Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), "the father of the atomic bomb", worked on the first nuclear weapons before becoming a government advisor.
Born	April 22, 1904 New York, New York, U.S.
Died	February 18, 1967 (aged 62) Princeton, New Jersey
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Ashkenazi Jewish
Fields	Physicist
Institutions	Manhattan Project University of California, Berkeley California Institute of Technology Institute for Advanced Study
Alma mater	Harvard University University of Cambridge University of Göttingen
Doctoral advisor	Max Born
Doctoral students	Willis Lamb David Bohm Robert Christy Melba Phillips Philip Morrison Siegfried Wouthuysen
Other notable students	Stan Frankel Samuel W. Alderson
Known for	Atomic bomb development Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit Oppenheimer-Phillips process
Notable awards	Enrico Fermi Award
Notes Brother of physicist Frank Oppenheimer

J. Events 1500 - Portuguese Navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral becomes the first European to sight Brazil. Year 1904 ( MCMIV) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year starting on The City of New York New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Events 3102 BC - Epoch (origin of the Kali Yuga. 1229 - The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II Holy Year 1967 ( MCMLXVII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. See also Princeton Township New Jersey, Borough of Princeton New Jersey Princeton Borough New Jersey Princeton Township New Jersey this New Jersey ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim ( Hebrew: אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים, ˌaʃkəˈnazim sing A physicist is a Scientist who studies or practices Physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, Coeducational research university located in Pasadena The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton New Jersey, United States is a center for theoretical research Alma mater is Latin for "nourishing mother" It was used in Ancient Rome as a title for the mother Goddess, and in Medieval The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University) located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the The University of Göttingen ( German: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) is a University in the city of Göttingen, Germany. A doctorate is an Academic degree that indicates the highest level of academic achievement Max Born (11 December 1882 &ndash 5 January 1970 was a German Physicist and Mathematician who was instrumental in the development of Quantum Willis Eugene Lamb Jr ( July 12, 1913 &ndash May 15, 2008) was a Physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American Robert F Christy (born 1916 in Vancouver is an American Theoretical physicist and later Astrophysicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Melba Newell Phillips ( February 1, 1907 - November 8, 2004) was an American physicist and science educator Philip Morrison, (born 7 November 1915 in Somerville New Jersey &ndash died 22 April 2005 in Cambridge Massachusetts Stanley Phillips "Stan" Frankel (1919 – May 1978 was an American computer scientist Samuel W Alderson ( October 21, 1914 – February 11 2005) was an inventor best known for his development of the Crash test dummy A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. The Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff ( TOV) limit is an upper bound to the mass of stars composed of neutron-degenerate matter ( Neutron stars. The Oppenheimer-Phillips process or strip reaction is a special type of Nuclear reaction. The Enrico Fermi Award is a US government "Presidential" award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development use or production Frank Friedman Oppenheimer ( August 14, 1912  &ndash February 3, 1985) was an American Physicist who worked on the Robert Oppenheimer^[1][2] (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Events 1500 - Portuguese Navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral becomes the first European to sight Brazil. Year 1904 ( MCMIV) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year starting on Events 3102 BC - Epoch (origin of the Kali Yuga. 1229 - The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II Holy Year 1967 ( MCMLXVII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Theoretical physics employs Mathematical models and Abstractions of Physics in an attempt to explain experimental data taken of the natural world Physics (Greek Physis - φύσις in everyday terms is the Science of Matter and its motion. The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley He is widely known for his role as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project: the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons at the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a New Mexico ( is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. For this reason he is universally remembered as "the father of the atomic bomb". A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where his Los Alamos team first tested the bomb, Oppenheimer famously quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: "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. Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. "

After the war Oppenheimer was a chief advisor to the newly created United States 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. The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control Arms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development production stockpiling Proliferation, and usage of Weapons especially Weapons of mass The nuclear Arms race was a competition for supremacy in Nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 After provoking the ire of many politicians with his outspoken political opinions during the Red Scare, he had his security clearance revoked in a much-publicized and politicized hearing in 1954. McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s For use by the United Nations, see Security Clearance (UN A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to Classified Though stripped of his direct political influence Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work in physics. Physics (Greek Physis - φύσις in everyday terms is the Science of Matter and its motion. A decade later President Lyndon B. Johnson presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation. The President of the United States is the Head of state and Head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in United States by The Enrico Fermi Award is a US government "Presidential" award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development use or production Political rehabilitation is the process by which a member of a political organization or government who has fallen into disgrace is restored to public life

As a scientist Oppenheimer is remembered most for being the chief founder of the American School of Theoretical Physics while at the University of California, Berkeley. A scientist, in the broadest sense refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire Knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley At the Institute for Advanced Study he would hold Einstein's old position of Senior Professor of Theoretical Physics. The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton New Jersey, United States is a center for theoretical research Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical Oppenheimer's notable achievements in physics include the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, work on electron-positron theory, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process, quantum tunneling, relativistic quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, black holes, and cosmic rays. In Quantum chemistry, the computation of the energy and Wavefunction of an average-size Molecule is a formidable task that is alleviated by the Born-Oppenheimer The electron is a fundamental Subatomic particle that was identified and assigned the negative charge in 1897 by J The positrons or antielectron is the Antiparticle or the Antimatter counterpart of the Electron. The Oppenheimer-Phillips process or strip reaction is a special type of Nuclear reaction. In Quantum mechanics, quantum tunnelling is a nanoscopic phenomenon in which a particle violates the principles of Classical mechanics by penetrating a Special relativity (SR (also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the Physical theory of Measurement in Inertial Quantum mechanics is the study of mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the Atomic scale such as Molecules Atoms Electrons In quantum field theory (QFT the forces between particles are mediated by other particles A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the Gravitational field is so powerful that nothing not even Electromagnetic radiation (e For the 1962 Bruce Conner film see Cosmic Ray (film Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on

Childhood and Education

Robert Oppenheimer was born to Julius S. Oppenheimer, a wealthy textile importer, who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888, and Ella Friedman, a painter. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. He had one brother, Frank, eight years younger, who also became a physicist. Frank Friedman Oppenheimer ( August 14, 1912  &ndash February 3, 1985) was an American Physicist who worked on the

Oppenheimer studied at the Ethical Culture Society School. The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, known as Fieldston is a private "independent" school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory It was founded by Felix Adler to promote a form of ethical training based on the Ethical Culture movement. Felix Adler ( August 13, 1851 &ndash April 24, 1933) was a Jewish Rationalist Intellectual, popular lecturer Ethical Culture is a nontheistic Religion established by Felix Adler in 1876 Informally its motto was "Deeds before creeds. " At the school he studied mathematics, science, Greek, French literature, and other subjects. Oppenheimer was a versatile scholar. He was interested in the humanities, in psychotherapy, and in science. Psychotherapy is an Interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living He entered Harvard University one year late because he had suffered an attack of colitis. Ulcerative colitis ( Colitis ulcerosa, UC) is a form of Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD To recuperate he went with a former English teacher to New Mexico. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States New Mexico ( is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. There he fell in love with horseback riding, the mountains, and the plateau of the Southwest. The horse ( Equus caballus) is a hoofed ( Ungulate) Mammal, one of eight living species of the family Equidae. The Southwestern area of the United States could be defined as the states west of the Mississippi River, with the qualification of a certain northern limit such as the 37 At Harvard he majored in chemistry. Chemistry (from Egyptian kēme (chem meaning "earth") is the Science concerned with the composition structure and properties He also continued his studies of Greek, architecture, classics, art, and literature. He made up for the delay caused by his illness by taking six courses each term and graduating summa cum laude in just three years. Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an Academic degree was earned

In his first year as an undergraduate at Harvard Oppenheimer was admitted to graduate standing in physics on the basis of independent study. As an undergraduate he never took a class in physics. During a course on thermodynamics taught by Percy Bridgman Oppenheimer found himself drawn to experimental physics. In Physics, thermodynamics (from the Greek θερμη therme meaning " Heat " and δυναμις dynamis meaning " Percy Williams Bridgman ( April 21, 1882 &ndash August 20, 1961) was an American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur W. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Ryder at Berkeley. He read the Bhagavad Gita in the original language. Later he cited it as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life. ^[3]

