J. Robert Oppenheimer - “I Am Become Death....”

As the blinding light of a thousand suns lit up the New Mexico desert that morning in July 1945, a line from the Bhagavad Gita flashed into the physicist’s brain. It had been written in India 2,000 years earlier, but it seemed particularly significant now: “I am become death, The Scatterer of Worlds.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer stared at the mushroom cloud rising over the desert where a huge steel tower had once stood. For more than two years, he and a staff of 4,500 scientists, engineers, and technicians had labored to reach this point. The United States had beaten Hitler (Number l) to the atomic bomb. But what now? Hitler was dead and Nazi Germany had surrendered 10 weeks earlier. Would it be necessary to use the bomb against the Japanese? The forthcoming answer would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Building the Atomic Bomb

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in 1904 in New York City. A graduate of Harvard, he went to Europe to study physics at Cambridge, Goettingen, Leyden, and Zurich. He then taught theoretical physics at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. His brilliant work in the fundamental particles of nuclear physics became well known throughout the scientific world.

Early in 1943, as the Manhattan Project (to build an atomic bomb) began, then-Colonel Leslie R. Groves (Number 32) tapped Oppenheimer to run the Los Alamos unit in New Mexico, where the scientists would work in virtual isolation. Their job was to design, construct, and then test an atomic bomb.

Years earlier, when Albert Einstein (Number 13) had first written to President Roosevelt (Number 2), the father of the relativity theory was not sure that an atomic bomb could be delivered by air. The scientists at Los Alamos had hundreds of details to work out—not merely the technical aspects of creating a critical mass, but also such issues as size, shape, and weight of the bomb, how it could be “armed,” what altitude would be most useful for the greatest impact, how best to protect the bomber and its crew, and so on. And it all had to be done in the strictest secrecy.

Among the scientists working on the bomb were Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Nils Bohr, and Albrecht Bethe. Klaus Fuchs, a German-born scientist from Britain, also worked at Los Alamos; he turned out to be a Soviet spy who would provide atom bomb secrets to the Russians. At one point, Oppenheimer himself had been approached by Haakon Chevalier, a French Communist, to provide information to the Soviets. Oppen-heimer responded, “But that would be treason.” He never provided such information, but his casual relationships with people of all political persuasions would later lead to security questions.

The Atomic Age

The atomic age was born on July 16, 1945, at Alamagordo, New Mexico. An atomic “device” was set off. It had the power of about 20,000 tons of dynamite. The results were sent to President Truman (Number 14), then meeting in Potsdam with Churchill (Number 3) and Stalin (Number 4). Churchill knew all about it. Stalin, who said that he hoped the United States would use it, probably knew more about it than Truman did, thanks to Soviet spies.

The scientists at Los Alamos were divided on how and whether to use the bomb. Some wanted to warn the Japanese in advance. Others wanted to have some Japanese official witness an actual explosion. The decision was a military one: It would end the war and save more lives than would be killed by the bomb. Truman ordered that the bomb be used on Japan. On August 6, 1945, “Little Boy,” a uranium bomb, was dropped on Hiroshima. “Fat Man,” a more powerful plutonium bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki, on August 8, 1945. The Japanese surrendered.

After the war, Oppenheimer became director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. An advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Defense Department, Oppenheimer publicly opposed the building of a hydrogen bomb.

In 1954, he was accused of disloyalty to the United States. A three-man committee heard his case. It ended in a split decision. One committee member said he was loyal and should keep his security clearance. A second ruled that Oppenheimer was not loyal and should lose his security clearance. The third and deciding vote was that even though he was loyal, Oppenheimer was a security risk. His past associations had come back to plague him, and he was denied security clearance. Labeled a security risk, Oppenheimer’s career was permanently crippled.

He died in 1967.