Julius Robert Oppenheimer Born April 22, 1904 - died February 18, 1967. American theoretical physicist, professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the US National Academy of Sciences (since 1941). Widely known as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, in which the first samples were developed during the Second World War. nuclear weapons, because of this, Oppenheimer is often referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb".
The atomic bomb was first tested in New Mexico in July 1945. Oppenheimer later recalled that at that moment the words from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind: "If the radiance of a thousand suns flashed in the sky, it would be like the brilliance of the Almighty ... I became Death, the destroyer of Worlds."
After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He also became a chief adviser to the newly formed US Atomic Energy Commission, and used his position to advocate for international control of nuclear energy to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons and the nuclear race. This anti-war stance has angered a number of politicians during the second wave of the Red Menace. Eventually, after a widely publicized politicized hearing in 1954, he was stripped of his security clearance. Having no direct political influence since then, he continued to lecture, write papers and work in the field of physics. Ten years later, President John F. Kennedy awarded the scientist the Enrico Fermi Prize as a sign of political rehabilitation. The award was presented after Kennedy's death by Lyndon Johnson.
Oppenheimer's most significant achievements in physics include: the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process in nuclear fusion and the first prediction of quantum tunneling.
Together with his students, he made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the solution of certain problems in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and cosmic ray physics.
Oppenheimer was a teacher and promoter of science, the founding father of the American School theoretical physics which gained worldwide fame in the 30s of the XX century.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904 to a Jewish family. His father, Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer (1865–1948), a wealthy textile importer, immigrated to the United States from Hanau, Germany in 1888. The mother's family, the Paris-educated artist Ella Friedman (d. 1948), also immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1840s. Robert had a younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist.
In 1912, the Oppenheimers moved to Manhattan, to an apartment on the eleventh floor of 155 Riverside Drive, off West 88th Street. This area is known for its luxurious mansions and townhouses. The family's collection of paintings included originals by Pablo Picasso and Jean Vuillard and at least three originals by Vincent van Gogh.
Oppenheimer attended the Alcuin Preparatory School for a time, then, in 1911, he entered the Society School ethical culture. It was founded by Felix Adler to promote education promoted by the Ethical Culture Movement, whose slogan was "Deed before Creed". Robert's father was a member of this society for many years, serving on its board of trustees from 1907 to 1915.
Oppenheimer was a versatile student, interested in English and French literature and especially mineralogy. He completed the program of the third and fourth grades in one year and in half a year he completed the eighth grade and moved to the ninth, in the last grade he became interested in chemistry. Robert entered Harvard College a year later, at the age of 18, having survived an attack of ulcerative colitis while mining in Jáchymov during a family holiday in Europe. For treatment, he went to New Mexico, where he was fascinated by horseback riding and the nature of the southwestern United States.
In addition to majors, students were required to study history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. Oppenheimer made up for his "late start" by taking six courses a semester and was accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa student honor society. In his freshman year, Oppenheimer was allowed to take a master's program in physics based on independent study; this meant that he was exempt from the initial subjects and could be taken immediately to advanced courses. After listening to a thermodynamics course taught by Percy Bridgman, Robert became seriously interested in experimental physics. He graduated from the university with honors (lat. summa cum laude) in just three years.
In 1924, Oppenheimer learned that he had been accepted into Christ's College, Cambridge. He wrote a letter to Ernest Rutherford asking for permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory. Bridgman gave his student a recommendation, noting his learning abilities and analytical mind, but concluded that Oppenheimer was not inclined towards experimental physics. Rutherford was unimpressed, yet Oppenheimer went to Cambridge hoping to get another offer. As a result, J.J. Thomson took him in on the condition that the young man complete the basic laboratory course.
Oppenheimer left Cambridge in 1926 to study at the University of Göttingen under Max Born.
