So, who is Oppenheimer? Oppenheimer is a physicist known for his discovery of the atomic bomb. This earned him the nickname 'Father of the Atomic Bomb.'
Who is Oppenheimer?
Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss in the film "Oppenheimer" (Universal Pictures). Julius Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Oppenheimer, was born in New York on April 22, 1904, as quoted from the Atomic Archive.
He was the son of Julius S. Oppenheimer, a wealthy German textile merchant, and Ella Friedman, an artist of Jewish descent. Oppenheimer studied chemistry at Harvard University in 1922. However, he became more interested in physics. He conducted nuclear-related research at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. At the age of 22, Oppenheimer earned his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen.
Oppenheimer established American theoretical physics schools and conducted significant research in astrophysics, nuclear physics, spectroscopy, and quantum field theory. He was also the first person to write a paper on black holes. In the 1940s, Oppenheimer built a nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and employed 3,000 people to create the atomic bomb.
This earned him the title of the Father of the Atomic Bomb. He spent his later life as a scientific researcher and passed away from throat cancer on February 18, 1967, in Princeton, New Jersey. Oppenheimer had a partner named Katherine 'Kitty' Puening, a former member of the Communist Party and a student at Berkeley. They got married in 1940.
The couple had two children, Peter, born in 1941, and their second child, Katherine, born three years later. The design and testing of that bomb prototype eventually led to the creation of the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man, which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
However, he was later accused of being involved with the Soviets due to his connections with some friends and acquaintances who were government agents for the Soviet Union.
In a security hearing in 1954, Oppenheimer was found not guilty of treason. Nevertheless, he was denied access to classified military information, and his contract as an advisor to the United States Atomic Energy Commission was canceled.
Did Oppenheimer Regret creating the atomic bomb??
Before the atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, claiming tens of thousands of lives, Oppenheimer was once quoted, which has since been widely interpreted as regret.
On July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer's team successfully conducted a test explosion of an atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico. That morning, from a distance, he witnessed the effects of the explosion, with a mushroom cloud soaring into the sky. In a television interview, Oppenheimer expressed a statement that some people believed to be a form of his regret.
"We knew the world would not be the same (after the discovery of the atomic bomb). Some people laughed, some people cried, and most remained silent," said Oppenheimer.
"I remembered a line from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince to fulfill his duty (to go into battle) and takes on his multi-armed form (Vishvarupa) and says to him, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another," he added. Lansing Lamont, in his book "Day of Trinity," revealed Oppenheimer's feelings about the atomic bomb he created, "Oh God, these affairs (related to the atomic bomb) are truly remorseless to my heart."
However, it is not entirely clear whether his expressions indicate genuine regret or not."