Europe

After graduating from Harvard Oppenheimer was encouraged to go to Europe for future study. A world-class education in modern physics was not then available in the United States. He was accepted for postgraduate work at Ernest Rutherford's famed Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge under the eminent but aging J.J. Thomson. Ernest Rutherford 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, PC, FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937 was a New Zealand Physicist The Cavendish Laboratory is the University of Cambridge 's Department of Physics, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences The city of Cambridge (ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒ is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England Sir Joseph John “JJ” Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 &ndash 30 August 1940 was a British Physicist and Nobel laureate

Oppenheimer's clumsiness in the laboratory made it apparent that his forte was not experimental but rather theoretical physics. So he left in 1926 for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born. The University of Göttingen ( German: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) is a University in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Max Born (11 December 1882 &ndash 5 January 1970 was a German Physicist and Mathematician who was instrumental in the development of Quantum Göttingen was one of the top centers for theoretical physics in the world. Oppenheimer made a number of friends who would go on to great success, such as Werner Heisenberg, Pascual Jordan, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller. Werner Heisenberg (5 December 1901 in Würzburg &ndash1 February 1976 in Munich) was a German theoretical physicist best known for enunciating the Pascual Jordan (b October 18, 1902 in Hanover, Germany; d July 31, 1980 in Hamburg, Federal Republic Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15 1908 &ndash September 9 2003 was a Hungarian -American theoretical Physicist At Göttingen Oppenheimer was known for being a quick student. ^[4] However, he was also known for being too enthusiastic in discussions, sometimes to the point of taking over seminar sessions, a fact that irritated some of Max Born's pupils so much that they signed a petition to make Oppenheimer stay quiet during class (Born left it out on his desk where Oppenheimer could read it, and it was effective without a word needing to be said). In 1927 Oppenheimer obtained his Ph.D. at the young age of 22 at the University of Göttingen, supervised by Born. "PhD" redirects here for other uses see PhD (disambiguation. The University of Göttingen ( German: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) is a University in the city of Göttingen, Germany. After the oral exam for his Ph. D. , the professor administering it is reported to have said, "Phew, I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me. "^[5] At Göttingen, Oppenheimer published more than a dozen articles, including many important contributions to the then newly-developed quantum theory. Quantum mechanics is the study of mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the Atomic scale such as Molecules Atoms Electrons Most notably he and Born published a famous paper on the so-called "Born-Oppenheimer approximation," which separates nuclear motion from electronic motion in the mathematical treatment of molecules, an action which allows nuclear motion to be neglected in order to simplify calculations. In Quantum chemistry, the computation of the energy and Wavefunction of an average-size Molecule is a formidable task that is alleviated by the Born-Oppenheimer

Early professional work

In September 1927, Oppenheimer returned to Harvard as a young maven of mathematical physics and a National Research Council Fellow, and in early 1928 he studied at the California Institute of Technology. A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field who seeks to pass knowledge on to others Mathematical physics is the scientific discipline concerned with the interface of Mathematics and Physics. The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, Coeducational research university located in Pasadena

While at Caltech he received numerous invitations for teaching positions, and accepted an assistant professorship in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley In his words, "it was a desert", yet paradoxically a fertile place of opportunity. He maintained a joint appointment with Caltech, where he spent every spring term to avoid isolation from mainstream research. At Caltech, Oppenheimer struck a close friendship with Linus Pauling and they planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond, a field in which Pauling was a pioneer—apparently Oppenheimer would supply the mathematics and Pauling would interpret the results. Linus Carl Pauling (February 28 1901 – August 19 1994 was an American Scientist, Peace activist, Author and educator. However, this collaboration, and their friendship, was nipped in the bud when Pauling began to suspect that the theorist was becoming too close to his wife, Ava Helen. ^[6] Once when Pauling was at work, Oppenheimer had come to their place and blurted out an invitation to Ava Helen to join him on a tryst in Mexico. The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. She flatly refused and reported this incident to Pauling. This, and her apparent nonchalance about the incident, disquieted him, and he immediately cut off his relationship with the professor. Oppenheimer later invited Pauling to be the head of the Chemistry Division of the atomic bomb project but Pauling refused, saying that he was a pacifist. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb

In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited Paul Ehrenfest's institute at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, where he impressed those there by giving lectures in Dutch despite having little experience with the language. Paul Ehrenfest ( January 18, 1880 – September 25, 1933) was an Austrian Physicist and Mathematician, who Leiden University (Universiteit Leiden located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest University in The Netherlands. The Netherlands ( Dutch:, ˈnedərlɑnt is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands the Netherlands Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname There he was given the nickname of "Opje," which was later Anglicized by his students as "Oppie". From Leiden he continued on to Zurich, Switzerland to work with Wolfgang Pauli on problems relating to quantum theory and the continuous spectrum before heading back to the United States. Zürich (, Zürich German: Züri, Zurich, Zurigo; in English generally Zurich) is the largest city in Switzerland and capital of the Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation Oppenheimer highly respected and liked Pauli, and some of his own style and his critical approach to problems was said to be inspired by Pauli. During his time with Ehrenfest and Pauli, Oppenheimer polished his mathematical skills.

Before his Berkeley professorship began, Oppenheimer was diagnosed with a mild case of tuberculosis and, with his brother Frank, spent some weeks at a ranch in New Mexico, which he leased and eventually purchased. Tuberculosis (abbreviated as TB for tubercle bacillus or T u' b' erculosis Bacillus --> is a common Frank Friedman Oppenheimer ( August 14, 1912  &ndash February 3, 1985) was an American Physicist who worked on the When he heard the ranch was available for lease, he exclaimed, "Hot dog!"—and later on the name of the ranch became "Perro Caliente," which is the translation of "hot dog" into Spanish. ^[7] Later, Oppenheimer used to say that "physics and desert country" were his "two great loves", loves that would be combined when he directed the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos in New Mexico. ^[8]

He recovered from his tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley where he prospered as an advisor and collaborator to a generation of physicists who admired him for his intellectual virtuosity and broad interests. Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe later said about him:

He also worked closely with (and became good friends with) Nobel Prize winning experimental physicist Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping the experimentalists understand the data their machines were producing at the Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory. Ernest Orlando Lawrence ( August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American physicist and Nobel Laureate best known for his A cyclotron is a type of Particle accelerator. Cyclotrons accelerate Charged particles using a high- Frequency, alternating Voltage (potential The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ( LBNL) is a U

Oppenheimer became known as a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics, and developed a reputation for his erudition in physics, his eclecticism, his quick mind, his interest in languages and Eastern philosophy, and the eloquence and clarity with which he thought. But he was also emotionally troubled throughout his life, and professed to experiencing periods of depression. "I need physics more than friends," he once informed his brother. ^[10] A tall, thin chain smoker who often neglected to eat during periods of intellectual discomfort and concentration, Oppenheimer was marked by many of his friends as having a self-destructive tendency and, during numerous periods of his life, worried his colleagues and associates with his melancholy and insecurity. Chain smoking is the practice of lighting a new Cigarette for personal consumption immediately after one that is finished sometimes using the finished cigarette to light the When he was studying in Cambridge and had taken a vacation to meet up with his friend Francis Ferguson in Paris, a disturbing event had taken place. During a conversation in which Oppenheimer was narrating his frustration with experimental physics to Ferguson, he had suddenly leapt up and tried to strangle him. Although Ferguson easily fended off the attack, the episode had convinced Ferguson of his friend's deep psychological troubles. ^[11] Oppenheimer developed numerous affectations, seemingly in an attempt to convince those around him—or possibly himself—of his self-worth. He was said to be mesmerizing, hypnotic in private interaction but often frigid in more public settings. His associates fell into two camps: one that saw him as an aloof and impressive genius and an aesthete; another that saw him as a pretentious and insecure poseur. His students almost always fell into the former category, adopting "Oppie's" affectations, from his way of walking to talking and beyond—even trying to replicate his inclination for reading entire texts in their originally transcribed languages. ^[12]

Oppenheimer's intelligence and charisma attracted students from across the country to Berkeley to study theoretical physics.

