Oppenheimer : Father of Atom Bombs

Subject : History

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Concept :

Christopher Nolan’s new film on the American physicist who built the most destructive weapon known to man, then advocated against nuclear weapons, and was punished for it, opens on July 21.
As Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, Oppenheimer led the so-called ‘Manhattan Project’ — and the team of scientists who worked to harness 20th-century advances in nuclear physics for the purposes of war.
However, after witnessing firsthand the devastating potential of nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer became one of the strongest voices against their proliferation and the growing nuclear arms race between the United States and the (erstwhile) Soviet Union.
This is the story of how the so-called ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’ became one of the most vocal advocates for nuclear non-proliferation.

The dawn of the Atomic Age – US Trinity Test

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device.
on July 16, 1945, the world’s first super bomb loaded with about 13 pounds of plutonium at its core exploded in a desert in New Mexico.
The super bomb, nicknamed ‘Gadget’, was built by a team of scientists at a top-secret site in Los Alamos.
It destroyed everything in its vicinity and melted vast swathes of sand into sea-green glass.
It was developed as part of the US-led Manhattan Project.

Oppenheimer and the Gita

Robert Oppenheimer always had doubts about “bestowing humanity the possible means for its own annihilation”.
After witnessing the Trinity Test, his reservations were amplified manifold. And like so many others, he sought the meaning of his actions in the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita.
In 1965, speaking on the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb, he quoted the Gita. “Vishnu (Krishna) is trying to persuade the Prince (Arjuna) that he should do his duty, and to impress him [He] takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’,” Oppenheimer said.
Oppenheimer’s “I am become Death” quote has become inextricably tied to the nuclear age, an apt description of the terrifying and awesome destructive potential of nuclear weapons.