The real story of Robert Oppenheimer, a phenomenon after Christopher Nolan’s film

2023-09-13 06:04:13

Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 in New York, into a family of Jewish origin. He studies Philosophy, Literature and Languages, but quickly becomes interested in Physics. He graduated in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge in 1925, and in 1926 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen (Germany) to study physics with Max Born.

Despite never belonging to the Communist Party, in 1934 he allocated part of his salary to help physicists fleeing Nazi Germany, and in 1936 he helped financially, with part of his inheritance, the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. These facts, along with his relationship with Jean Tatlock (psychiatrist, activist and writer for Communist Party publications), lead the FBI to consider him a suspect of anti-American activities and he appears on the United States Preventive Detention Index. Joined.

In 1938, German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann managed to split an atom by bombarding uranium nuclei with neutrons, a process later called “nuclear fission.” This fact caused, in the context of World War II, the American scientific community to alert the Government of the danger that Germany would be able to manufacture a nuclear bomb, so the Government of the United States entered the scientific race with the aim of get it first.

Lieutenant General Leslie Groves was in charge of launching the ‘Manhattan Project’, aimed at developing the bomb, and, against all odds due to his background, he chose Robert Oppenheimer to direct the project. He was a very reputable military man and had also supervised the construction of the Pentagon.

In 1942 the Manhattan Project began and in 1943 a base laboratory was built in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Robert Oppenheimer brought together the most cutting-edge scientists and physicists under his leadership to work on the different aspects of the future bomb, including which include Isaac Rabi, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller (who would later become the father of the Hydrogen Bomb or H-Bomb).

On July 16, 1945, the team of scientists successfully detonated the “Trinity” test at the Alamogordo base, in the New Mexico desert. The achievement makes clear the viability of the atomic bomb, and the scientific community is divided between joy at the success achieved and moral doubts over the impact of the invention. Robert Oppenheimer himself narrated that at that moment a quote from the sacred Hindu text Bhagavad Gita came to mind: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

A few days later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in Hiroshima, with the name ‘Little boy’, and another in Nagasaki, ‘Fat man’, causing the instant death of 70,000 and 40,000 people, respectively; despite the fact that more than 246,000 deaths are estimated.

Robert Oppenheimer directly expressed his feeling of guilt to President Harry S. Truman, stating that he had “blood on his hands,” a fact that provoked contempt from the White House.

This, added to his reluctance to develop the Hydrogen Bomb, ended up leading to his fall from grace, and in 1953 he was accused of maintaining links with communism, and his security credentials were withdrawn.

In 1963 his contribution to Science was recognized and President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Enrico Fermi Prize from the Atomic Energy Commission. Robert Oppenheimer died in 1966 as a result of throat cancer.