared in the Sun on April 13, 2005, under the title, “Burned by His Own Flame.”