J. Robert Oppenheimer

Portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Father of the Atomic Bomb · Physicist · 1904–1967

Director of the Manhattan Project, father of the atomic bomb — and the man who spent a lifetime living with that fact.

Explore the life of Oppenheimer — five chapters

The Poisoned Apple — A privileged childhood and a breakdown at Cambridge
Black Holes and the Left — A paper nobody noticed, and associations that were never forgotten
Director — Why a theorist with no management experience was chosen
Blood on My Hands — Opposing the hydrogen bomb
The Hearing — Four weeks in a converted room, and a clearance revoked

J. Robert Oppenheimer has a genuine claim on 1 lesson of the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE science course built into Incandio:

Chain Reactions and Reactors — Physics: This page is about holding a chain reaction at exactly one neutron per fission, and Oppenheimer directed the project that deliberately did not. He is worth asking because he understood both the physics and what it would mean: he ran Los Alamos with complete commitment, watched the Trinity test, and then spent the rest of his career arguing against the weapons he had helped create, losing his security clearance for it in 1954. He is the right figure for the question a reactor page raises and cannot answer — what the difference between a power station and a bomb actually consists of, and who decides which gets built.