J. Robert Oppenheimer: the man, his science, and the man beyond the science Premium
The Hindu
We take a look at Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist and the man, beyond his most famous scientific development- the atomic bomb.
American film director Christopher Nolan’s latest work, Oppenheimer, has dominated theatres worldwide (alongside Greta Gerwig’s Barbie), delivering one of the most iconic box office weekends for cinema. The movie has also renewed interest in the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played in the film by Cillian Murphy.
Known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” Oppenheimer’s contributions to nuclear physics and science in general not only sparked technological advancements but also raised questions about ethics and science.
Born in New York City in 1904 to wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants, Oppenheimer proved to be a prodigious scholar right from the start. His younger brother Frank, too, was a physicist.
After finishing school, he enrolled at Harvard University, majoring in chemistry, but soon realised that his real passion was physics. In fact, in a letter to a friend, Oppenheimer wrote, “My two great loves are physics and desert country.” (He spent time recuperating from illnesses on multiple occasions at a ranch in New Mexico, which he later bought too).
After finishing his degree, Oppenheimer moved to Cambridge University’s Christ’s College, where, in 1925, he expressed a desire to work at Ernest Rutherford’s Cavendish Laboratory. . Rutherford, the 1908 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, asked Percy Bridgman, his professor at Harvard, if he’d recommend that Oppenheimer join his laboratory. His response throws light on the great scientist’s still-uncertain future at the time. As science historian and author David C. Cassidy wrote in his 2005 book, J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American century, “Despite his (Oppenheimer’s) interest in experimental research, the young man displayed little of the dexterity required for laboratory work.”
While Oppenheimer left for Cambridge in September 1925, in the hopes of earning a doctorate degree in experimental physics, it was not to be.
Niels Bohr, the 1922 Physics Nobel laureate for his work on structure of atoms, was also a visitor at Cambridge in the spring of 1926. At the time, Oppenheimer was working on the motion of two bodies in quantum mechanics. A discussion with Bohr about the same had profound impact on Oppenheimer and sparked his transition to theoretical physics. “I forgot about beryllium and films and decided to try to learn the trade of being a theoretical physicist,” Oppenheimer said, decided, according to Cassidy’s book.