Robert Oppenheimer completed his Ph.D. thesis in March 1927, at the age of 23, under Born's scientific supervision. At the end of the oral examination on May 11, James Frank, the presiding professor, is reported to have said, “I'm glad it's over. He almost started asking me questions himself.”
In September 1927, Oppenheimer applied for and received a National Research Council scholarship to work at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech"). However, Bridgman also wanted Oppenheimer to work at Harvard, and as a compromise, Oppenheimer split his 1927-28 academic year so that he worked at Harvard in 1927 and Caltech in 1928.
In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited the Paul Ehrenfest Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he impressed those present by lecturing in Dutch, although he had little experience in that language. There he was given the nickname "Opie" (Dutch. Opje), which later his students remade in the English manner in "Oppie" (Eng. Oppie). After Leiden, he went to ETH Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on problems in quantum mechanics and, in particular, on the description of the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer deeply respected and loved Pauli, who may have had a strong influence on the scientist's own style and critical approach to problems.
Upon his return to the United States, Oppenheimer accepted an invitation to become an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was invited by Raymond Thayer Birge, who wanted Oppenheimer to work for him so much that he allowed him to work in parallel at Caltech. But before Oppenheimer took office, he was diagnosed with a mild form of tuberculosis; because of this, he and his brother Frank spent several weeks on a ranch in New Mexico, which he rented and later bought. When he found out that this place was available for rent, he exclaimed: Hot dog! (English “Wow!”, Literally “Hot dog”) - and later the name of the ranch became Perro Caliente, which is a literal translation of hot dog into Spanish. Oppenheimer later liked to say that "physics and desert country" were his "two great passions." He was cured of tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley, where he succeeded as the scientific adviser to a generation of young physicists who admired him for his intellectual sophistication and broad interests.
Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel laureate experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence and his fellow cyclotron developers, helping them interpret data from Lawrence Radiation Laboratory instruments.
In 1936, the University of Berkeley gave the scientist a professorship with a salary of $3,300 a year. In return, he was asked to stop teaching at Caltech. As a result, the parties agreed that Oppenheimer was off work for 6 weeks each year - this was enough to conduct classes for one trimester at Caltech.
Oppenheimer's scientific research relates to theoretical astrophysics, closely related to general theory relativity and the theory of the atomic nucleus, nuclear physics, theoretical spectroscopy, quantum field theory, including quantum electrodynamics. He was attracted by the formal rigor of relativistic quantum mechanics, although he doubted its correctness. Some later discoveries were predicted in his work, including the discovery of the neutron, meson, and neutron stars.
In 1931, together with Paul Ehrenfest, he proved a theorem according to which nuclei consisting of an odd number of fermion particles must obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics, and from an even number, the Bose-Einstein statistics. This statement is known as Ehrenfest-Oppenheimer theorem, made it possible to show the insufficiency of the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of the atomic nucleus.
Oppenheimer made a significant contribution to the theory of showers of cosmic rays and other high-energy phenomena, using to describe them the then existing formalism of quantum electrodynamics, which was developed in the pioneering work of Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. He showed that in the framework of this theory already in the second order of the perturbation theory quadratic divergences of the integrals corresponding to the self-energy of the electron are observed.
In 1930, Oppenheimer wrote a paper that essentially predicted the existence of the positron.
After the discovery of the positron, Oppenheimer, together with his students Milton Plesset and Leo Nedelsky, calculated the cross sections for the production of new particles during the scattering of energetic gamma rays in the field of an atomic nucleus. Later, he applied his results concerning the production of electron-positron pairs to the theory of cosmic ray showers, to which he paid great attention in subsequent years (in 1937, together with Franklin Carlson, he developed the cascade theory of showers).
In 1934, Oppenheimer, together with Wendell Ferry, generalized Dirac's theory of the electron., including positrons in it and obtaining as one of the consequences the effect of vacuum polarization (similar ideas were expressed simultaneously by other scientists). However, this theory was also not free from divergences, which gave rise to Oppenheimer's skeptical attitude towards the future of quantum electrodynamics. In 1937, after the discovery of mesons, Oppenheimer suggested that the new particle was identical to that proposed by Hideki Yukawa a few years earlier, and together with his students calculated some of its properties.
