Oppenhiemer
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer’s name has become synonymous with the atomic bomb. He is known for pioneering the field of atomic energy. The vast majority of his work dealt with theoretical physics. One thing that he isn’t well known for are his papers concerning gravitational collapse. Oppenheimer was known to those that worked around him as an intense person and a great leader.
Through much of his early life Oppenheimer studied varied fields diligently. He took science and Math courses but also loved to study languages such as Greek, Latin, French, and German. He picked up languages quickly and often learned one just to read a document in its original text. He also kept an interest in eastern philosophy for most of his life. He received his PhD in Germany in 1929 after studying at Harvard and Cambridge University. He studied under some of the great minds of the day including Ernest Rutherford.
After he got his PhD he was known to be an extraordinary teacher and a brilliant theoretician. In 1939 it was known that the Germans had split the atom. In 1942 President Theodore Roosevelt put him in charge of the Manhattan Project. Research was going on at Columbia University, The University of Chicago, and in Oak Ridge Tennessee. However Oppenheimer chose to set up a research facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The greatest minds in physics were brought here to work on creating the Atomic bomb. Some of the physicist there were his own students. One of them, Edward Teller spoke of the remote chance that a nuclear explosion would generate enough heat to ignite the atmosphere. This was later proven to impossible by Hans Bethe.
All the work of the physicist culminated at the site now known as Trinity. On July 16, 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico the first Nuclear Blast in the history of mankind rang out across the desert. Oppenheimer said that after the explosion he remembered a verse from the Hindu book Bhagavad Gita. “If the...
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