The world must leave room for people such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Alan Turing

The movie “Oppenheimer” reminds us that a healthy society must leave room for people who face down power to pursue truth, who introduce new ways of thinking or who choose to follow alternative life paths. A brilliant but eccentric scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer led the world into the Atomic Age only to run afoul of government investigators. He also calls to mind a similar account in Great Britain in which Alan Turing, who led the world into the computer age and helped crack the German military codes in World War II, was convicted on a morals charge and eventually took his own life. Both men ...