With his first graduate student, Melba Phillips, Oppenheimer worked on calculating the artificial radioactivity of elements bombarded by deuterons. Ernest Lawrence and Edwin Macmillan had previously found that the results were well described by Georgy Gamow's calculations when irradiating atomic nuclei with deuterons, but when more massive nuclei and particles with higher energies were involved in the experiment, the result began to diverge from theory.
Oppenheimer and Phillips developed a new theory to explain these results in 1935. She gained fame as Oppenheimer-Phillips process and is still in use today. The essence of this process is that the deuteron, upon collision with a heavy nucleus, decays into a proton and a neutron, and one of these particles is captured by the nucleus, while the other leaves it. Other results of Oppenheimer in the field of nuclear physics include calculations of the density of energy levels of nuclei, the nuclear photoelectric effect, the properties of nuclear resonances, the explanation of the production of electron pairs when fluorine is irradiated with protons, the development of the meson theory of nuclear forces, and some others.
In the late 1930s, Oppenheimer, probably influenced by his friend Richard Tolman, became interested in astrophysics, which resulted in a series of articles.
Many believe that, despite his talents, the level of Oppenheimer's discoveries and research does not allow him to be ranked among those theorists who expanded the boundaries of fundamental knowledge. The variety of his interests sometimes did not allow him to fully concentrate on a single task. One of Oppenheimer's habits that surprised his colleagues and friends was his tendency to read original foreign literature, especially poetry.
In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur Ryder at Berkeley. Oppenheimer read the original Bhagavad Gita. Later, he spoke of it as one of the books that had a strong influence on him and shaped his philosophy of life.
Experts such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez have suggested that if Oppenheimer lived long enough to see his predictions confirmed by experiments, he might Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse related to the theory of neutron stars and black holes. Retrospectively, some physicists and historians regard it as his most significant achievement, although not taken up by his contemporaries. When the physicist and historian of science Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer what he considered his most important contribution to science, Oppenheimer named the work on electrons and positrons, but did not say a word about work on gravitational contraction. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times - in 1945, 1951 and 1967 - but was never awarded it..
On October 9, 1941, shortly before the US entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt approved an accelerated program to build the atomic bomb. In May 1942, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, James B. Conant, one of Oppenheimer's Harvard teachers, asked him to lead a group at Berkeley that would work on fast neutron calculations. Robert, worried about the difficult situation in Europe, took up the job with enthusiasm.
The title of his position - "Coordinator of Rapid Rupture" ("Coordinator of the Rapid Rupture") - clearly alluded to the use of a fast neutron chain reaction in the atomic bomb. One of Oppenheimer's first acts in his new position was to organize a summer school on bomb theory at his Berkeley campus. His group, which included both European physicists and his own students, including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinsky, Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller, studied what and in what order to do to get a bomb.
To manage its part of the atomic project, the US Army in June 1942 founded the "Manhattan Engineer District" (Manhattan Engineer District), better known later as Manhattan Project, thus initiating the transfer of responsibility from the Office scientific research and development to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. was named project leader. Groves, in turn, appointed Oppenheimer as head of the secret weapons laboratory.
Oppenheimer and Groves decided that for the sake of security and cohesion, they needed a centralized secret research laboratory in a remote area. A search for a convenient location in late 1942 brought Oppenheimer to New Mexico, near his ranch.
On November 16, 1942, Oppenheimer, Groves and the others inspected the proposed site. Oppenheimer was afraid that the high cliffs surrounding the place would make his men feel like they were in a confined space, while the engineers saw the possibility of flooding. Then Oppenheimer suggested a place that he knew well - a flat mesa (mesa) near Santa Fe, where there was a private educational institution for boys - Los Alamos Farm School. The engineers were concerned about the lack of a good access road and water supply, but otherwise found the site to be ideal. Los Alamos National Laboratory was hastily built on the site of the school. The builders occupied several buildings of the latter for it and erected many others in the shortest possible time. There Oppenheimer assembled a group outstanding physicists the time he called "lights" (luminaries).
Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the true sense of the word. Here his uncanny speed at grasping the main points on any subject was the deciding factor; he could see all important details every part of the work.
In 1943, development efforts were focused on a gun-type plutonium nuclear bomb called the Thin Man. The first studies of the properties of plutonium were carried out using cyclotron-produced plutonium-239, which was extremely pure but could only be produced in small quantities.
When Los Alamos received the first sample of plutonium from the X-10 graphite reactor in April 1944, a new problem emerged: the reactor plutonium had a higher concentration of the 240Pu isotope, making it unsuitable for gun-type bombs.
In July 1944, Oppenheimer left the development of cannon bombs, focusing his efforts on the creation of implosion-type weapons (English implosion-type). With the help of a chemical explosive lens, a subcritical sphere of fissile material could be compressed to a smaller size and thus to a higher density. The substance in this case would have to travel a very small distance, so the critical mass would be reached in a much shorter time.
In August 1944, Oppenheimer completely reorganized the Los Alamos Laboratory, focusing his efforts on the study of implosion (an explosion directed inwards). A separate group was given the task of developing a bomb of simple design, which was supposed to work only on uranium-235; the project of this bomb was ready in February 1945 - she was given the name "Kid" (Little Boy). After a titanic effort, the design of a more complex implosion charge, nicknamed "Christy's Thing" (Christy gadget), in honor of Robert Christie, was completed on February 28, 1945 at a meeting in Oppenheimer's office.
The result of the coordinated work of scientists at Los Alamos was the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, in a place that Oppenheimer in mid-1944 called "Trinity" (Trinity). He later said that the title was taken from John Donne's Sacred Sonnets. According to historian Gregg Herken, the title may be a reference to Jean Tatlock (who committed suicide a few months earlier) who introduced Donn's work to Oppenheimer in the 1930s.
For his work as the head of Los Alamos in 1946, Oppenheimer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit.
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public, and Oppenheimer became a national representative of science, symbolic of a new type of technocratic power. His face appeared on the covers of Life and Time magazines. Nuclear physics has become a powerful force as governments around the world begin to understand the strategic and political power that comes with nuclear weapons and their dire consequences. Like many scientists of his time, Oppenheimer understood that only an international organization, such as the newly formed United Nations, could provide security for nuclear weapons, which could introduce a program to curb the arms race.
In November 1945, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos to return to Caltech, but soon found that teaching did not appeal to him as much as before.
In 1947, he accepted an offer from Lewis Strauss to head the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey.
As a member of the Board of Advisers to the commission approved by President Harry Truman, Oppenheimer had a strong influence on the Acheson-Lilienthal report. In this report, the committee recommended the creation of an international "Agency for the Development of the Nuclear Industry", which would own all nuclear materials and their production facilities, including mines and laboratories, as well as nuclear power plants, where nuclear materials would be used to generate energy for peaceful purposes. Bernard Baruch was put in charge of translating this report into the form of a proposal to the UN Council and completed it in 1946. The Baruch Plan introduced a number of additional provisions regarding law enforcement, in particular the need to inspect the uranium resources of the Soviet Union. The Baruch Plan was seen as an attempt by the US to gain a monopoly on nuclear technology and was rejected by the Soviets. After that, it became clear to Oppenheimer that because of the mutual suspicions of the United States and the Soviet Union, an arms race was inevitable.
