Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904. In the
early years of his education he attended Ethical Culture School in New
York. In school Oppenheimer took classes involving Math, Science, as well
as many language classes such as French, Greek, German and Latin. He really
loved languages and Eastern Philosophy.
Later in life, he studied under Ernest
Rutherford at Cambridge University and 1925 he obtained a Bachelor's
degree in Physics at the age of 21 years old. In the year 1929 Oppenheimer
taught at California Tech and the University of California Berkeley. It
was here that he made predictions such as; the neutron, positron, meson,
and the neutron stars.
Ten years later the U.S. government was informed by By
Albert Einstine that the Germans
had split the atom. Seeing that the Nazis could gain access to the new
weapon of mass destruction, this encouraged President Roosevelt to establish
the Manhattan Project in 1941. Robert Oppenheimer was appointed Director
of Science in 1942.
Preliminary research was being done at Columbia University,
the University of Chicago and in Oakridge, Tennessee. Robert Oppenheimer
thought that work could be done more efficiently if everything was done
in a single laboratory.
Under the permission of General Leslie Grooves, Oppenheimer
placed all theoretical physicists, chemical engineers, metallurgists, and
all other workers together in one facility.
The site they chose was a former boarding school in Los
Alamos, New Mexico. His location was suitable for security reasons and
the whole thing was kept from the public until the first bomb was dropped
on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
On July 16, 1945 Oppenheimer witnessed the first explosion
of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. He quoted "We knew the world
would not be the same."
When the war was over, Oppenheimer disagreed with inventing
the hydrogen bomb because he thought that an atomic bomb was powerful enough.
But still the project was approved by the United States government. In
1953 Oppenheimer was accused of having communists sympathies which caused
his security clearance to be taken away. This ended Oppenheimer influence
in the United States Science Policy. This led to the ten year humiliation
of Robert Oppenheimer.
In 1963, however, Oppenheimer was vindicated when he received
the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award. The highest prize awarded by the Atomic
Energy Commission. This award was given to him by President Johnson. Oppenheimer
replied to President Johnson, after receiving the award, and quoted; "I
think it is just possible that it has taken some charity and some courage
for you to make this award today."
In Oppenheimer's later years he wrote many things about the problems of intellectual ethics and morality. He then died of throat cancer in 1967.