Oppenheimer, J. Robert

(1904–67)

Scientist

J. Robert Oppenheimer is best known for his leadership ofthe Manhattan Project, the U.S. program during World War II to design and build the world's first atomic weapons. Although his work as a scientist displayed immense talent and wideranging interests, he will forever be known to Americans and the world as the man who headed up the project to build “the bomb.”

Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904, in New York City. He attended Harvard University and earned a degree in chemistry. He received his doctorate in 1927 at the University of Göttingen in Germany, known for its focus on theoretical physics. He returned to the United States in the summer of 1929 and took up a teaching position in the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he proved himself to be unusually skilled at explaining complex theories in physics to non-specialists. This facility made him popular at Berkeley among his students and would serve him well in his later work with the Manhattan Project.

Oppenheimer held his academic position at Berkeley until 1943. By that time his interests had become more political. Although he had never been especially interested in politics before, his girlfriend, Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party, influenced Oppenheimer to become involved in union activity and, as he stated himself, “just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast.” These political involvements would later be used against him.

In the early 1940s, scientific developments in Germany led many scientists in the rest of Europe and in the United States to speculate that Germany was trying to construct a weapon out of the recently discovered process of atomic fission. When this information was presented to Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in a letter signed by such notables as Albert Einstein, Roosevelt gave the goahead for the U.S. military to develop a similar weapon. Scientists acrossthe country began working on the formula and design of an atomic weapon. In early 1942 Oppenheimer was brought in as one of the many scientists on the project. He quickly impressed those in charge and was promoted to one of two men supervising the construction of the bomb mechanism. When the other man resigned in the spring of 1942, Oppenheimer assumed total command. The senior government scientists then realized the true scale of the project and enlisted the help of the U.S. military. Gen. Leslie Groves was appointed head of the project in September 1942. Groves met with Oppenheimer and decided to appoint him head of a new laboratory soon to be built at Los Alamos, New Mexico, which would house the entire bomb project.

Oppenheimer worked at maintaining morale and focus at Los Alamos, where a select group of scientists soon arrived with their families from all over the country. Oppenheimer was fairly successful at it. Bomb mechanisms were developed, material was received, and despite the resignations of some scientists in early 1945, the project did produce a successful test in July. After atomic weapons were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Oppenheimer was showing signs of strain. He confessed to President Truman that he had blood on his hands, though he had [Page 607]never publicly questioned the moral implications of the atomic weapons he had helped build.

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