After the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1947 as a civilian agency for nuclear research and nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer was appointed chairman of its General Advisory Committee (GAC).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (then under John Edgar Hoover) followed Oppenheimer before the war, when he, as a professor at Berkeley, showed sympathy for the Communists, and was also intimately acquainted with members of the Communist Party, among whom were his wife and brother. He has been under close surveillance since the early 1940s: bugs were placed in his house, telephone conversations were recorded, and mail was looked through. Oppenheimer's political enemies, among them Lewis Strauss, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, who had long felt resentment towards Oppenheimer - both because of Robert's speech against hydrogen bomb, advocated by Straus, and for humiliating Lewis in front of Congress a few years earlier; in reference to Strauss' opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes, Oppenheimer memorably classified them as "less important than electronic devices, but more important than, say, vitamins."
On June 7, 1949, Oppenheimer testified before the Un-American Activities Commission, where he admitted to having ties to the Communist Party in the 1930s. He testified that some of his students, including David Bohm, Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, Philip Morrison, Bernard Peters, and Joseph Weinberg, were communists during the period they worked with him at Berkeley. Frank Oppenheimer and his wife Jackie also testified before the Commission that they were members of the Communist Party. Frank was subsequently fired from his position at the University of Michigan. A physicist by training, he did not find work in his specialty for many years and became a farmer on a cattle ranch in Colorado. He later began teaching high school physics and founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
In 1950, Paul Crouch, a Communist Party recruiter in Alameda County from April 1941 until early 1942, became the first person to accuse Oppenheimer of having links with that party. He testified before a congressional committee that Oppenheimer had held a Party meeting at his home in Berkeley. At that time, the case received wide publicity. However, Oppenheimer was able to prove that he was in New Mexico when the meeting took place, and Crouch was eventually found to be an unreliable informant. In November 1953, J. Edgar Hoover received a letter regarding Oppenheimer written by William Liscum Borden, former executive director of the Congress' Joint Atomic Energy Committee. In the letter, Borden expressed his opinion, " based on several years of research, according to the available secret information, that J. Robert Oppenheimer - with a certain degree of probability - is an agent of the Soviet Union.
Oppenheimer's former colleague, physicist Edward Teller, testified against Oppenheimer at his 1954 security clearance hearing.
Straus, along with Senator Brian McMahon, author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, forced Eisenhower to reopen the Oppenheimer trial. On December 21, 1953, Lewis Straus informed Oppenheimer that the admission hearing was suspended pending a decision on a number of charges listed in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols, general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, and suggested that the scientist resign. Oppenheimer did not do this and insisted on holding a hearing.
At the hearing, held in April - May 1954, which was initially closed and did not receive publicity, special attention was paid to Oppenheimer's former connections with the Communists and his cooperation during the Manhattan Project with unreliable or Communist Party scientists. One of the highlights of this hearing was Oppenheimer's early testimony about George Eltenton's conversations with several scientists at Los Alamos, a story that Oppenheimer himself admitted to have fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier. Oppenheimer was unaware that both versions were recorded during his interrogations ten years earlier, and he was surprised when a witness provided these notes, which Oppenheimer was not allowed to see first. In fact, Oppenheimer never told Chevalier that he had given his name, and this testimony cost Chevalier his job. Both Chevalier and Eltenton confirmed that they talked about the possibility of passing information to the Soviets: Eltenton admitted that he told Chevalier about it, and Chevalier that he mentioned it to Oppenheimer; but both did not see anything seditious in idle talk, completely rejecting the possibility that the transfer of such information as intelligence could be carried out or even planned for the future. None of them were charged with any crime.
Edward Teller testified in the Oppenheimer trial on April 28, 1954. Teller stated that he does not question Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States, but "knows him as a man of extremely active and sophisticated thinking." When asked if Oppenheimer posed a threat to national security, Teller responded: "In large numbers On several occasions I found it exceedingly difficult to understand Dr. Oppenheimer's actions. I completely disagreed with him on many issues, and his actions seemed to me confused and complicated. In this sense, I would like to see the vital interests of our country in the hands of a person whom I understand better and therefore trust more. In this very limited sense, I would like to express the feeling that I personally would feel more secure if the public interest were in other hands."
