2023-07-21 15:04:47
J. Robert Oppenheimer was scientific director of one of the most important and secret projects in human history, the Manhattan Project. From his laboratory in Los Alamos he had to achieve the fission of the atom for military purposes before the Nazis: the atomic bomb. He made it. But then there were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and J. Robert Oppenheimer has been carrying a historical responsibility ever since. Who saves you? Who condemns him?
Nolan movie star
Based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Christopher Nolan has directed the film Oppenheimer about the figure of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The film narrates the role of Oppenheimer in the construction of the first atomic bomb in 1945. The premiere has once again activated his leadership.
Oppenheimer was a brilliant American physicist born in New York on April 22, 1904 and died in Princeton (New Jersey) on February 18, 1967, a victim of laryngeal cancer. He studied Chemistry at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude. Subsequently, he traveled to Europe where he studied Physics at Cambridge (United Kingdom) to finally obtain his PhD at the University of Göttingen (Germany) under the supervision of Max Born, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics.
In the years before World War II he was a professor at the University of California until in 1942 he was recruited by General Leslie R. Groves as scientific director of the newly created Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Trinity and the beginning of the nuclear age
The Manhattan Project was a gigantic military-scientific initiative whose sole objective was to achieve the atomic weapon. This task was accomplished when the first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, was detonated on July 16, 1945 in a remote area of the New Mexico desert.
The task entrusted to Oppenheimer was to coordinate from Los Alamos the very large group of scientists, engineers, military and civilian personnel who worked in more than a dozen research centers spread mainly throughout the United States. For this reason, and although important contributions in atomic and molecular physics are recognized, Oppenheimer has gone down in history for having been one of the main promoters of the Manhattan Project, perhaps its best-known face, and for this reason nicknamed the father of the bomb. atomic.
Following the success of Trinity’s trial, the rest of the story is sadly known. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 120,000 people died immediately from the bomb blast. Many more later died from injuries and radiation.
Explosion of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan) George R. Caron and Charles Levy / Wikimedia Commons
Oppenheimer opted to drop the bombs
In addition to his role as director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Oppenheimer played an important role in the group that forced the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan before the administration of then-President Truman. This decision, made against many close voices who bet on an intimidating first tactical use of the atomic weapon, marked the rest of his life.
After the end of the war, in 1946 the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created, an agency to control research on atomic weapons. Oppenheimer was named chairman of its advisory committee. From this rostrum, and quite possibly conditioned by the devastating effect of the bombs dropped on Japan, Oppenheimer dedicated a large part of his efforts to defending nuclear non-proliferation and trying to stop the arms race undertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union.
the witch hunt
From that moment his problems began. This pacifist position, as well as a past of communist sympathies, led him to be persecuted and investigated by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. As a consequence of this persecution, in 1954 the AEC revoked his security clearance due to alleged communist connections.
Lost all his political influence, Oppenheimer resumed his teaching and research work in physics. Finally, in 1963, Oppenheimer’s friends managed to get President John F. Kennedy to award him the Enrico Fermi Award, a “presidential” award from the US government. This award was a gesture of political rehabilitation. It was not until 2022 when it was shown that Oppenheimer had been one more victim of the witch hunt carried out by McCarthyist sectors of the American government during the cold war.
At first we may think that Oppenheimer was a demon, a villain who opened the Pandora’s box of atomic power and forced its use against Japan. However, perhaps we have to do a calmer reasoning, a mental game that leads us to get into Oppenheimer’s shoes, in the historical context that he had to live and in the decisions that he was forced to make.
We should ask ourselves if among all the options that were available, the ones that Oppenheimer took were the most successful or not. The only rule we must follow in this game is that not making decisions is not a valid option. The answers are all valid and very possibly all of equally terrible consequences to those taken by Oppenheimer.
Beyond the elegant aesthetic typical of the 50s of the 20th century, perhaps the attraction that the figure of Oppenheimer exerts on us lies in the fact that he reduces to his only person the responsibility for actions that were taken by many. Actions with devastating consequences, as if taken by a hero, a new Prometheus, and which undoubtedly forever modulated the world in which we live.
Oppenheimer himself knew this very early on and, after the detonation of Trinity, remembered the words of the Bhagavad-gita, an important Hindu sacred text (considered one of the most important religious classics in the world):
“Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
***This article was originally published onThe Conversation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jose Pablo Salas Ilarraza
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