Oppenheimer's recommendation letter for Richard Feynman
"To label the letter a glowing recommendation would be an understatement ..."<p>"He is ... extremely normal in all respects ..."<p>That doesn't seem so "glowing", unless it's 1943 government employee code for "not gay, not a communist, and not anything else that could get your university into trouble, mister".<p>EDIT: To understand the political climate of that era, consider that Turing and Oppenheimer got into lots of trouble because of actual, or perceived, homosexuality and communist sympathy, respectively. So, it is certainly not a stretch of the imagination to think that something as innocuous as "extremely normal in all respects" could be code for "not gay, not a communist" and not anything else that a university might care about in those days.