This position outraged the American scientific community, and Teller, in fact, was subjected to a lifelong boycott.
Groves also testified against Oppenheimer, but his testimony is rife with speculation and contradiction.
During the proceedings, Oppenheimer willingly testified about the "leftist" behavior of many of his fellow scientists. According to Richard Polenberg, if Oppenheimer's clearance had not been revoked, he might have gone down in history as one of those who "named names" to save his reputation. But since it did, he was seen by most of the scientific community as a "martyr" of "McCarthyism," an eclectic liberal who was unfairly attacked by his militarist enemies, a symbol of scientific creativity moving from the universities to the military. Wernher von Braun expressed his opinion on the scientist's trial in a sarcastic remark to a congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."
P. A. Sudoplatov in his book notes that Oppenheimer, like other scientists, was not recruited, but was "a source associated with trusted agents, proxies and operatives." At a seminar at the Institute Woodrow Wilson Institute On May 20, 2009, John Earl Hines, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vasiliev, based on a comprehensive analysis of the latter's notes based on materials from the KGB archive, confirmed that Oppenheimer never spying for the Soviet Union. The secret services of the USSR periodically tried to recruit him, but were not successful - Oppenheimer did not betray the United States. Moreover, he fired several people who sympathized with the Soviet Union from the Manhattan Project.
Beginning in 1954, Oppenheimer spent several months of the year on Saint John, one of the Virgin Islands. In 1957, he bought a 2-acre (0.81 ha) plot of land on Gibney Beach, where he built a Spartan waterfront home. Oppenheimer spent much of his time sailing with his daughter Tony and wife Kitty.
Increasingly worried about the potential danger scientific discoveries for mankind, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat, and other eminent scientists and educators to found the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960. After his public humiliation, Oppenheimer did not sign major open protests against nuclear weapons in the 1950s, including the 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto. He did not come to the first Pugwash Conference for Peace and Scientific Cooperation in 1957, although he was invited.
Oppenheimer has been a heavy smoker since his youth. At the end of 1965, he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx and, after an unsuccessful operation, at the end of 1966 he underwent radio and chemotherapy. The treatment had no effect. On February 15, 1967, Oppenheimer fell into a coma and died on February 18 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62.
A memorial service was held at Alexander Hall at Princeton University a week later, attended by 600 of his closest colleagues and friends—scientists, politicians, and the military—including Bethe, Groves, Kennan, Lilienthal, Rabi, Smith, and Wigner. Also present were Frank and the rest of his family, historian Arthur Meyer Schlesinger, Jr., writer John O'Hara, and director of the New York City Ballet George Balanchine. Bethe, Kennan and Smith made short speeches in which they paid tribute to the achievements of the deceased.
Oppenheimer was cremated and his ashes placed in an urn. Kitty took her to St. John's Island and threw her off the side of the boat into the sea within sight of their cabin.
After the death of Kitty Oppenheimer, who died in October 1972 from an intestinal infection complicated by a pulmonary embolism, their son Peter inherited Oppenheimer's ranch in New Mexico, and their daughter Tony inherited the property on St. John's Island. Tony was denied a security clearance, which was required for her chosen profession as a UN translator, after the FBI raised old charges against her father.
In January 1977, three months after the annulment of her second marriage, she committed suicide by hanging herself in a house on the coast; she bequeathed her property "to the people of Saint John as a public park and recreation area". The house, originally built too close to the sea, was destroyed by the hurricane; the government of the Virgin Islands currently maintains a Community Center on the site.
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(No, Linkin Park did introduce motherfucker fans to the name of this great physicist.)
Stunning, deadly monotonous, "hypnotic" the composition "Radiance", with which, in fact, my acquaintance with Oppenheimer Analysis began.