Scientific work

Oppenheimer did important research in theoretical astronomy (especially as it relates to general relativity and nuclear theory), nuclear physics, spectroscopy, and quantum field theory (including its extension into quantum electrodynamics). Astronomy (from the Greek words astron (ἄστρον "star" and nomos (νόμος "law" is the scientific study General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of Gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916 Nuclear physics is the field of Physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of Atomic nuclei. Spectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between Radiation and Matter as a function of Wavelength (λ In quantum field theory (QFT the forces between particles are mediated by other particles Quantum electrodynamics ( QED) is a relativistic Quantum field theory of Electrodynamics. The formalism of relativistic quantum mechanics also attracted his attention, although because of the then existing well-known problem of the self-energy of the electron, he doubted the validity of quantum electrodynamics at high energies. Special relativity (SR (also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the Physical theory of Measurement in Inertial Quantum mechanics is the study of mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the Atomic scale such as Molecules Atoms Electrons In Theoretical physics and Quantum field theory a particle's self-energy \Sigma represents the contribution to the particle's Energy, or His best-known contribution, made as a graduate student, is the Born-Oppenheimer approximation mentioned above. In Quantum chemistry, the computation of the energy and Wavefunction of an average-size Molecule is a formidable task that is alleviated by the Born-Oppenheimer He also made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers and did work that eventually led toward descriptions of quantum tunneling. For the 1962 Bruce Conner film see Cosmic Ray (film Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on In Quantum mechanics, quantum tunnelling is a nanoscopic phenomenon in which a particle violates the principles of Classical mechanics by penetrating a His work on the Oppenheimer-Phillips process, involved in artificial radioactivity under bombardment by deuterons, has served as an important step in nuclear physics. The Oppenheimer-Phillips process or strip reaction is a special type of Nuclear reaction. Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is a Stable isotope of Hydrogen with a Natural abundance in the Oceans of Earth In the late 1930s, he, along with the help of Hartland Snyder, was the first to write papers suggesting the existence of what we today call black holes. A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the Gravitational field is so powerful that nothing not even Electromagnetic radiation (e In these papers, he demonstrated that there was a size limit (the so called Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit) to stars beyond which they would not remain stable as neutron stars, and would undergo gravitational collapse. The Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff ( TOV) limit is an upper bound to the mass of stars composed of neutron-degenerate matter ( Neutron stars. A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the Gravitational collapse of a massive Star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type After the Born-Oppenheimer approximation paper, these papers remain his most cited ones, and they were key in the rejuvenation of astrophysical research in the United States in the 1950s, mainly by John Wheeler. John Wheeler may refer to John Archibald Wheeler (1911&ndash2008 physicist John Wheeler (commerce (fl As early as 1930, he also wrote a paper essentially predicting the existence of the positron (which had been postulated by Paul Dirac), a formulation that he however did not carry to its natural outcome, because of his skepticism about the validity of the Dirac equation. The positrons or antielectron is the Antiparticle or the Antimatter counterpart of the Electron. In Physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic quantum mechanical wave equation formulated by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928 and provides As evidenced above, his work predicts many later finds, which include, further, the neutron, meson, and neutron star. This article is a discussion of neutrons in general For the specific case of a neutron found outside the nucleus see Free neutron. In Particle physics, a meson is a strongly interacting Boson &mdashthat is a Hadron with integer spin. A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the Gravitational collapse of a massive Star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type He was known also to have midwifed Robert Marshak's innovative 2-meson hypothesis which led to Cecil Frank Powell's breakthrough—and a Nobel Prize later (mentioned in the new Pulitzer Prize biography book, American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin). Robert Eugene Marshak ( October 11, 1916 – December 23, 1992) was an American Physicist dedicated to learning research and education A hypothesis (from Greek) consists either of a suggested explanation for a phenomenon (an event that is observable or of a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible Cecil Frank Powell ( December 5, 1903 &ndash August 9, 1969) was a British Physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate The Pulitzer Prize, ˈpʊlɨtsɚ PULL-it-sər is an American award regarded as the highest national honor in Newspaper journalism, Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize -winning Author and Columnist, best known for his biographies of political figures Martin J Sherwin is a Pulitzer Prize -winning American Historian. Even beyond the immense abstruseness of the topics he was expert in, Oppenheimer's papers were considered difficult to understand. Oppenheimer was very fond of using elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles though he was sometimes criticized for making mathematical mistakes, presumably out of haste.

Many people thought that Oppenheimer's discoveries and research were not commensurate with his inherent abilities and talents. They still considered him an outstanding physicist, but they did not place him at the very top rank of theorists who fundamentally challenged the frontiers of knowledge. ^[13] One reason for this could have been his diverse interests, which kept him from completely focusing on any individual topic for long enough to bring it to full fruition. His close confidant and colleague, Nobel Prize winner Isidor Rabi, later gave his own interpretation:

In spite of this, some people (such as the Nobel Prize winner physicist Luis Alvarez) have suggested that if he had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, Oppenheimer might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse, concerning neutron stars and black holes. Luis W Alvarez (June 13 1911 San Francisco California &ndash September 1 1988 was an American physicist and Inventor, who spent nearly Gravitational collapse in Astronomy is the inward fall of a massive body under the influence of the force of Gravity. ^[15][16] In retrospect, some physicists and historians consider this to be his most important contribution, though it was not taken up by other scientists in his own lifetime. ^[17] Interestingly, when the physicist and historian Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer about what he considered to be his most important scientific contributions, Oppenheimer cited his work on electrons and positrons, but did not mention anything about his work on gravitational contraction. Abraham (Bram Pais (May 19 1918 Amsterdam, The Netherlands &mdash July 28 2000 Copenhagen, Denmark) was a Dutch -born American ^[18]

Radical politics

During the 1920s, Oppenheimer kept himself aloof of worldly matters, and claimed not to have learned of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 until some time after the fact. The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the ’29 Crash, the Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of October 1929 Only when he became involved with Jean Tatlock, the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor, in 1936, did he show any interest in politics. Jean Tatlock had a brief romantic relationship with Manhattan Project scientific leader J Like many young intellectuals in the 1930s he became a supporter of social reforms which were later alleged to be communist ideas. Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based After inheriting over $300,000 (equivalent to about $4. 3 million in 2006 dollars) upon his father's death in 1937, he donated to many progressive efforts which were later branded as "left-wing" during the McCarthy era. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14 1908 – May 2 1957 was an American politician who served as a Republican U The majority of his allegedly radical work consisted of hosting fundraisers for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and other anti-fascist activity. The Second Spanish Republic was the system of government in Spain between April 14 1931, when King Alfonso XIII left the country The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted Coup d'état committed by parts of the army against the government of Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist and corporatist ideology He never openly joined the Communist Party, though he did pass money to liberal causes by way of acquaintances who were alleged to be Party members. The Communist Party of the United States of America ( CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist Political party in the United States. ^[19] Historian Gregg Herken has recently claimed to have evidence that Oppenheimer did interact with the Communist Party during the 1930s and early 1940s. ^[20]

Oppenheimer’s brother Frank, Frank’s wife Jackie,^[21] Oppenheimer’s own wife Kitty Oppenheimer (widow of Communist political commissar Joe Dallet, killed in the Spanish Civil War),^[22] his mistress, Jean Tatlock, and his landlady were all active members of the Communist Party. Jean Tatlock had a brief romantic relationship with Manhattan Project scientific leader J ^[23][24]

In addition, several of Oppenheimer’s graduate students at Berkeley, including Joe Weinberg, Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, David Bohm and Philip Morrison were Communist Party members. Ross Lomanitz (1921&ndash2003 was an American Physicist. He was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Bryan Texas. David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American Philip Morrison, (born 7 November 1915 in Somerville New Jersey &ndash died 22 April 2005 in Cambridge Massachusetts ^[25]

