J. Robert Oppenheimer: General Advisory Committee Report on the Building of the H-Bomb

J. Robert Oppenheimer gained prominence as a physicist and academic because of his success in publishing research in the highly specialized language of the physical sciences and through his abilities in the seminar room, though he was a somewhat shaky lecturer. During World War II, his success at Los Alamos, where he worked to design an atomic bomb, depended on his skill at mediating among the very different worlds of the soldiers, scientists, and engineers assigned to the project and persuading them to work together in the face of personal and political suspicions and rivalries. After the war, as an important adviser to the U.S. government on nuclear issues, he had to communicate in the bureaucratic language of government work. In 1949, after the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb, the U.S. government commissioned a report from a group of nuclear experts. As head of the panel, Oppenheimer signed off on the General Advisory Committee Report on the Building of the H-Bomb, which outlined the options available to the United States in response to the Soviet threat.