Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American physicist of German-Jewish origin, and the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons, at the secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. Known colloquially as "the father of the atomic bomb", Oppenheimer lamented the weapon's killing power after it was used to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he was a chief advisor to the newly created Atomic Energy Commission and used that position to lobby for international control of atomic energy and to avert the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. After invoking the ire of many politicians and scientists with his outspoken political opinions during the Red Scare, he had his security clearance revoked in a much-publicized and politicized hearing in 1954. Though stripped of his direct political influence, Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work in physics. A decade later, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of rehabilitation.

The Manhattan Project

When World War II started, Oppenheimer eagerly became involved in the efforts to develop an atomic bomb which were already taking up much of the time and facilities of Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. In 1941, Lawrence, Vannevar Bush, Arthur Compton, and James Conant were trying to wrest the bomb project from the Uranium Committee established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, because they felt it was proceeding too slowly. Oppenheimer was invited to take over work on neutron calculations, a task which he threw himself into with full vigor, renouncing what he called his "left-wing wanderings" to abandon himself to his responsibilities (though many of his friends and students were still quite radical). When the U.S. Army was given jurisdiction over the bomb effort, now called the Manhattan Project, project director General Leslie R. Groves (who had just finished directing the construction of the Pentagon) appointed Oppenheimer as its scientific director, to the surprise of many. Groves knew of Oppenheimer's potential security problems, but thought that Oppenheimer was the best man to direct a diverse team of scientists and would be unaffected by his past political leanings.

Related Topics:
World War II - Atomic bomb - Radiation Laboratory - 1941 - Vannevar Bush - Arthur Compton - James Conant - Franklin D. Roosevelt - 1939 - U.S. Army - Manhattan Project - General Leslie R. Groves - Pentagon

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Los Alamos

One of Oppenheimer's first acts was to host a summer school for bomb theory at his building in Berkeley. The mix of European physicists and his own students—a group including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinski, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller—busied themselves calculating what needed to be done, and in what order, to make the bomb. When Teller put forward the remote possibility that the bomb would generate enough heat to ignite the atmosphere (an event that was soon shown to be impossible by Bethe), Oppenheimer nevertheless was concerned enough to meet up with Arthur Compton in Michigan to discuss the situation. At the time, research for the project was going on at many different universities and laboratories across the country, presenting a problem for both security and cohesion. Oppenheimer and Groves decided that they needed a centralized, secret research laboratory. Scouting for a site, Oppenheimer was drawn to New Mexico, not far from his ranch. On a flat mesa near Santa Fe, the Los Alamos laboratory was hastily built, a rag-tag collection of barracks and mud. There Oppenheimer coaxed and collected a group of the most brilliant physicists of his day, including Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Robert R. Wilson, and Victor Weisskopf, as well as Bethe and Teller. His wife gave birth there to their second child, Katherine (called Toni), in 1944.

Related Topics:
Robert Serber - Emil Konopinski - Felix Bloch - Hans Bethe - Edward Teller - Arthur Compton - Michigan - Mesa - Santa Fe - Los Alamos - Enrico Fermi - Richard Feynman - Robert R. Wilson - Victor Weisskopf - 1944

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Oppenheimer was noted for his mastery of all scientific aspects of the project and for his efforts to control the inevitable cultural conflicts between scientists and the military. He was an iconic figure to his fellow scientists, as much a figurehead of what they were working towards as a scientific director. Victor Weisskopf put it thus:

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:"He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time."

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All the while, Oppenheimer was under investigation by both the FBI and the Manhattan Project's internal security arm for his past left-wing associations. He was also followed by an FBI agent during an unannounced trip to California in 1943 to meet his former girlfriend, Jean Tatlock. In August 1943, Oppenheimer told Manhattan Project security agents that three of his students had been solicited for nuclear secrets by a friend of his with Communist connections. When pressed on the issue in later interviews with General Groves and security agents, he identified the friend as Haakon Chevalier, a Berkeley professor of French literature. Oppenheimer would be asked for interviews related to the "Chevalier incident", and he often gave contradictory and equivocating statements, telling Groves that only one person had been actually been approached, and that that person was his brother Frank. But Groves still thought Oppenheimer too important to the ultimate Allied goals to oust him over this suspicious behavior.

Related Topics:
FBI - California - 1943

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Trinity

The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, which Oppenheimer named "Trinity", which he later said was after one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. According to the historian Gregg Herken, this naming could have been an allusion to Jean Tatlock (who had introduced him to Donne when they had dated in the 1930s), who had committed suicide a few months previously. He later recalled that while witnessing the explosion he thought of a verse from the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita:

Related Topics:
Nuclear explosion - Alamogordo - July 16 - 1945 - Trinity - John Donne - Sonnets - Hindu - Bhagavad Gita

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:If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one...

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Years later he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time:

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:"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that one way or another."

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According to his brother, at the time he simply exclaimed, "It worked." News of the successful test was rushed to President Harry S. Truman, who would try to use it as leverage at the upcoming Potsdam Conference on the fate of post-war Europe.

Related Topics:
Harry S. Truman - Potsdam Conference

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Japan

Though the initial impetus for the development of the bomb—a perceived arms race with Nazi Germany—had been shown unnecessary (when the German program was discovered to be stillborn by the Manhattan Project's ALSOS investigation), Oppenheimer and his scientists pressed on.

Related Topics:
Nazi Germany - ALSOS

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The scientist-administrators were divided on whether and how to use the now-tested weapon. Lawrence initially favored not using the weapon on a live target, arguing that a demonstration alone would be enough to convince the Japanese government of the futility of continuing the war. Oppenheimer and many of the military advisors strongly disagreed with this assessment. Oppenheimer feared that if it were announced where such a demonstration might occur, the enemy might move American POWs or other human shields into the region. To other physicists, including Teller and Leo Szilard, using the weapon on a civilian area would be a moral horror. A petition was circulated at the labs in Los Alamos and Oak Ridge pleading that use of the bomb against civilians would be immoral and unnecessary. Oppenheimer opposed the petition and warned Szilard and Teller not to impede the project. It is uncertain how much stock the American government and military put in the opinions of the scientists on the weapon they had created.

Related Topics:
POW - Leo Szilard - Oak Ridge

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On August 6, 1945, the "Little Boy" uranium bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The bombs killed hundreds of thousands of civilians immediately and many more over time.

Related Topics:
August 6 - 1945 - Little Boy - Uranium - Hiroshima - Japan - Fat Man - Plutonium - Nagasaki

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The pride which Oppenheimer had felt after the successful "Trinity" test was soon replaced by guilt and horror, though he never said that he regretted making the weapon. During his only visit to postwar Japan in 1960, he was asked by a reporter whether he felt any guilt on developing the bomb. Oppenheimer quipped, "It's not that I don't feel bad about it. It's just that I don't feel worse today than what I felt yesterday."

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:See also: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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