The text of the song consists entirely of the famous quote from the "father of the atomic bomb" Robert Oppenheimer, words from the Bhagavad Gita, which he allegedly uttered following the results of "Trinity", the first ever test of a nuclear device (it was called Gadget, "Device"), held July 16, 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico. ( What is typical, the Oppenheimer Analysis album is titled "New Mexico".)
If the radiance of a thousand[s] suns
Were to burst into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.
I am become death
Destroyer of Worlds.
If a thousand suns
[At the same time] lit up in the sky,
It would be comparable to the radiance of a Mighty [Being].
I am Death
Destroyer of Worlds.
(Popular quote: In 2006, Iron Maiden recorded "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns," and Linkin Park, in their perennial attempt to sound intellectual, called their last year's album "A Thousand Suns.")
William Lawrence, a science journalist, interviewed Oppenheimer just hours after the explosion, in which he is believed to have said these words. For the first time they, in this form, appeared in Time magazine on November 8, 1948; only instead of "destroyer" it was: "shatterer".
In his 1965 interview, Oppenheimer recalls the Trinity test and repeats the last words of his quote. (The audio recording of this Linkin Park interview was overdubbed with sampled flatus sounds, see the second track from their latest album.)
If this can be called a "scene", then it is a very strong, emotional scene (I would like to say: "in the spirit of noir", but I will not say):
After the explosion, he did not utter the lines from the Bhagavad Gita, but only remembered them. "I guess we all remembered them one way or another.".
Robert Oppenheimer's younger brother Frank was also present at the testing of the Device; afterwards he said: "I wish I could remember what my brother said, but I can't. But I think we just said, 'It worked.' I think that's what we both said.".
And what part of the Bhagavad-gita did Oppenheimer quote?
These are two different verses (12 and 32) from the eleventh chapter ("conversations").
From the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into Russian, 1788:
The splendor and amazing radiance of this mighty being can be likened to being the sun, suddenly ascending into heaven with a radiance a thousand times greater than ordinary (pp. 136-137).
<...>
I am time, the destroyer of the human race, which has arrived and has come here to steal away all of a sudden all those standing before us (p. 141).
From "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" (translation into Russian English translation from Sanskrit):
If hundreds of thousands of suns were to rise in the sky at once, their luminosity would be comparable to the effulgence of the Supreme Lord in His universal form. (11:12)
<...>
The Supreme Lord said: I am time, the great destroyer of the worlds. (11:32)
From an 1890 English translation:
The glory and amazing splendor of this mighty Being may be likened to the radiance shed by a thousand suns rising together into the heavens.
<...>
I am Time matured, come hither for the destruction of these creatures.
From the 1942 English translation:
If the splendour of a thousand suns were to blaze out at once (simultaneously) in the sky, that would be the splendour of that mighty Being (great soul). (11:12)
<...>
I am the mighty world-destroying Time, now engaged in destroying the worlds. Even without thee, none of the warriors arrayed in the hostile armies shall live. (11:32)
It is known that Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit under Arthur Ryder, and in 1933 he read the Bhagavad Gita and, in his own words, it "radically influenced" his worldview.
Ryder published a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1929, and Vishnu calls himself not "time", as the vast majority of translators do, but death.
In Sanskrit the word kala means "time", "age", "darkness", in the feminine - "death".
For those interested, there is a wonderful extensive article about Oppenheimer's famous quote and the history of his study of Sanskrit and the Bhagavad Gita:
. James A. Hijia. The Gita of Robert J. Oppenheimer // Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. 144, no. June 2, 2000
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Robert Oppenheimer is widely known as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II, which is why he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb".
Today we decided to illustrate you the biography of the famous scientist.
“If the radiance of a thousand suns flashed in the sky, it would be like the brilliance of the Almighty ... I became Death, the destroyer of the Worlds”
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born to Julius Oppenheimer, a wealthy textile importer, and artist Ella Friedman. His parents were Jews who immigrated in 1888 from Germany to America.
