Description:

JULIUS ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
(1904 - 1967) American physicist, director of the Manhattan project which developed the first atomic bomb, later served as director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. Nice content T.L.S. on Institute for Advanced Study letterhead, 1p. 4to., Princeton, June 25, 1956 to a woman at Douglass College at Rutgers University. Oppenheimer declines an offer to lecture, citing a previous commitment: "...to give the William James Lectures at Harvard..." the following Spring. File holes at left margin, else very good. Oppenheimer's selection to deliver the prestigious 1957 William James Lectures by both the philosophy and psychiatry departments at Harvard angered the university's conservative backers who labeled the great physicist as having a questionable "moral background" and a "defect of character". Oppenheimer delivered the speeches, concluding the final speech: "...We have, I think, a dual duty: a duty of faithfulness and firmness and steadfastness in the things which by accident in our own time, in our own place, are our knowledge, our skill, our arts; [and] we have a duty of great openness to others...learning to welcome the strange and being glad to learn something that is new...".

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May 14, 2009 10:00 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

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