Oppenheimer laughingly agreed with a security agent's quip during an interview that he [Oppenheimer] was “a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast,” but he did not know he was being taped and that the words would more significantly be put into his own mouth in records presented at his trial a decade later, without informing him that the transcript was not being strictly followed. ^[26][27] He was a subscriber to the People’s World,^[28] a Communist Party organ, and he testified in 1954, “I was associated with the Communist movement. ”^[29]

In 1937–42, in the midst of the Great Purge and Hitler-Stalin pact, Oppenheimer was a member at Berkeley of what he called a "discussion group," which was later identified by fellow members Haakon Chevalier^[30][31] and Gordon Griffiths^[32] as a “closed” (secret) unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty. Great Purge (Большая чистка transliterated Bolshaya chistka) was a series of campaigns of Political repression and Persecution Haakon Maurice Chevalier (September 10 1901 &mdash July 4 1985 was an Author, Translator, and professor of French literature at the University If Oppenheimer was not a Communist, he was the only member of this group who was not. ^[33]

Surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded that J. Robert Oppenheimer attended a meeting in the home of self-proclaimed Communist Haakon Chevalier with the Communist Party’s California state chairman William Schneiderman and Isaac Folkoff, West Coast liaison between the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence, in Fall 1940, during the Hitler-Stalin pact. Haakon Maurice Chevalier (September 10 1901 &mdash July 4 1985 was an Author, Translator, and professor of French literature at the University The Communist Party of the United States of America ( CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist Political party in the United States. Isaac Folkoff was a senior member of the California Communist Party and West Coast liaison between Soviet intelligence and the Communist Party USA The NKVD ( НКВД, ru Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел ''Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del'') or People's Commissariat ^[34] Shortly thereafter, the FBI added Oppenheimer to its Custodial Detention Index, listed as “Nationalistic Tendency: Communist. Custodial Detention Index ( CDI) was based on a massive list of US residents compiled by FBI during 1939-1941 in the frame of a program called variously "Custodial ”^[35]

A 1943 FBI report summarizing recent surveillance reported that Hannah Peters, organizer of the Doctor's Branch of the Professional Section of the Communist Party, told Communist Party National Committee member Steve Nelson, the organizer for Alameda County, "that Dr. Stjepan Mesaros Steve Nelson is an alias of Stephen Mesarosh or Stjepan Mesaros ( 1 January 1903 &ndash December 1993 who was born in Chaglich OPPIE, believed by the informant to be J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER . . . could not be active in the Party at the present time. " The report continued, reporting that Alameda County Communist Party Secretary Bernadette Doyle proposed that the Alameda County Communist Party confer with the State Committee of the Communist Party regarding "the two OPPIES, inasmuch as they were regularly registered [as members of the Communist Party] and everyone in the county knew they were Communists. It is believed that the two OPPIES mentioned above had reference to subject J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER and his brother FRANK OPPENHEIMER. "^[36]

In a 1944 letter to Soviet Commissar for Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria, NKVD chief Boris Merkulov reported:

Merkulov added:

Many debates over Oppenheimer's Party membership or lack thereof have turned on very fine points; almost all historians agree he had strong socialist sympathies during this time, and interacted with Party members, though there is considerable dispute over whether he was officially a member of the Party or not. ^[39] Oppenheimer himself at his 1954 security clearance hearings denied being a member of the Communist Party, but identified himself as a fellow traveler, which he defined as someone who agrees with many of the goals of Communism, but without being willing to blindly follow orders from any Communist party apparatus. In some political contexts the term fellow traveler refers to a person who sympathizes with the beliefs of a particular organization but does not belong to that organization

Marriage and family life

In November 1940, Oppenheimer married Katherine ("Kitty") Puening Harrison, a radical Berkeley student and former Communist Party member. Harrison had been married twice previously, first to Joe Dallet, a Communist Party and union activist who was killed in the Spanish civil war. She divorced her second husband, a southern California doctor, to marry Oppenheimer.

By May 1941 they had their first child, Peter. Oppenheimer joked that the 8 lb. baby, born 7 months after their marriage, should be named "Pronto". ^[40] Their second child, Katherine (called Toni), was born in 1944, while Oppenheimer was scientific director of the Manhattan Project. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb

During his marriage, Oppenheimer continued his involvement with Jean Tatlock, though it is not clear if they continued their love affair. Jean Tatlock had a brief romantic relationship with Manhattan Project scientific leader J ^[41] Later their continued contact became an issue in Oppenheimer's security clearance hearings, due to Tatlock's communist associations.

The Manhattan Project

Main article: Manhattan Project

Oppenheimer's badge photo from Los Alamos. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a

When World War II started, Oppenheimer 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. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Ernest Lawrence's laboratory at UC Berkeley now known as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was also known as the Radiation Laboratory In 1941, Lawrence, Vannevar Bush, Arthur Compton, and James Conant worked to wrest the bomb project from the S-1 Uranium Committee, because they felt it was proceeding too slowly. Vannevar Bush ( March 11, 1890 &ndash June 30, 1974; pronounced "VAN-ee-var" ˈvæˌniː Arthur Holly Compton (September 10 1892 &ndash March 15 1962 was an American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect James Conant may refer to James Bryant Conant (1893-1978 American chemist and educational administrator James F The S-1 Uranium Committee was a Committee of the National Defense Research Committee that superseded the Briggs Advisory Committee on Uranium and later evolved into Oppenheimer was invited to take over work on fast neutron calculations, a task that he threw himself into with full vigor. At this time he renounced what he called his "left-wing wanderings" to concentrate on his responsibilities, though he continued to maintain friendships with many who were quite radical.

In 1942, the U.S. Army was given jurisdiction over the bomb effort, which was renamed as the Manhattan Engineering District, or Manhattan Project. The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb General Leslie R. Groves was appointed project director, and Groves, in turn, selected Oppenheimer as the project's scientific director. Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves ( August 17, 1896 &ndash July 13, 1970) was a United States Army Engineer Groves knew Oppenheimer would be viewed as a security risk, but thought that Oppenheimer was the best man to direct a diverse team of scientists and would be unaffected by his past political leanings.

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. Robert Serber ( March 14 1909 - June 1 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Emil John (Jan Konopinski ( December 25, 1911 in Michigan City, Indiana - May 26, 1990 in Bloomington, This page addresses only the Swiss physicist for the man accused of espionage see Felix Bloch (diplomatic officer Felix Bloch ( October 23 Hans Albrecht Bethe (/hans ˈalbʀɛçt ˈbeːtə/ ( July 2 1906 &ndash March 6, 2005) was a German - American Physicist Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15 1908 &ndash September 9 2003 was a Hungarian -American theoretical Physicist Teller put forward the remote possibility that the bomb would generate enough heat to ignite the atmosphere. While such an event was soon shown to be impossible by Bethe, Oppenheimer nevertheless was concerned enough to meet with Arthur Compton in Michigan to discuss the situation. Arthur Holly Compton (September 10 1892 &ndash March 15 1962 was an American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect Michigan ( is a Midwestern state of the United States of America. 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 in late 1942, Oppenheimer was drawn to New Mexico, not far from his ranch (the final site picked would be 40 miles from Perro Caliente). After Groves turned down a proposed site in a walled canyon, Oppenheimer suggested a site which he knew well: a flat mesa near Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was the site of a private boys' school called The Los Alamos Ranch School (Sp. A mesa ( Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic for "table" is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs Santa Fe ( Navajo: Yootó is the Capital of the state of New Mexico. New Mexico ( is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. Los Alamos Ranch School was a private Boarding school for boys near Otowi, New Mexico, in what would eventually become Los Alamos New Mexico Los Alamos means "The Cottonwoods"). Minutes after seeing the mesa site, Groves was convinced, and approached the owners to sell it. The Los Alamos laboratory was thus hastily built on the site of the school, taking over some of its buildings, but building many others in great haste. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a There Oppenheimer assembled a group of the top physicists of the time, which he referred to as the "luminaries. "^[42] Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman (then an unknown post-doctoral student), John von Neumann, Robert R. Wilson, and Victor Weisskopf, as well as Bethe and Teller, were already famous or would soon become famous. Richard Phillips Feynman (ˈfaɪnmən May 11 1918 – February 15 1988 was an American Physicist known for the Path integral formulation of quantum Robert Rathbun Wilson ( March 4, 1914 &ndash January 16, 2000) was an American Physicist who was a group leader of the Manhattan Weisskopf redirects here For people known under English version of that name see Whitehead.

