Who was J Robert Oppenheimer?

Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Oppenheimer, based on the life of American physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, released today. It has sold a whopping 90,000 tickets for the opening day in India. But who was Oppenheimer? 

Oppenheimer’s early life

Often called the “Father of atomic bomb”, J Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904. After completing high school, he enrolled at Harvard University. But, the plans were postponed due to illness. He joined Harvard in September 1922 and graduated in three years. Although he majored in chemistry, Oppenheimer eventually realised his true passion was the study of physics.

In 1925, Oppenheimer began his graduate work in physics at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England. JJ Thomson, who was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting the electron, agreed to take on Oppenheimer as a student. 

Later, he went to Germany to study physics under Max Born.

Oppenheimer received his doctorate in 1927 and accepted professorships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology, also known as CalTech.

World War II and the Manhattan Project

The rise of Adolf Hitler during the Second World War caught the world by storm. After Poland’s invasion in 1939, several scientists, including Albert Einstein, warned the USA of dangers that might befall the world if Germany was able to make the first nuclear bomb.

While he was still at Berkeley, Oppenheimer, in 1942, began to seek a process for separating uranium-235 from natural uranium and determining the critical mass of uranium required to make such a bomb.

In August 1942, the US Army was given the responsibility of organising the efforts of British and US physicists to seek a way to harness nuclear energy for military purposes, an effort that became known as the Manhattan Project.

General Leslie R Groves instructed Oppenheimer to lead the project and establish and administer a laboratory to carry out this assignment.

Next year, in 1943, he chose Mexico’s Los Alamos to set up the lab. He was also made the director of the new lab.

The Trinity Test

After two years of immense research and experimenting, the first nuclear explosion was undertaken during the “Trinity Test” on July 16, 1945.

Twenty days later, on August 6 and 9, 1945, the USA used these weapons to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It eventually led to Japan’s surrender.

On October 16 of the same year, Oppenheimer resigned as director of Los Alamos Laboratory, accepting a post at CalTech. He was also made the chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission.

Accusations of treason

On December 21, 1953, a military security report accused him of having associated with communists, being a Soviet spy, and opposing the building of the hydrogen bomb.

Next year, a security hearing declared him not guilty of treason but ruled that he should not have access to military secrets. As a result, his contract as an adviser to the US Atomic Energy Commission was cancelled. His security clearance was also revoked.

Return of Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer died in 1967. Fifty-five years later, in December 2022, the US Energy Secretary formally nullified the 1954 decision to revoke his security clearance.

In a statement, the US Energy secretary, Jennifer M Granholm, said the 1954 decision of the Atomic Energy Commission to bar Oppenheimer’s clearance resulted from “bias and unfairness” and a “flawed process”.