Army called on Oppenheimer to head up the secret lab where the bomb would be tested. As he endeavored to figure out what would need to happen to trigger and sustain the kind of neutron-chain reaction needed to create a nuclear explosion, Oppenheimer’s superiors were impressed by his wide-ranging knowledge, ambition, and ability to work with, and inspire, other scientists. He was a voracious learner outside of the sciences, too, learning Sanskrit, studying religion, and aligning himself with a variety of progressive causes.Īfter the United States joined the Allies in 1941, Oppenheimer was asked to participate in the top-secret Manhattan Project, whose aim was to develop an atomic weapon. The young physicist “Oppie” had soon rubbed shoulders with the greatest scientific figures of his age, and his academic work advanced quantum theory and predicted everything from the neutron to the black hole. He graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude after just three years of study, then studied theoretical physics at both Cambridge University and the University of Göttingen in Germany, where he gained his doctorate at age 23. ( How the advent of nuclear weapons changed the course of history.) From child prodigy to the Manhattan Projectīorn in New York City in 1904, Julius Robert Oppenheimer was the son of German Jewish immigrants who found wealth in the textile importing trade. Here’s how Oppenheimer birthed-and questioned-the atomic bomb. ![]() Robert Oppenheimer’s moonshot project to build an atomic bomb in a top-secret lab in the New Mexico desert-and his lifelong qualms about the nuclear age he ushered in.ĭid the legendary physicist really regret his nuclear creation? The truth is as complicated as the science behind the bomb. ![]() This is the central question of the upcoming film Oppenheimer, which recounts American scientist J. But what happens when a scientist comes to regret the knowledge he’s unleashed? ![]() New scientific discoveries can ignite curiosity, explain the unknown, and even improve the world.
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