Ramsey Denies Politics Affected Award of AEC

Norman F. Ramsey, professor of Physics, yesterday denied that there was any political significance in the Atomic Energy Commission's decision to present the 1963 Fermi Award to J. Robert Oppenheimer '26.

Although the award is officially granted for "especially meritorious contribution to the development, use or control of atomic energy," many observers consider its presentation to Oppenheimer an attempt by the Kennedy administration to clear the name of the nuclear physicist who was director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the wartime Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was declared a security risk by the AEC in 1954.

A member of the nine-man General Advisory Committee which nominates candidates to receive the annual $50,000 prize, Ramsey called it a mistake to look for "deep seated political motives" in this year's choice.

"The award is being given to Oppenheimer for his many valuable contributions in science and scientific policy," he said.

"Many of us have felt for years that he deserved it, but there were always many other good candidates." Ramsey said that he himself had written to the General Advisory Committee before he became a member in 1960, recommending Oppenheimer for the prize.

Describing the committee as an independent body which could not be influenced by politics, Ramsey said that he had never been subjected to any pressure to nominate Oppenheimer.

No Politics Involved

He pointed out that the scientists and engineers who make up the committee are appointed for six years so that they will be above partisan influences. Most of the present committee members, he added, were appointed under the Eisenhower administration. Except for a few people, Ramsey said the committee was the same group which chose to present last year's prize to Edward Teller, one of the principal hostile witnesses in Oppenheimer's 1954 security review.

He said he thought if the Committee were pressured to nominate a particular candidate, it would "bend over backward" to choose someone else.

The General Advisory Committee voted unanimously at a meeting last month to give this year's prize to Oppenheimer. At a meeting on March 25, the five-man AEC unanimously approved the committee's recommendation and submitted the Oppenheimer nomination to the White House. It was quickly approved by President Kennedy.

Currently director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Oppenheimer graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1926 after three years of study. He recalls the college as an intellectual paradise. "I loved it," he said later. "I took more courses than I was supposed to, lived in the stacks, just raided the place intellectually."