J. Robert Oppenheimer - Biography, Facts and Pictures Blog J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as “the father of the atomic bomb”, was an American nuclear physicist and director of the Los Alamos Laboratory (Manhattan Project). With a project so big that involved the hard work of hundreds of gifted scientists, it may appear quite undue to give so much credit on the shoulders of Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is, however, still the sole creator and inventor of the nuclear bomb to most people in the world. Advertisements Early Life and Education: Born in 1904 in New York City to a rich Jewish father, Oppenheimer became one of the brightest students at Harvard University at a youthful age of seventeen. He also went to Cambridge University in England for higher studies, where Ernest Rutherford , the famous British chemist and physicist, was his teacher. Oppenheimer acquired his Ph.D. from University of Göttingen in Germany. Although he spent most of his time carrying out research and publishing books about quantum theory and theoretical physics, he was probably more interested in the classics and Eastern philosophy.

In 1929, Oppenheimer topped in all the units at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. Most of the times, Oppenheimer had almost no time for his personal life. The growing popularity of Nazism in Germany during the 1930s, however, became a major event in his life, as it led him towards politics and resistance against the European fascist movement. Oppenheimer subsequently joined left-wing politics, and became associated with several left-leaning organizations, which were somehow linked to the Communist Party. Contributions and Achievements: Niels Bohr and other European scientists informed their American contemporaries about the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s successful attempt of splitting the atom in 1939. President Roosevelt was much concerned that the Nazis may utilize this extraordinary technology to create an atomic weapon. This fear led him to institute the Manhattan Project in 1941. Oppenheimer was appointed the scientific director of the project. He advised that the project be housed at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

After extensive hard work and rigorous struggle, the first nuclear bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, with the power of approximately 18,000 tons of TNT, at Alamogordo Air Force Base in southern New Mexico. Within one month, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. The event almost instantly ended the war, after which Oppenheimer was made the chairperson of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Later Life and Death: Oppenheimer, due to his conscience and regrets over making such horrible weapons of mass destruction, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1949. The bomb is often thought to be the Truman administration’s answer to the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb. Due to this unexpected move, Edward Teller, his colleague at Los Alamos, was made the director of the new project. Oppenheimer’s patriotism was also questioned and he was even accused of “communist sympathies” due to his past political affiliations. For the rest of his life, he shunned politics and performed his duties as the director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. Oppenheimer died of cancer in Princeton in 1967. Advertisements Robert F.

Christy, Atom Bomb Physicist, Dies at 96 - The New York Times The New York Times Science |Robert F. Christy, Atom Bomb Physicist, Dies at 96 Search Continue reading the main story Robert F. Christy, who as a young Canadian-born physicist working on the Manhattan Project came up with a critical insight that led to the creation of the world’s first atom bomb, died on Wednesday at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 96. His death, after a brief respiratory illness, was confirmed by his family. Dr. Christy later turned his mind to the riddles of space and served as provost of Caltech. But he was more widely known as one of the last surviving leading scientists to have worked on the atomic bomb. Dr. Christy was present at important junctures in the early atomic era, including the debut in 1942 of the world’s first nuclear reactor in Chicago. Most notable was his contribution to the design of the explosive core of the first atom bomb, which lit up the New Mexico desert during a nighttime test in 1945. The atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki also used his design.

The first bomb, developed in secrecy during World War II at Los Alamos, N.M., relied on implosion. The plan was to detonate a sphere of conventional explosives, the blast from which would compress a central ball of nuclear fuel into an incredibly dense mass; that in turn would start a chain reaction that would end in a nuclear explosion. But the Los Alamos team discovered that the interface between the detonating explosives and the hollow sphere could become unstable and ruin the crushing power of the blast wave. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dr. Christy, while studying implosion tests, realized that a solid core could be compressed far more uniformly, and he worked hard in the days that followed to convince his colleagues of its superiority. He succeeded, and the hollow core was replaced with one made of solid plutonium metal. A 1993 book, “Critical Assembly,” sponsored by the Department of Energy, which maintains the nation’s nuclear arsenal, said Dr. Christy’s insight reduced the risk that the core would lose its spherical form and thus fail to explode. And Robert S. Norris, an atomic historian and the author of “Racing for the Bomb,” called Dr.

Christy’s breakthrough, known as the Christy pit, “a conservative solution to a problem they were having” that “increased the likelihood of a successful detonation.” Robert Frederick Christy was born May 14, 1916, in Vancouver and studied physics at the University of British Columbia . He was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, under J. Robert Oppenheimer , a leading theoretical physicist who became known as the father of the atomic bomb. After completing his studies in 1941, Dr. Christy worked at the University of Chicago before being recruited to join the Los Alamos team when Oppenheimer became its scientific director. Photo Mr. Christy helped design the explosive core of the first atomic bomb. Credit Caltech After the war, Dr. Christy joined Caltech in theoretical physics and stayed at the university for the rest of his academic career, serving as a faculty chairman, vice president, provost (from 1970 to 1980) and acting president (1977-78). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr.

Christy came to question the wisdom of further developing nuclear arms, though he never became an activist on the issue. His love of nuclear physics led him to study cosmic rays and to investigate what drove the pulsating brightness of an important class of stars used as yardsticks to measure cosmic distances. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up In 1967, he won the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his work in theoretical astrophysics. Advertisement Continue reading the main story While working for the National Research Council during the 1980s and ’90s, Dr. Christy studied the effects of atomic radiation on the Japanese people resulting from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to help determine safe radiation levels and better understand radiation’s medical risks. He is survived by his wife, I. Juliana Christy-Sackmann; two daughters; two sons from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce; and five grandchildren. Dr. Christy may be best remembered for a bitter encounter that crystallized the resentment that many American scientists felt toward Edward Teller, considered the father of the hydrogen bomb.

