J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the most important names when it comes to World War II. Known as the “father of the atomic bomb” for his role in the production of the first nuclear bomb, Oppenheimer’s name is now more frequently mentioned in Christopher Nolan’s movie. The US theoretical physicist was behind the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These bombs were manufactured at the Los Alamos Laboratory, headed by Oppenheimer.
Before the film’s release, we will give some important information from the life of Oppenheimer, who even shaped world politics with what he did. This information will also be good for you to better understand the movie before going to the movie.
First, let’s get to know Oppenheimer’s life briefly.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1904. Having completed his doctorate in physics at the age of 23, the scientist later began to teach physics at the California Institute of Technology, University of California and Berkeley.
In 1942, General Leslie Groves Jr. asked Oppenheimer to lead the project, despite his lack of managerial experience and no Nobel Prize (many of the other possible candidates were Nobel laureates).
In this way, Oppenheimer became the head of the Manhattan Project. There are also some details in Oppenheimer’s extraordinary story. Let’s take a look at interesting facts about Oppenheimer with these details.
His students admired him because of his high speaking power.
Oppenheimer was a physicist who relied not only on mathematics, but also on verbal strength. For this reason, he was doing a very good job of describing physics in words. Oppenheimer was very talented at making beautiful sentences, and his students followed him with great interest.
Some of these students admired Oppenheimer so much that they began to dress and act like him. Influenced by their teachers, the students became nicknamed “nim nim boys” for imitating Oppenheimer’s distinctive “nim nim” hum.
He could speak 6 languages, including ancient Sanskrit.
Oppenheimer spoke 6 languages. Even including Dutch, which he learned in 6 weeks to lecture. Oppenheimer, who also reads a lot outside of his field, learned Sanskrit in order to read the Hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita during a time of depression.
In fact, Oppenheimer told his friends in a 1965 NBC interview after seeing the mushroom cloud formed in the first successful atomic bomb test, “Now I am death, destroyer of worlds.” The word comes from this book.
He became interested in communism during the Great Depression.
Oppenheimer, who became interested in workers’ rights and communism during the Great Depression, which was among the most difficult times in the USA, began to support leftist causes in the late 1930s.
Although the United States sided with the Soviet Union in World War II, Americans still suspected the communists. Oppenheimer was never a member of communist parties, but people from his close circle, like his brother, were members of these parties.
After the Manhattan Project, this scientist’s opponents sought to smear Oppenheimer’s interest in communism as a security threat.
The then US President Truman insulted Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer began to feel severe remorse after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two months after the detonation of these two atomic bombs, Oppenheimer went to the Oval Office to speak with President Harry S. Truman about the possibility that the Soviet Union could develop an atomic bomb. The President paid little attention to Oppenheimer’s concerns, reassuring the famous physicist that the Soviets would never develop an atomic bomb.
Angered at this, Oppenheimer rubbed his hands and gave Truman the legendary sentence: “Mr. President, I feel there is blood on my hands” sentence that most people hear.
At this sentence, Truman got very angry and said, “Blood on your hands, damn you don’t have as much blood on your hands as I have. Just don’t talk about it,” and after Oppenheimer’s exit, he told Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “I’ll never see that b*tch in the office again.” I don’t want it,” he said.
Ready to go to the movie?
Oppenheimer, who we can get to know better with Christopher Nolan’s movie, has a unique personality. Thousands of people died because of what he did, but maybe he saved millions.
There is a lot of specific information about Oppenheimer that shows that a person was never completely black or white. We leave these to watch in the movie. So what do you expect from Oppenheimer’s new movie? Let’s meet in the comments.
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