A group of physicists at a wartime Los Alamos colloquium. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a In the front row are Norris Bradbury, John Manley, Enrico Fermi, and J. Norris Edwin Bradbury ( May 30, 1909 - August 20, 1997) was an American Physicist who was born in Santa Barbara, California John H Manley ( July 21, 1907 &ndash June 11, 1990) was an American Physicist who worked with J M. B. Kellogg (L-R). Oppenheimer is in the second row on the left; to the right in the photograph is Richard Feynman. Richard Phillips Feynman (ˈfaɪnmən May 11 1918 – February 15 1988 was an American Physicist known for the Path integral formulation of quantum

Oppenheimer at first had difficulty with organizational division of large groups, but soon rapidly learned the art of large-scale administration after he took up permanent residence on the mesa. He 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:

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 Army security agents during an unannounced trip to California in 1943 to meet his former girlfriend, Jean Tatlock, with whom he spent the night in her apartment. California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. ^[43]

The Chevalier incident

In August 1943, Oppenheimer volunteered to Manhattan Project security agents that three men at Los Alamos had been solicited for nuclear secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union, by a person he did not know who worked for Shell Oil, and who had Communist connections. He gave that person's name: George Eltenton. However, when pressed on the issue in later interviews with General Groves, who ordered him to give the name of these men and promised to keep their identity from the FBI, he finally identified the only contact who had approached him, as his friend Haakon Chevalier, a Berkeley professor of French literature who he said had mentioned the matter privately at a dinner at Oppenheimer's house. Haakon Maurice Chevalier (September 10 1901 &mdash July 4 1985 was an Author, Translator, and professor of French literature at the University Oppenheimer would be asked again in 1947 for interviews related to the "Chevalier incident," and he gave contradictory and equivocating statements, telling government agents that actually only one scientist had been approached at Los Alamos, and that person was himself. This was by Chevalier, who at the time had supposedly said that he had a potential conduit through Eltenton for information which could be passed to the Soviets. Oppenheimer claimed to have invented the other contacts in order to conceal the identity of Chevalier, whose identity he believed would be immediately apparent if he named only one contact, but whom he believed to be innocent of any disloyalty. General Groves during the war had thought Oppenheimer too important to the ultimate Allied goals to oust him over this suspicious behavior; he was, Groves reported, "absolutely essential to the project". ^[44] However, by 1947, Oppenheimer had now told two conflicting versions of this story, had both of them taped without his knowledge and importantly was taped in a later interview as admitting to have made up a deliberate lie in this first report.

All of this would remain suppressed by the government for another seven years. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer would continue to work for the government as an advisor on top secret nuclear weapons projects.

Trinity

The first nuclear test, which Oppenheimer designated "Trinity". Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness yield and explosive capability of Nuclear weapons Throughout the twentieth century most nations Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon.

Main article: Trinity test

See also: Bhagavad Gita#Influence of the Bhagavad Gita and Trinity test#Explosion

The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, the site of which Oppenheimer named "Trinity", Oppenheimer later said this name was from one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon. Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon. A nuclear explosion occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from an intentionally high-speed Nuclear reaction. Alamogordo is a city in Otero County, New Mexico, United States of America. Events 622 - The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 - Three Roman legates fractured relations between the Western and Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon. John Donne (pronounced like done, dʌn 1572 – 31 March 1631 was a Jacobean poet preacher and a major representative of the Metaphysical poets The sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in Lyric poetry from Europe. According to the historian Gregg Herken, this naming could have been an allusion to Jean Tatlock, who had committed suicide a few months previously, and had in the 1930s introduced Oppenheimer to Donne's work. ^[45] Oppenheimer later recalled that while witnessing the explosion he thought of a verse from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita:

Years later he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time: It is the famous verse, which begins as "Kalo Asmi" and was quoted by Oppenheimer after the successful detonation of the first nuclear weapon. He translated it as "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. "

Oppenheimer later would be persuaded to quote again in 1965 for a television broadcast:

Gen. Leslie R. Groves, Oppenheimer, and others at remains of the Trinity shot tower a few weeks later. Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves ( August 17, 1896 &ndash July 13, 1970) was a United States Army Engineer

According to his brother, at the time Oppenheimer simply exclaimed, "It worked. " A contemporary account by Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, who was present in the control bunker at the site with Oppenheimer, summarized his reaction as follows:

News of the successful test was rushed to President Harry S. Truman, then at the Potsdam Conference, who authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, Germany, from July 16, The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at Oppenheimer later became an important figure in the debates on the repercussions of this act.

Postwar activities

Overnight, Oppenheimer became a national spokesman for science, and emblematic of a new type of technocratic power. Nuclear physics became a powerful force as all governments of the world began to realize the strategic and political power that came with nuclear weapons and their horrific implications. Like many scientists of his generation, he felt that security from atomic bombs would come only from some form of transnational organization (such as the newly formed United Nations), which could institute a program to stifle a nuclear arms race. The United Nations ( UN) is an International organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in International law, International security The nuclear Arms race was a competition for supremacy in Nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective

Atomic Energy Commission

After the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created in 1946, as a civilian agency in control of nuclear research and weapons issues, Oppenheimer was immediately appointed as the Chairman of its General Advisory Committee (GAC) and left the directorship of Los Alamos. The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control From this position he advised on a number of nuclear-related issues, including project funding, laboratory construction, and even international policy—though the GAC's advice was not always implemented.

As a member of the Board of Consultants to a committee appointed by President Truman to advise the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer strongly influenced the Acheson-Lilienthal Report. The United Nations Atomic Energy Commission ( UNAEC) was founded on 24 January 1946 by the first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly The Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy was written by a committee chaired by Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal in 1946 and ^[41] In this report, the committee advocated creation of an international Atomic Development Authority, which would own all fissionable material, and the means of its production, such as mines and laboratories, and atomic power plants where it could be used for peaceful energy production. Bernard Baruch was appointed to translate this report into a proposal to the United Nations, resulting in the Baruch Plan of 1946. Bernard Mannes Baruch (bəˈɹuk ( August 18, 1870 &ndash June 20, 1965) was a Jewish-American Financier, stock market Speculator The Baruch Plan was a proposal by the United States government written largely by Bernard Baruch but based on the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, to the The Baruch Plan introduced many additional provisions regarding enforcement, in particular requiring inspection of the USSR's uranium resources. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 The Baruch Plan was seen as an attempt to maintain the United States' nuclear monopoly, and was rejected by the USSR. With this, it became clear to Oppenheimer that an arms race was unavoidable, due to the mutual distrust of the U. S. and the USSR.

While still Chairman of the GAC, Oppenheimer lobbied vigorously for international arms control and funding for basic science, and attempted to influence policy away from a heated arms race. When the government questioned whether to pursue a crash program to develop an atomic weapon based on nuclear fusion—the hydrogen bomb—Oppenheimer initially recommended against it, though he had been in favor of developing such a weapon in the early days of the Manhattan Project. In Physics and Nuclear chemistry, nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple- like charged atomic nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the He was motivated partly by ethical concerns, feeling that such a weapon could only be used strategically against civilian targets, resulting in millions of deaths. But he was also motivated by practical concerns; as at the time there was no workable design for a hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer felt that resources would be better spent creating a large force of fission weapons; he and others were especially concerned about nuclear reactors being diverted away from producing plutonium to produce tritium. He was overridden by President Truman, who announced a crash program after the Soviet Union tested their first atomic bomb in 1949. Oppenheimer and other GAC opponents of the project, especially James Conant, felt personally shunned and considered retiring from the committee. They stayed on, though their views on the hydrogen bomb were well known.

