Pulitzer Prize-winning author Martin Sherwin will deliver the annual Oppenheimer Memorial Lecture on August 11 at the Duane Smith Auditorium in Los Alamos.
Sherwin and co-author Kai Bird won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for their biography of Los Alamos’s first director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Titled American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the book serves as an interesting insight to Oppenheimer’s life, including his behavior and motivations.
The talk begins at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Sherwin's research on Oppenheimer began in 1979. With hundreds of hours of interviews with persons directly involved in Oppenheimer's life, such as Robert Serber, and thousands of hours spent in archives, libraries, and government repositories, his research results were vitally enriched when FBI records became accessible through the Freedom of Information Act.
A history professor at George Mason University, Sherwin received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a doctorate in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He also authored A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart l. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize, and was the runner up for the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in History and the National Book Award.
Sherwin’s lecture will be the 38th in a series sponsored by the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee, a philanthropic, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the memory and legacy of Oppenheimer.
