The Story Behind J Robert Oppenheimer: Known as Atom Bomb Pioneer

Jakarta – Oppenheimer created by Christopher Nolan's was one of the best movies in Indonesia on Wednesday. The movie stars Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who was drafted to lead the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M., to build the atomic bomb during World War II. 

The movie is based on the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning biographical book, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin over a period of more than 25 years.

"Celebrated in 1945 as the 'Father of the Atomic Bomb', nine years later he would become the ultimate celebrity victim of the McCarthyite vortex," Bird wrote. 

Oppenheimer is the first film to properly address the scientist and his legacy, which was marred by a controversial trial in 1954 that resulted in his security clearance being revoked.

Well, who exactly is J Robert Oppenheimer?

Oppenheimer was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in New York City. His family's art collection included original works by Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

At an early age, Oppenheimer's academic abilities surpassed his peers and he made it to Harvard University at the age of 18 where he graduated in just three years summa cum laude (with highest honors). 

However, despite his academic prowess, he struggled with his mental health. During college, he once expressed suicidal thoughts and, while pursuing his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University, deliberately left an apple that had been poisoned with laboratory chemicals on his lecturer's desk. 

Meanwhile, with the outbreak of World War II, Oppenheimer transformed himself into a respected professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has made many significant contributions to the world of science.

While at Berkeley, he fell in love with Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh in Oppenheimer's movie), the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor and a student at Stanford University School of Medicine. She was a member of the Communist Party, which later became an issue in his security clearance hearings.

They separated in 1939 and, a year later, he married Katherine ("Kitty") Puening and had two children. During their marriage, Oppenheimer rekindled his relationship with Tatlock and the two had an affair.

He later committed suicide in 1944.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, two months before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D Roosevelt approved a program to develop an atomic bomb. A year later, Oppenheimer was recruited by the National Defense Research Committee to research the creation of an atomic bomb. 

In September of that year, General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in the movie) took over as head of the Manhattan Project (named after its inaugural office in Manhattan) and selected Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory.

For three years, Oppenheimer and a large team of scientists worked to build an atomic bomb at a military laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 

Their work culminated in the first nuclear explosion in history, known as the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945.

In an interview conducted years later, Oppenheimer claimed that a line from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, crossed his mind during the explosion: "Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds." 

A month later, two bombs developed by the Manhattan Project were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing around 200,000 people, most of whom were civilians.

On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan.

After the project's success, Oppenheimer continued to act as a nuclear weapons consultant to the US government; however, he warned about the devastating capabilities of the atomic bomb.

In a 1953 speech, he likened the nuclear capabilities of the United States and the Soviet Union to "two scorpions in one bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of its own life". 

In December of that year, during the Second Red Scare in the US, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr in Nolan's film) informed Oppenheimer that his secret security clearance had been revoked and insisted on his resignation.

However, the scientist refused and insisted on defending himself at a highly publicized security hearing, which was later lost amidst public humiliation. 

Many sources claim that Oppenheimer never recovered from the incident. The New York Times wrote in his obituary: "This deeply complicated man never fully succeeded in dispelling doubts about his behavior." 

Efforts were later made to improve Oppenheimer's image, in 1963, President Lyndon B Johnson awarded Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award, the AEC's highest honor.

A heavy smoker, Oppenheimer died of throat cancer at his home in Princeton in February 1967. 

In his piece for The NYT, Bird wrote: "I hope Christopher Nolan's stunning new movie about Oppenheimer's complicated legacy will start a national conversation not only about our existential relationship with weapons of mass destruction, but also our society's need for weapons of mass destruction scientists as public intellectuals."