In 1951, however, Edward Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam developed what became known as the Teller-Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb. Stanisław Marcin Ulam ( April 13, 1909 &ndash May 13, 1984) was a Polish Mathematician who participated in the Manhattan The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the This new design seemed technically feasible, and Oppenheimer changed his opinion about developing the weapon. As he later recalled:

Oppenheimer's critics have accused him of equivocating between 1949, when he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and 1951, when he supported it. Some have made this a case for reinforcing their opinions about his moral inconsistency. Historian Priscilla McMillan has argued,^[49] however, that if Oppenheimer has been accused of being morally inconsistent, then so should Rabi and Fermi, who had also opposed the program in 1949. Most of the GAC members were against a crash hydrogen bomb development program then, and in fact, Conant, Fermi and Rabi had submitted even more strongly worded reports against it than Oppenheimer. McMillan's argument is that because the hydrogen bomb appeared to be well within reach in 1951, everybody had to assume that the Russians could also do it, and that was the main reason why they changed their stance in favor of developing it. Thus this change in opinion should not be viewed as a change in morality, but a change in opinions purely based on technical possibilities.

The first true hydrogen bomb, dubbed "Ivy Mike", was tested in 1952 with a yield of 10. Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first US test of a fusion device where a major part of the explosive yield came from fusion 4 megatons, more than 650 times the strength of the weapons developed by Oppenheimer during World War II.

Security hearings

In his role as a political advisor, Oppenheimer made numerous enemies. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had been following his activities since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a radical professor. WikipediaManual of Style (biographies#Postnominal initials They were willing to furnish Oppenheimer's political enemies with incriminating evidence about Communist ties. These enemies included Lewis Strauss, an AEC commissioner who had long harbored resentment against Oppenheimer both for his activity in opposing the hydrogen bomb and for his humiliation of Strauss before Congress some years earlier, regarding Strauss's opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes to other nations. Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss ( January 31, 1896 – January 21, 1974) was an American businessman government department head and US Naval officer Strauss and Senator Brien McMahon, author of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, pushed President Eisenhower to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. Brien McMahon ( October 6 1903, Norwalk Connecticut – July 28 1952, Washington D The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, informally known as the McMahon Act, determined how the United States government would control and manage the Nuclear technology Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14 1890 – March 28 1969 was President of the United States from 1953 until 1961 and a five-star general ^[50] This came following controversies about whether some of Oppenheimer's students, including David Bohm, Joseph Weinberg, and Bernard Peters, had been Communists at the time they had worked with him at Berkeley. David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American

Robert Oppenheimer was forced to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he admitted that he had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, but he refused to name other members. The House Committee on Un-American Activities ( HUAC or HCUA 1938–1975 was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression. Frank Oppenheimer was subsequently fired from his university position, could not find work in physics for many years, and became instead a cattle rancher in Colorado, and later the founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium. Frank Friedman Oppenheimer ( August 14, 1912  &ndash February 3, 1985) was an American Physicist who worked on the The State of Colorado ( or chiefly by nonresidents) is a state located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. The Exploratorium is a public science Museum, located in the Marina District at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco California

Oppenheimer had also found himself in the middle of more than one controversy and power struggle, in the years from 1949 to 1953. Edward Teller, who had been so uninterested in work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the war that Oppenheimer had (instead of firing him) actually given him time instead to work on his own project of the hydrogen bomb, had eventually left Los Alamos to help found, in 1951, a second laboratory at what would become the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15 1908 &ndash September 9 2003 was a Hungarian -American theoretical Physicist The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( LLNL) in Livermore California is a scientific research laboratory founded by the University of California in 1952 There, he could be free of Los Alamos control to develop the hydrogen bomb. This laboratory would go on to develop long-range jet-bomber delivered themonuclear "strategic weapons" (city-destroyers) which would necessarily be under control of the new Air Force. An air force, also known in some countries as an air army or historically an army air corps, is in the broadest sense the national military or armed service By contrast, Oppenheimer had for some years pushed for smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons which would be more useful in a limited theater against enemy troops, and which would be under control of the Army. An army (from Latin Armata "act of arming" via Old French armée) in the broadest sense is the land-based Armed forces As these two branches of the service fought for control of nuclear weapons, often allied with different political parties, the Air Force, with Teller pushing its program, had begun to gain ascendence in the Republican controlled government, after the election of Eisenhower in 1952.

Oppenheimer's former colleague, physicist Edward Teller, testified against Oppenheimer at his security hearing in 1954.

In the 1953 Executive Sessions of the “McCarthy Hearings” on Security and the United Nations (made public in 2003), Paul Crouch, Communist Party organizer for Alameda County from April 1941 to early January 1942, testified that J. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14 1908 – May 2 1957 was an American politician who served as a Republican U Robert Oppenheimer had been a Communist at that time:

In 1953, partly as the result of evidence provided by the U. S. Army's Signals Intelligence Service, Oppenheimer was accused of being a security risk, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked him to resign. Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14 1890 – March 28 1969 was President of the United States from 1953 until 1961 and a five-star general Oppenheimer refused and requested a hearing to assess his loyalty; in the meantime, his security clearance was suspended. The public hearing that followed focused on Oppenheimer's past Communist ties and his association during the Manhattan Project with suspected disloyal or Communist scientists. One of the key elements in this hearing was Oppenheimer's earliest testimony about George Eltenton's approach to various Los Alamos scientists, a story that Oppenheimer confessed he had fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier. Haakon Maurice Chevalier (September 10 1901 &mdash July 4 1985 was an Author, Translator, and professor of French literature at the University (Unknown to Oppenheimer, both versions were recorded during his interrogations of a decade before, and, in a breach of standard trial procedure, which went unappealed, he was surprised on the witness stand with transcripts of these, which he had had no chance to review). In fact, Oppenheimer had never told Chevalier that he had finally named him, and the testimony had led to Chevalier losing his job. (Both Chevalier and Eltenton confirmed mentioning that they had a way to get information to the Soviets, Eltenton admitting he said this to Chevalier, and Chevalier admitting he mentioned it to Oppenheimer, but both put the matter in terms of gossip and denying any thought or suggestion of treason or thoughts of espionage, either in planning or in deed. Neither was ever convicted of any crime. )

Teller testified against Oppenheimer, saying that he considered him loyal, but of such questionable judgement that he should be relieved of clearance on the basis of bad decision-making. This led to outrage by the scientific community and Teller's virtual expulsion from academic science. ^[50] General Groves, threatened by the FBI as having been potentially part of a coverup about the Chevalier contact in 1943, testified against Oppenheimer also.

Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Inconsistencies in his testimony and his erratic behavior on the stand (at one point, saying he had given a "cock and bull story" and that this was because he "was a damned fool") convinced some that he was unstable, unreliable and a possible security risk. Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked one day before it was slated to lapse anyway. ^[52] Physicist I.I. Rabi's comment was that Oppenheimer was merely a government consultant at the time anyway, and that if the government "didn't want to consult the guy, then don't consult him. Isidor Isaac Rabi ( July 29, 1898 &ndash January 11, 1988) Galician born Physicist, and Nobel laureate. " However, the prosecution would not settle for anything less than public humiliation of Oppenheimer.

