ABSTRACT
J. Robert Oppenheimer is, more than Einstein, Newton, Darwin, or Galileo, representative of both the high intellectuality and the tremendous power of modern science. The question of Oppenheimer's membership in the Communist party remains a hot topic among historians and researchers, but in the end, the question seems unresolvable. The great calamity of Oppenheimer's life was the Gray Board hearing called by his political opponent Lewis Strauss, then head of the Atomic Energy Commission, to decide whether Oppenheimer was a security risk. Oppenheimer's ambition was manifested in the self-dramatizing in his language and even in his posture and was apparent in his immediate and unreflective acceptance of Grove's offer to lead in the development of the A-bomb. Oppenheimer had recognized in the late 1930's from published reports of the infamous purge trials and from the on-site testimony of the false imprisonment of scientists that the Soviet regime was morally corrupt.
