In the third week of July 2023, Universal Pictures, USA, released a star-studded $100 million movie titled ‘Oppenheimer.’ The movie is about the story of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist generally known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb.’ As we know, the first atomic bomb was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, totally destroying it and killing around 125,000 people as estimated by Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. Since then, August 6 is being observed worldwide as Hiroshima Day to commemorate the victims of this horrific tragedy. Interestingly, the movie has been released just a fortnight before Hiroshima Day.
The movie revolves around a hearing by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1954 for the renewal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Oppenheimer was declared a security risk and was accused of having communist connections and opposing the development of the hydrogen bomb. The whole thing was the result of a conspiracy hatched by Lewis Strauss, the then Chairman of AEC. Oppenheimer was then a consultant to the AEC. After the hearing, the three-member board made a majority decision against Oppenheimer. His security clearance was revoked and he lost his job. His image and reputation were shattered. Almost a decade later in 1963, Oppenheimer was presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon B. Johnson which rehabilitated him in the scientific world and the society.
According to Richard Rhodes’s book “The Making of the Atom Bomb”, Oppenheimer was chosen by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. to lead a team of scientists in designing and developing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He did it successfully and the first nuclear explosion was tested on July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer thought that the testing could initiate a chain reaction in the atmosphere and destroy the whole planet. However, that didn’t stop him from going ahead with the test. In his own words: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” Oppenheimer was also an adviser of the Target Committee that was working on selecting targets in Japan for dropping atomic bombs since April 1945 – three months before the test explosion was successfully carried out.
How could an intellectual mind actively participate in planning to annihilate thousands of innocent people? Well, Oppenheimer’s psyche was probably not comparable with the ethics and morals of normal people.
As detailed in the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer tried to poison his head tutor Patrick Blackett at Cambridge University in 1925. Blackett was an experimental physicist and Oppenheimer was failing to perform in laboratory works given by Blackett. One day Oppenheimer injected cyanide into an apple he found on Blackett’s table but fortunately, Blackett didn’t eat it. Also, while at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer proceeded seriously with Enrico Fermi’s casual idea of poisoning Germany’s food supply with radioactive materials. He later dropped the idea because he found that due to several limitations, such a scheme would be able to kill only less than half a million people.
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This article was published in the Daily Sun on August 2, 2023. Please read the full article here or here.