During his hearing, Oppenheimer testified willingly on the left-wing behavior of many of his scientific colleagues. Cornell University historian Richard Polenberg has speculated that if Oppenheimer's clearance had not been stripped (it would have expired in a matter of days anyhow, as he knew while testifying), he would have been remembered as someone who had "named names" to save his own reputation. As it happened, Oppenheimer was seen by most of the scientific community as a martyr to McCarthyism, an eclectic liberal who was unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific creativity from academia into the military. The term martyr ( Greek μάρτυς martys "witness" is most commonly used today to describe an individual who sacrifices their life (or personal freedom McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s ^[53] Wernher von Braun summed up his opinion about the matter with a quip to a Congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23 1912 &ndash June 16 1977 a German rocket physicist and astronautics engineer became one of the leading figures in "^[54]

Institute for Advanced Study

Oppenheimer eventually took over Einstein's position at the Institute for Advanced Study. Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical

In 1947, Oppenheimer left Berkeley, citing difficulties with the administration during the war, and took up the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton New Jersey, United States is a center for theoretical research See also Princeton Township New Jersey, Borough of Princeton New Jersey Princeton Borough New Jersey Princeton Township New Jersey this New Jersey ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. He later held Albert Einstein's old position of senior professor of theoretical physics. Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical Theoretical physics employs Mathematical models and Abstractions of Physics in an attempt to explain experimental data taken of the natural world ^[14]

After 1953, deprived of political power, Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work on physics. He toured Europe and Japan, giving talks about the history of science, the role of science in society, and the nature of the universe. On 3 May 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Events 1491 - Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries adopting the baptismal name of João Year 1962 ( MCMLXII) was a Common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as The Royal Society, is a Learned society for science that was founded in 1660 In 1963, at the urging of many of Oppenheimer's political friends who had ascended to power, President John F. Kennedy awarded Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation. John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29 1917&ndashNovember 22 1963 often referred to by his initials JFK, was the thirty-fifth President of The Enrico Fermi Award is a US government "Presidential" award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development use or production Edward Teller, the winner of the previous year's award, had also recommended Oppenheimer receive it. A little over a week after Kennedy's assassination, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, presented Oppenheimer with the award, "for contributions to theoretical physics as a teacher and originator of ideas, and for leadership of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the atomic energy program during critical years". Oppenheimer told Johnson: "I think it is just possible, Mr. President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this award today. "^[55] The rehabilitation implied by the award was partly symbolic, as Oppenheimer still lacked a security clearance and could have no effect on official policy, but the award came with a $50,000 tax free stipend, and its award to Oppenheimer outraged many prominent Republicans in Congress. The late President Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, still living in the White House, made it a point to meet with Oppenheimer to tell him how much her husband had wanted him to have the medal. While still a congressman in 1959, JFK had been instrumental in voting to narrowly deny Oppenheimer's enemy Lewis Strauss, a coveted government position as Secretary of Commerce, effectively ending Strauss' political career. Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss ( January 31, 1896 – January 21, 1974) was an American businessman government department head and US Naval officer The United States Secretary of Commerce is the head of the United States Department of Commerce concerned with business and industry the Department states its mission to This was partly due to lobbying on the basis of the scientific community on behalf of Oppenheimer, as was the Fermi prize later.

In his final years, Oppenheimer continued his work at the Institute for Advanced Study, bringing together intellectuals at the height of their powers and from a variety of disciplines to solve the most pertinent questions of the age. He directed and encouraged the research of many well-known scientists, including Freeman Dyson, and the duo of Yang and Lee, who won a Nobel Prize for their discovery of parity non-conservation. Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical Physicist and Mathematician, famous for his Chen-Ning Franklin Yang ( (born October 1, 1922) is a Chinese -born American Physicist who worked on Statistical mechanics Tsung-Dao Lee ( TD Lee,) (born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese -born American Physicist, well known for his work In Physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of one Spatial Coordinate. He also instituted temporary memberships for scholars from the humanities, such as T. S. Eliot and George Kennan. Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. George Frost Kennan (February 16 1904 &ndash March 17 2005 was an American Advisor, Diplomat, Political scientist, and Historian, best Some of these activities were resented by a few members of the mathematics faculty, who wanted the institute to stay a bastion of pure scientific research. Abraham Pais said that Oppenheimer himself thought that one of his failures at the institute was a failure to bring together scholars from the natural sciences and the humanities.

Oppenheimer's lectures in America, Europe, and Canada were published in a number of books. Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page Still, he thought the effort had little effect on actual policy.

Final years

Oppenheimer Beach, in St John, U.S. Virgin Islands. DSC00835JPG|thumb|250px| Trunk Bay Beach in St John US Virgin Islands. The United States Virgin Islands is a group of Islands in the Caribbean that are an Insular area of the United States.

After the 1954 security hearings, Oppenheimer started to retreat to a simpler life. In 1957, he purchased a piece of land on Gibney Beach in the island of St John in the Virgin Islands. DSC00835JPG|thumb|250px| Trunk Bay Beach in St John US Virgin Islands. See also Culture of the Virgin Islands Music of the Virgin Islands Virgin Islands Creole He built a spartan vacation home on the beach, where he would spend holidays, usually months at a time, with his wife Kitty. Oppenheimer also spent a considerable amount of time sailing with his wife.

Increasingly concerned about the potential danger to humanity arising from scientific discoveries, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat and other eminent scientists and academics to establish what would eventually become the World Academy of Art and Science in 1960. Albert Einstein ( German: ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n; English: ˈælbɝt ˈaɪnstaɪn (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955 was a German -born theoretical Bertrand Arthur William Russell 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970 was a British Philosopher, Historian Sir Joseph Rotblat, KCMG, CBE, FRS, ( 4 November, 1908 &ndash 31 August, 2005) was a Polish -born The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS is an international non-governmental scientific organization an informal and non-official world network of individual fellows elected for distinguished Significantly, however, after his public humiliation, Oppenheimer did not sign the major open protests against nuclear weapons of the 1950s, including the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. He also did not attend the first Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in 1957, though invited. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an International organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger However, in his speeches and public writings, Oppenheimer continually stressed the difficulty of managing the power of knowledge in a world in which the freedom of science to exchange ideas was more and more hobbled by political concerns. ^[56]

A chain-smoker since adulthood, Robert Oppenheimer was diagnosed with throat cancer in late 1965, and after inconclusive surgery, underwent radiation treatment by cobalt gamma rays and high energy electrons, then finally chemotherapy late in 1966. The term head and neck cancer refers to a group of biologically similar cancers originating from the upper aerodigestive tract including the Lip, Oral cavity ( These were not curative, and the tumor spread to his palate, affecting his swallowing, hearing, and breathing. ^[56] He died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey in February 1967, at age 62. His funeral was attended by many of his scientific, political, and military associates, and eulogies were delivered by Hans Bethe and George F. Kennan among others. He was cremated and his wife placed his ashes in an urn and dropped them into the sea, within sight of the coast at the location of his beach house. Cremation is the act of reducing a Corpse by burning, generally in a crematorium furnace or crematory fire ^[57]

Upon the death of Mrs. Oppenheimer (Kitty died of an intestinal infection complicated by pulmonary embolism in October 1972), Oppenheimer's ranch in New Mexico was inherited by his son Peter, while the beach property in St. Year 1972 ( MCMLXXII) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. John was inherited by their daughter Toni. Toni, who had been refused security clearance for her chosen vocation as a U. N. translator, committed suicide by hanging in the beach house in St. John in January 1977, and left it in her will to "the people of St. John for a public park and recreation area. "^[58] The original house, built too close to the coast, succumbed to a hurricane, but today, the Virgin Islands Government maintains a Community Center in the area, which can be rented. The northern portion of the beach is colloquially known to this day as "Oppenheimer Beach". ^[59]

Legacy

As a scientist, Oppenheimer is remembered by his students and colleagues as being a brilliant researcher and engaging teacher, the founder of modern theoretical physics in the United States. ^[60] Many have asked why Oppenheimer never won a Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize (Nobelpriset (Nobelprisen is a Swedish prize established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Peace, Literature Scholars respond that his scientific attentions often changed rapidly and he never worked long enough on any one topic to achieve enough headway to merit the Nobel Prize. ^[61][62] His lack of a Prize would not be odd (many great scientists never won Nobel Prizes) had not so many of his associates (Einstein, Fermi, Bethe, Lawrence, Dirac, Rabi, Feynman, etc. ) won them. Some scientists and historians have speculated that his investigations towards black holes may have warranted the Nobel, had he lived long enough to see them brought into fruition by later astrophysicists. ^[15]

Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves, shortly after the war.

