The Boon That Went Boom!

          J. Robert Oppenheimer is indirectly responsible for the deaths of nearly 200,000 men, women and children.  It is also reasonable to infer that he saved the lives of countless more.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Born in New York City to a Jewish immigrant from Germany, Oppenheimer studied at the Ethical Culture Society School and went on to graduate summa cum laude after just three years at Harvard. At the age of 23, Oppenheimer earned his PDH at the University of Gottingen in Germany. In 1927, he returned to America and took a job as an assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.  After spending a few years establishing himself as an intelligent, charismatic professor, students from around the world migrated to Berkeley in order to study theoretical physics.                                                                                                                                                                     Although he was often immersed in his research and somewhat isolated from the political world, Oppenheimer was wary of the rise of fascism in the 1930s, and publicly opposed the authoritarian nationalist ideology.  By 1939, Americans learned that German scientists had split the atom, creating the opportunity for Nazis to develop extremely powerful weapons. President Roosevelt subsequently established the Manhattan Project and, in 1942, appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer as its director.  Oppenheimer quickly gathered the nation's most brilliant minds in physics and set up a new research station at Los Alamos, New Mexico. There he managed more than three thousand people, and overcame the vast number of mechanical challenges that arose during the creation of the world's first atomic bomb.On July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer witnessed the first detonation of one of his atomic bombs in the New Mexico desert (Trinity Test). In less than a month, Japan would surrender after atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Oppenheimer famously quoted Hindu scripture, saying “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one” and “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”                                                                                                     At the End of WWII, Oppenheimer became the head of the general advising committee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He opposed the development of the more powerful hydrogen bomb, sensing the repercussions that would surely accompany the advancement of such destructive forces. Oppenheimer did not argue when President Truman eventually approved the research and testing of the H bomb, but his initial reluctance and the tense political climate eventually turned against him. In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was publicly revoked. Despite a lack of concrete evidence that he was indeed a member of the Communist party, this loss of security clearance ended Oppenheimer’s influence on scientific policy long after the Red Scare.  He eventually returned to the field of education and took Albert Einstein's position as Senior Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton.  In the last years of his life, Oppenheimer joined a number of noteworthy scientists in protest against nuclear weaponry, stressing mankind's inability to wield the epic power of knowledge in a world that is defined by its political disputes.                                                                                                                                                                 When defining a hero, there is often a great deal of debate as to whether or not someone is heroic just because they were the first to do something.  In this case, Oppenheimer's ability to efficiently assemble and manage thousands of the country's greatest minds led to a swift victory for the allies in WWII.  Many consider him to be a villain for fathering one of the most destructive forces of all time and doing so with the knowledge that his work would be used as a weapon.  Oppenheimer was a hero because he was on our side, and like so many heroes, his high esteem is a direct result of perspective. Without his help, the United States might have experienced a grim alternate reality were prolonged wartime would have exhausted resources, facilitating the spread of Nazism into the West.  For better or worse, Oppenheimer has reshaped the world and given its people a whole new reason to hope and fear for its survival.  In the end, we can only hope that this godly power remains under our control, because, in this case, one man's boon has become every man's burden.