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Martin J. Sherwin, Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, will explore the significance and legacy of the life, times, and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer in his lecture “Oppenheimer’s Shadow: His Nuclear World and Ours” 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7 in Hugel Science Center, Jaqua Auditorium (room 103).
Sponsored by the history department, the talk is this year’s Richard E. Welch, Jr. Memorial Lecture. It is free and open to the public.
Oppenheimer was the scientific head of the Manhattan Project during World War II, “father of the atomic bomb,” and famous victim of the anti-communist hysteria of the early Cold War era.
In 2005, Sherwin coauthored American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer with independent historian Kai Bird. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2006, the book won the National Critics Award for biography and English Speaking Union book prize.
“American Prometheus is an incredibly sophisticated and beautifully written study of Oppenheimer, his era, and his nation,” says Arnold Offner, Hugel Professor of History. “The book is far more than a biography of the nation’s most brilliant theoretical physicist. It provides powerful insights into links between science and society, Big Three politics and diplomacy during World War II, and U.S. foreign and domestic policies at the dawn of the Atomic Age and Cold War.”
The book also explores vital issues of the 1940s debates over international control of atomic energy and efforts to head off the post-World War II nuclear arms race and the anti-communist witch hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era.
“Any student – any person – who cares about issues pertaining to nuclear power and nuclear arms, and past or present uses of nuclear weapons and arms races, would be interested to attend the lecture and hear about Oppenheimer’s prophetic views,” Offner says. “Sherwin’s lecture will also interest anyone concerned about the relationship of the individual, or scientist, to the government, or about the development of what President Dwight Eisenhower called the ‘military-industrial-complex.’”
Sherwin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and earned his A.B. at Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. in history at University of California-Los Angeles.
He subsequently taught at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University, and in 1980 joined the Tufts faculty.
Sherwin’s first book, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance, won book prizes from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and National Historical Society.
The history department began the Richard E. Welch, Jr. Memorial Lecture in the early 1990s to honor Welch, a distinguished historian and teacher and revered member of the history faculty at Lafayette from 1958 to his retirement in 1989 as Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of History.
Welch was the author of four books including Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War and Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1956-1961. He also won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship.
Previous Welch lecturers have included Pulitzer Prize winner James MacPherson of Princeton University and Bancroft Prize winner Melvyn P. Leffler of University of Virginia.