J. Robert Oppenheimer–David Bohm relationship

J. Robert Oppenheimer and David Bohm were joined first by the university world—as professor and former student—and then by the investigations that made their political pasts professionally dangerous. Their relationship is defined by a painful imbalance: Oppenheimer could offer encouragement and practical help, but he also used his authority to distance Bohm when the latter’s presence threatened an institution. Bohm, in turn, remained capable of seeing both the assistance and the failure, without reducing Oppenheimer to either a hero or a betrayer.

From former student to political target

In the spring of 1949, the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated alleged atomic spying at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and subpoenaed four of Oppenheimer’s former students, among them Bohm and Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz. The proceedings turned a former academic connection into a question of loyalty and association. Bohm was unsure whether he should testify about his own politics or refuse to discuss his friends. Albert Einstein urged him to resist, even if that meant going to jail. Bohm’s own reasoning was that Communist Party membership was not illegal; his instinct was to speak about himself but not to implicate others.

Bohm contacted Lomanitz, an old friend whose employment had repeatedly been damaged after the FBI informed employers that he was a communist. When the two met in Princeton, Oppenheimer unexpectedly emerged from a barbershop. The encounter was brief, but it brought their separate vulnerabilities into the same conversation: Bohm and Lomanitz explained the subpoenas, and Oppenheimer became agitated. He exclaimed, “Oh, my God, all is lost. There is an FBI man on the Un-American Activities Committee.” Lomanitz thought the reaction paranoid; Oppenheimer, himself subpoenaed, knew that committee member Harold Velde had worked as an FBI agent in Berkeley during the war.

Oppenheimer later described the exchange as a two-minute conversation in which he advised the younger men to “tell the truth,” and they replied, “We won’t lie.” Bohm testified in May and again in June. On the advice of his lawyer, Clifford Durr, he refused to cooperate, invoking the First and Fifth Amendments. Princeton University publicly supported him for the time being. Oppenheimer’s brief counsel thus stood beside Bohm’s more consequential refusal: the former teacher could advise, but he could not shield his former student from the machinery of investigation.

Support under pressure

The consequences were severe. More than a year later, Bohm and Lomanitz were indicted for contempt of Congress. Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950, and released on $1,500 bail. Princeton University suspended him from all teaching duties and barred him from campus. Although he was acquitted six months later, the university did not renew his teaching contract when it expired that June. These events sharpened the distinction between personal regard and institutional protection: public support had not prevented Bohm’s exclusion from the place where he taught.

Oppenheimer’s response to Bohm’s prospects at the Institute for Advanced Study made that distinction more painful. After Princeton dismissed Bohm, Einstein suggested that the Institute employ him as an assistant. Einstein remained interested in revising quantum theory and was heard to say, “if anyone can do it, then it will be Bohm.” Oppenheimer vetoed the proposal, judging Bohm a political liability to the Institute. According to one account, he also instructed Eleanor Leary to keep Bohm away; Leary was subsequently heard telling staff, “David Bohm is not to see Dr. Oppenheimer. He is not to see him.” The reported instruction made exclusion personal as well as administrative: it restricted not only a possible appointment but access to Oppenheimer himself.

Yet Oppenheimer did not sever every avenue of help. When Bohm heard of a teaching opportunity in Brazil, Oppenheimer wrote him a strong letter of recommendation. Bohm left the United States and spent the rest of his career abroad, first in Brazil, then in Israel, and finally in England. The contrast is central to their relationship: Oppenheimer could help Bohm find a future elsewhere while refusing to bring him into his own institution. The recommendation mattered, but it did not undo the veto or the professional exclusion that preceded it.

A judgment that held both sides

Bohm understood that Oppenheimer was under intense strain, but he did not treat fear as a complete excuse. When Bohm’s name became entangled in Oppenheimer’s damaging testimony about Bernard Peters, Bohm asked him directly why he had said such things about their friend. Oppenheimer replied that “his nerve just gave way at that moment,” that the situation had become too much for him, and that he could not understand why he had acted as he did. Bohm connected this admission to a recurring weakness under pressure: when overwhelmed, Oppenheimer sometimes did irrational things. He had also behaved in ways he later struggled to understand during his 1943 interview with Boris Pash and his 1945 meeting with Harry S. Truman; the same vulnerability would surface again in the 1954 security hearing.

Bohm’s eventual account resisted a simple verdict. Although his admiration for Oppenheimer became ambivalent, he did not hold him responsible for his banishment from America. He said, “I think he acted fairly to me as far as he was able to.” The qualification preserves the limit as much as the generosity: fairness was real, but constrained by fear and political expediency. The relationship therefore offers a close view of how private loyalty could survive without erasing public harm. Oppenheimer’s choices toward Bohm were neither consistently protective nor wholly abandoning; they changed with the stakes, leaving Bohm to carry both the memory of assistance and the knowledge of what that assistance could not—or would not—prevent.