Day 37: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb.
"I remembered the line from the Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
a linguist, poet, and logical thinker. Despite his many talents, Oppenheimer would always be known as the creator of the atomic bomb, the person who gave mankind the ability to destroy itself.
On April 12, 1904, J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York. Born into a modest Manhattan household, he was the eldest son of German-Jewish immigrants.
Following his graduation in 1922 from a conventional private school in New York, Oppenheimer enrolled at Harvard, where he became interested in Physics.
Oppenheimer had a reputation for being a bookworm because he would spend most of his time in the library, perusing books that piqued his interest and stoked his desire to learn.
After completing his studies at Harvard in three years, Oppenheimer continued his research on experimental physics at Cambridge. Due to his clumsiness in the lab, Oppenheimer then decided to switch to theoretical Physics which served him quite well at the University of Göttingen in Germany.
Politics wasn't a game that interested Oppenheimer, but the rise of Fascism in Europe caught his attention, especially when the Nazi Germans invaded Poland in 1939.
Oppenheimer and many others were assigned to a project known as "The Manhattan Project," and this project involved creating an atomic bomb. The Manhattan project was prompted by America's fear of the Nazis gaining control of Nuclear power before them. America having this doomsday device would therefore give them an upper hand in the ongoing World War.
On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets, piloting the aircraft known as "Enola Gay," dropped the most lethal weapon ever invented on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths. Three days later, Major Charles Sweeney dropped another bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, from the "Bockstar" plane, resulting in an estimated 74,000 deaths. The Japanese surrendered six days after this horrific act of war, bringing an end to the Second World War.
The development of nuclear power—both for peaceful purposes and for wreaking havoc—was made possible by Oppenheimer's work.
The rest of Oppenheimer’s story was marked by tragedy, as he spent the rest of his life in constant ups and downs. Asides the guilt in his heart for creating a doomsday device that claimed tons of lives, losing his lover, an accusation of treason, getting stripped of his rank, suffering humiliation, being diagnosed with throat cancer which ultimately claimed his life, were part of the tragic ends of J. Robert Oppenheimer.