The boy receives his primary education at the Preparatory School. Alcuin, and in 1911 he entered the School of the Society for Ethical Culture. Here he is in short term Receives secondary education, showing special interest in mineralogy.
Robert Oppenheimer, 1931
In 1922, Robert entered Harvard College for a chemistry course, but later he would also study literature, history, mathematics, and theoretical and experimental physics. He graduated from the university in 1925.
Photo of young Oppenheimer
Entering Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, he works at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he soon receives an offer to work for the famous British physicist J. J. Thomson - on the condition that Oppenheimer completes the basic laboratory training course.
Robert
Oppenheimer
(with tube)
Since 1926, Robert has been studying at the University of Göttingen, where Max Born becomes his supervisor. At that time, this university was one of the leading universities educational institutions in the field of theoretical physics, and it is here that Oppenheimer meets a number of prominent people whose names will soon become known to the whole world: Enrico Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli.
Oppenheimer
,
Enrico
Fermi
and Ernest Lawrence
His dissertation entitled "The Born-Oppenheimer Approximation" makes a significant contribution to the study of the nature of molecules. Finally, in 1927, he graduated from the university, having received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Young Oppenheimer's hairstyle
In 1927, Oppenheimer was awarded membership in research groups at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology by the US National Research Council. In 1928 he lectured at the University of Leiden, after which he went to Zurich, where, together with his colleague from the institute, Wolfgang Pauli, he worked on questions of quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum.
Robert
Oppenheimer
. "Father" of the American atomic bomb
In 1929, Oppenheimer accepted an offer to become an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would work for the next twenty years.
Called himself the destroyer of worlds
Robert Oppenheimer
Since 1934, continuing his work in the field of physics, he also takes an active part in political life countries. Oppenheimer lists part of his wages in aid of German physicists seeking to escape Nazi Germany, and shows support for social reforms that would later be called "communist efforts."
Albert Einstein and
Robert
Oppenheimer
In 1936, Oppenheimer received the position of full professor at the National Laboratory. Lawrence at Berkeley. However, at the same time, the continuation of his full-fledged teaching at the California Institute of Technology becomes impossible. Ultimately, the parties come to an agreement that Oppenheimer will vacate his position at the university after six academic weeks, which corresponded to one semester.
From left to right:
Robert
Oppenheimer
, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence
In 1942, Oppenheimer took part in the Manhattan Project, along with a research group engaged in the development of atomic bombs during World War II.
General Leslie Groves (military head of the Manhattan Project) and Robert Oppenheimer (scientific head)
In 1947, Oppenheimer was unanimously elected head of the General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission. In this position, he actively petitions for strict adherence to international rules on the use of weapons and support for fundamental scientific projects.
Julius
Robert
Oppenheimer
Even before the outbreak of World War II, the FBI, and J. Edgar Hoover personally, put Oppenheimer under surveillance, suspecting him of close ties to the Communist group.
In 1949, before the Commission of Inquiry into Un-American Activities, the scientist admits that in the 1930s he did take an active part in the Communist Party. As a result, in the next four years it will be declared unreliable.
Professor
Robert
Oppenheimer
Late in his life, Oppenheimer collaborated with Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Joseph Rotblat, jointly founding the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960.
Robert Oppenheimer, Elsa Einstein, Albert Einstein, Margarita Konenkova, Einstein's adopted daughter, Margot
Oppenheimer has been a heavy smoker since his youth; at the end of 1965 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx and, after an unsuccessful operation, at the end of 1966 he underwent radio and chemotherapy. The treatment had no effect; On February 15, 1967, Oppenheimer fell into a coma and died on February 18 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62.
The lunar crater of the same name and asteroid No. 67085 are named in his honor.
Interesting Facts
Theoretical physicist François Ferguson, a friend of Oppenheimer, recalled how, one day, he left an apple doused with harmful chemicals on the table of his supervisor Patrick Blackett.
The most famous theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer had serious mental problems, was a heavy smoker and often forgot to eat during his work.