The Other Oppenheimer

 Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of our main priorities at the Center for Investigative Reporting was examining the health and safety implications of nuclear technology.

This resulted in a series of special reports including “Nuclear Nightmare,” “Operation Wigwam,” and “Nuclear California.”

As part of this work, we interviewed a number of scientists who had been associated in some way with the Manhattan Project, the secret government program during World War Two to invent the atomic bomb.

Two memorable figures among those I met were in San Francisco — John Gofman and Frank Oppenheimer, brother of the lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

By the time I met him, Frank was an elderly, soft-spoken man. A colleague and I interviewed him in his office at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, an interactive museum with exhibits that encourage children (and the adults accompanying them) to experience first-hand the wonder and mystery of scientific exploration and discovery.

During our interview, Frank described his brother crouching in a bunker to witness the explosion of the first atomic bomb. At first he had felt elation at the success of the mission, Frank said, but then a terrible sense of regret.

“Oh God, what have we done?” he had said, according to Frank.

Frank explained that he had later founded the Exploratorium in part in order to compensate for that awful sense of regret. “We had proven that science could accomplish terrible things. I wanted children to be able to also realize that science can also accomplish wonderful things.”

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