As a military and public policy advisor, Oppenheimer was a technocratic leader in a shift in the interactions between science and the military and the emergence of "Big Science. Technocracy: A form of government in which scientists and technical experts are in control "technocracy is described as that society in which those who govern justify themselves This article is about the term For the album see ''Big Science'' (album. " During World War II, scientists became involved in military research to an unprecedented degree (some research of this sort had occurred during World War I, but it was far smaller in scope). World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Because of the threat Fascism posed to Western civilization, scientists volunteered in great numbers both for technological and organizational assistance to the Allied effort, resulting in such powerful tools as radar, the proximity fuse, and operations research. Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist and corporatist ideology Radar is a system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range altitude direction or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as Aircraft, ships A proximity fuze (also called a VT fuze for "variable time" is a fuze that is designed to detonate an explosive device automatically when the distance Operations Research (OR in North America South Africa and Australia and Operational Research in Europe is an interdisciplinary branch of applied Mathematics and As a cultured, intellectual, theoretical physicist who became a disciplined military organizer, Oppenheimer represented the shift away from the idea that scientists had their "head in the clouds" and that knowledge on such previously esoteric subjects as the composition of the atomic nucleus had no "real-world" applications. ^[63]

When Oppenheimer was ejected from his position of political influence in 1954, he symbolized for many the folly of scientists thinking they could control how others would use their research. Oppenheimer has been seen as symbolizing the dilemmas involving the moral responsibility of the scientist in the nuclear world. ^[63]

Most popular depictions of Oppenheimer view his security struggles as a confrontation between right-wing militarists (symbolized by Edward Teller) and left-wing intellectuals (symbolized by Oppenheimer) over the moral question of weapons of mass destruction. Many historians have contested this as an oversimplification. ^[64] The hearings were motivated both by politics, as Oppenheimer was seen as a representative of the previous administration, and also by personal considerations stemming from his enmity with Lewis Strauss. ^[50] Furthermore, the ostensible reason for the hearing and the issue that aligned Oppenheimer with the liberal intellectuals, Oppenheimer's opposition to hydrogen bomb development, was based as much on technical grounds as on moral ones. Once the technical considerations were resolved, he supported "the Super" because he believed that the Soviet Union too would inevitably construct one. Nevertheless, the trope of Oppenheimer as a martyr has proven indelible, and to speak of Oppenheimer has often been to speak of the limits of science and politics; however, more complicated is the actual history.

One particular example of the view of Oppenheimer as martyr is found in German playwright Heinar Kipphardt's 1964 play, In the Matter J. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. Robert Oppenheimer. Even Oppenheimer himself had difficulty with this portrayal—after reading a transcript of Kipphardt's play soon after it began to be performed, Oppenheimer threatened to sue the playwright. ^[65] Later he told an interviewer:

Oppenheimer, Groves, and others at the site of the Trinity test shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Trinity was the first test of technology for a Nuclear weapon.

Despite Oppenheimer's remorseful, or at least conflicted, attitudes, Oppenheimer was a vocal supporter of using the first atomic weapons on "built-up areas" in the days before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather than consistently opposing the "Red-baiting" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, he had testified against many of his former colleagues and students, both before and during his hearing. In one incident, Oppenheimer's damning testimony against former student Bernard Peters was selectively leaked to the press. Historians have interpreted this as an attempt by Oppenheimer to please his colleagues in the government (and perhaps to divert attention from his own previous left-wing ties and especially from those of his brother, who had earlier been a target of the anti-Red lobby). In the end it became a liability: under cross-examination, it became clear that if Oppenheimer had really doubted Peters' loyalty, then his recommending him for the Manhattan Project was reckless, or at least contradictory. ^[67]

The question of the scientists' responsibility towards humanity, so manifest in the dropping of the atomic bombs and Oppenheimer's public questioning, in addition to Kipphardt's play, inspired Bertolt Brecht's drama Galileo (from 1955), left its imprint on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker, and is the basis of the opera Doctor Atomic by John Adams (2005), which portrays Oppenheimer as a modern Faust. (born; 10 February 1898&ndash14 August 1956 was a German Poet, Playwright, and Theatre director. Life of Galileo ( Leben des Galilei) also known as Galileo, is a play by the twentieth-century German Dramatist Bertolt Friedrich Dürrenmatt ( January 5, 1921 &ndash December 14, 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. Die Physiker ( The Physicists) ( 1961) is a satiric Drama often recognized as the most impressive yet most easily understood work of the Swiss Doctor Atomic is an Opera by the contemporary Post-minimalist American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. Faust or Faustus ( Latin for "auspicious" or "lucky" is the protagonist of a classic German Legend in which he makes

Works

• Science and the Common Understanding (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954).
• The Open Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955).
• The flying trapeze: Three crises for physicists (London: Oxford University Press, 1964).
• Uncommon sense (Cambridge, MA: Birkhäuser Boston, 1984). (posthumous)
• Atom and void: Essays on science and community (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). (posthumous)

See also

• History of nuclear weapons
• Soviet atomic bomb project
• German nuclear energy project

Notes

References

• Bird, Kai (2005), American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0-375-41202-6 . New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous Alfred A Knopf Inc is a New York publishing house founded by Alfred A
• Carson, Cathryn (2005), Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections, Office for History of Science and Technology, ISBN 0-9672617-3-2 .
• Herken, Gregg (2002), Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, New York: Henry Holt and Company, ISBN 0-8050-6588-1 . New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous Henry Holt and Company is an American book publishing company
• McMillan, Priscilla J. (2005), The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race, Viking Press, ISBN 0-670-03422-3 . Viking Press is an American Publishing company currently owned by Penguin Books.
• Pais, Abraham (2006), J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-516673-6 .
• Polenberg, Richard (2002), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing, Ithaca: Cornell University, ISBN 0-8014-3783-0 . The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York
• Smith, Alice Kimball (1980), Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and recollections, Cambridge: Harvard University Press . The city of Cambridge (ˈkeɪmbrɪdʒ is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England Harvard University Press ( HUP) is a Publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in Academic publishing.

Further reading

• Thorpe, Charles. Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect (University Of Chicago Press, 2006) ISBN 0-226-79845-3
• Cassidy, David C. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century (New York: Pi Press, 2005). ISBN 0-13-147996-2
• Davis, Nuel Pharr. Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968).
• Hijiya, James A. "The Gita of Robert Oppenheimer" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 144:2 (June 2000). ^[1] (on Oppenheimer's famous quote)
• Michelmore, Peter. The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (Dodd Mead, 1969) ISBN 0-396-06024-2
• Romerstein, Herbert and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets, Regnery Publishing, Inc. , 2000
• Rummel, Jack. Robert Oppenheimer: Dark Prince (New York: Facts on File, 1992). ISBN 0-8160-2598-3
• Schweber, S. S. In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-691-04989-0
• Schweber, S. S. "J. Robert Oppenheimer: Proteus Unbound", Science in Context 16 (1/2), 219–242, 2003 (abstract, Retrieved on 2007-03-13)
• U. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1138 - Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II. S. Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Washington, D. C. : 1954).
• York, Herbert. The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).

External links

• Obituary, NY Times, February 19, 1967, J. Events 197 - Roman Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum Year 1967 ( MCMLXVII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. Robert Oppenheimer, Atom Bomb Pioneer, Dies
• Hans Bethe's "Biographical Memoirs" contains a full list of Oppenheimer's scientific publications.
• On Atomic Energy, Problems to CivilizationTalk at UC Berkeley, November 6, 1946 (online audio file)
• Decision and Opinions of the US AEC in the Matter of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Powers, Thomas, "An American Tragedy, " New York Review of Books, September 2005. Events 355 - Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with Year 1946 ( MCMXLVI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a semimonthly Magazine on Literature, Culture, and current Review of several revisionist histories of the struggles to develop the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and Oppenheimer's role therein. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the
• Biography and online exhibit created for the centennial of his birth
• Oppenheimer talking about the experience of the first bomb test (video file, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds. ")
• Katherine Oppenheimer's FBI file
• Was Oppenheimer a member of the Communist Party?, notes and documents on the question (still in historical debate) by the historian Gregg Herken
• TV Documentary/Drama BBC Miniseries from 1980
• Annotated bibliography for J. Robert Oppenhiemer from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Proceedings of American Philosophical Society, Published 2000
• J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial at Find A Grave
• Two collections of digitized materials related to Oppenheimer's connection to Linus Pauling, structural chemistry research and peace activism. Find A Grave is a Website allowing its users to access maintain and expand an online Database of Burial records Linus Carl Pauling (February 28 1901 – August 19 1994 was an American Scientist, Peace activist, Author and educator.