Oppenheimer's relationship with Chevalier, and Chevalier's relationship with a possible recruiter for Soviet intelligence, figured prominently in a 1954 hearing of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on Oppenheimer's security clearance. At that hearing, Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked.
When he was in his twenties Chevalier felt attracted by the romantic aspects of seafaring. He embarked as a deckhand on one of the last commercial sailing ships, the four-masted U.S. schooner Rosamond, for a voyage to the southern ocean and Cape Town. Chevalier wrote a vivid and nostalgic testimony of this end of the age of sail in his book The Last Voyage of the Schooner Rosamond.
Chevalier met Oppenheimer in 1937 at Berkeley while he was an associate professor of Romance languages. Together, Chevalier and Oppenheimer founded the Berkeley branch of a teachers' union, which provided benefits for leftist causes.[3]
Chevalier informed Oppenheimer in 1942 of a discussion he had with George C. Eltenton that disturbed him considerably and that he thought Oppenheimer ought to know about. It was regarding Soviet attempts through Eltenton to penetrate the Manhattan Project.[4] That short conversation, Oppenheimer's belated reporting of it, and attempts to obscure the identity of Chevalier, would later become one of the key issues in Oppenheimer's 1954 security hearing in front of the Atomic Energy Commission, which resulted in the revocation of his security clearance.[5]
Chevalier had four children from three marriages. From 1922 to 1931 he was married to Ruth Bosley, from 1931 to 1950 to Barbara Lansburgh, and finally to Carol Lansburgh in 1952.
Later life and death
After the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities hearing, Chevalier lost his job at Berkeley in 1950. Unable to find another professorship in the United States, he moved to France, where he continued to work as a translator.
Chevalier returned to the United States briefly in July 1965, to attend his daughter's wedding in San Francisco.[2]
Chevalier died in 1985 in Paris at the age of 83. The cause of death was not reported.[8]
Broad, William J. "Father of A-bomb was Communist, book claims". The New York Times, September 8, 2002. p. A7.
Gray, Gordon. In the matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: transcript of hearing before Personnel Security Board. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954, p. 4-6.
Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Holt, 2002.
"Haakon Chevalier, 83, Author and Translator". The New York Times. July 11, 1985. Section B, p. 6.
"Metro; Deaths Elsewhere". Washington Post, July 11, 1985, p. C7.
