One of his colleagues described Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos branch of the atomic bomb's Manhattan Project, as "the smartest of the lot." Last week, just before he resigned to go back to teaching physics, tough-minded, 41-year-old Dr. Oppenheimer made the smartest statement of all the scientists who were cautioning Congress to watch its atomic step.
Dr. Oppenheimer halfheartedly supported the Administration's May-Johnson bill, but insisted that its concept of total control should not be the "pattern for the future." Some enforced secrecy was obviously necessary, he said. But he added: "The gossip of scientists who get together...