This paper explores how the humanities shape our understanding of science and technology, examining the example of the US physicist Robert Oppenheimer. It analyses how Oppenheimer raised questions about human values as a postwar public intellectual at a time when Cold War imperatives were driving scientists to develop weapons of mass destruction. The paper closes with a consideration of how novels and film – notably, the recent biopic of Oppenheimer – frame imaginative and ethical reflections on the dilemma posed by Bertrand Russell: “Whether science will prove to have been a blessing or a curse to mankind, is to my mind, still a doubtful question.”

Jason Harding is Head of the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. He arrived from Durham University, where he had lectured since 2006 and was promoted to full Professor in 2017. He is the author or editor of seven books, including a study of British literary journalism, The Criterion (OUP 2002), The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (CUP 2017) and he edited a volume in the award-winning The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot (Faber 2015). He is currently completing the first full-length book on Encounter magazine for Princeton University Press.

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