Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Army on July 16, 1945, as a result of the Manhattan Project. The first detonation of a nuclear device, conducted by the U.S. “ The physicists have known sin,” he remarked two years after the attacks, “and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” But he conveyed a sense of anguish – scripting his own tragic role, as I argue in my book about him. government’s justification of the atomic bombings: that they saved lives by preventing the need for invasion. Intense interest in Oppenheimer’s life and his ambivalent feelings about the bomb have turned him into almost a myth: a “tortured genius” or “tragic intellect” people try to comprehend because the terror of the bomb itself is too disturbing.įor the rest of his life, Oppenheimer gave the U.S. In American culture, however, fascination with the man behind the bomb often seems to eclipse the horrific reality of nuclear weapons themselves – as if he were the welder’s glass allowing viewers to safely look at the explosion, even as it obscures the blinding light. It’s little wonder that Christopher Nolan’s new film, “Oppenheimer,” tells the story of Los Alamos through this single life – or that Oppenheimer is the focus of so much writing about the bomb Oppenheimer’s life provides a human-scaled way to talk about an otherwise overwhelming topic. Under his directorship, scientists at Los Alamos Laboratory, where the bomb was designed and built, forever changed how people view the world, adding a new sense of precariousness. Oppenheimer had many achievements in theoretical physics but is remembered as the so-called father of the atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer’s triumph was his tragedy.
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