During the height of American cold war fears of Communist influences, Teller, a veteran of the Manhattan Project, had testified against Oppenheimer before the Atomic Energy Commission, questioning his judgment and recommending that the government revoke his security clearance. Shortly after the testimony, in the summer of 1954, scientists attending a conference at Los Alamos were preparing for a picnic lunch on a terrace. Teller saw Dr. Christy, an old friend, and hurried over to greet him. But Dr. Christy, a former protégé and colleague of Oppenheimer’s and known to be a courteous, genial man, threw back an icy glance and walked away. “I was so stunned that for a moment I couldn’t react,” Teller recalled in “Memoirs,” a 2001 book. “Then I realized that my life as I had known it was over.” A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 2012, on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: Robert F. Christy, Atom Bomb Physicist, Dies at 96.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Atomic Bomb | Video | C-SPAN.org Supreme Court November 16, 1945 The Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer spoke about the development and use of the atomic bomb. He talked about atomic weapons as “evil things” and about the ethical… read more The Atomic Bomb Robert Oppenheimer spoke about the development and use of the atomic bomb. He talked about atomic weapons as “evil things” and about the ethical application of science and scientific discovery. He also expressed his hope that the atomic bomb would never be used again, peaceful use of nuclear technologies, as well as nuclear deterrence. The physicist known as “the father of the atomic bomb” served as the first director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory beginning in 1943. The first atomic bomb test in New Mexico was on July 16, 1945 and on August 6, 1945 Little Boy was detonated above Hiroshima. After WWII he became chief adviser to the newly-created Atomic Energy Commission. The program was an audio recording with still images shown. The speech was delivered at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

It is presented courtesy of the American Philosophical Society Library. close Transcript type Articles: Jewish Scientists Helped America Build the Atom Bomb Jewish Scientists Helped America Build the Atom Bomb By Arnold Cusmariu J. Robert Oppenheimer is probably the best-known Jewish scientist born in the US who worked at the Manhattan Project (MP), the program that produced the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Were there other US-born Jewish scientists at MP? If so, who were they and what did they contribute? Edward Teller is probably the best-known Jewish scientist at MP not born in the US, who later also worked on the hydrogen bomb. Were there other foreign-born Jewish scientists at MP? If so, who were they and what did they contribute? The 26 biographical sketches presented below make a (belated) start at answering these questions. I realize the lists are not exhaustive. Comprehensive coverage would require book-length treatment, which I’m hoping someone else will undertake. US-Born Jewish Scientists at MP J. Robert Oppenheimer: Scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory.

Without his decisive, inspirational and in many ways fearless leadership, the atomic bomb probably would not have been built in time to be useful. His gravitas comes through in a 1965 interview . For an assessment of Oppenheimer by the MP Director, General Leslie M. Groves, see [2: 63]. See also the Bird and Sherwin biography of Oppenheimer [4]. Richard P. Feynman: Nobel Prize in physics, 1965. At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to the theoretical division of Hans Bethe. He and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Robert Serber. Oppenheimer sent Feynman to Tennessee to identify safety problems at the Oak Ridge uranium separation plant (Y-12) and suggest solutions, which were adopted. “The plant would have blown up if nobody had paid attention,” Feynman commented [6: 124]. Robert Serber: A former student of Oppenheimer, Serber was one of the first scientists to arrive at Los Alamos.

He produced the “Los Alamos Primer," which explained the physics and goals of MP to all incoming scientific staff. According to Hans Bethe [1: 417] “The theory of the fission bomb was well taken care of by Serber and two of his young people.” Serber gave “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” their names. He was present at the Trinity Test in July 1945 and was part of the American team that entered Hiroshima to measure radiation levels and assess damage. More on Serber here . Stanley P. Frankel: Frankel determined that a uranium fission chain reaction would release considerable energy in a very large explosion and made the first calculations to determine the amount of uranium needed for a fission bomb. Frankel also performed other calculations on ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computer, which laid the computational groundwork for developing thermonuclear weapons. More on Frankel here . Isadore Perlman: Perlman joined Glenn Seaborg's group at MP, which was developing chemical methods for separating plutonium from uranium and fission products.

During 1942-1945, Perlman was deputy director of the Plutonium Chemistry Section at Met Lab, then director of the Plutonium Chemistry Section at Oak Ridge, and served in a key role in the production plant at Hanford, Washington. An article on Perlman by Glenn Seaborg is available here . Alvin M. Weinberg: At Met Lab, Weinberg worked closely with Enrico Fermi and others to develop the world's first nuclear reactor. While there, he worked with Eugene Wigner on neutron multiplication. He also worked at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory (ORNL). According to Wigner [see 3], Weinberg “designed almost alone the Oak Ridge pilot reactor.” Weinberg served as director of ORNL between 1955 and 1973. More here . David Bohm: A student of Oppenheimer at Berkeley, Bohm performed calculations for the calutrons at the Y-12 Oak Ridge plant used to electromagnetically enrich uranium. Bohm later authored several physics books and also one on how the human brain works, Thought as a System. See the Peat biography on Bohm [11] and [4].

Phillip Morrison: At Met Lab, Morrison worked with Eugene Wigner on the design of nuclear reactors. In 1944, moved to Los Alamos where he worked on the development of explosive lenses required to detonate the implosion-type nuclear weapon. He transported the core of the Trinity test device to the test site and was present at the test. He traveled to Tinian to assemble the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and accompanied Serber to Hiroshima to assess damage. More in [4] and here . Frank Oppenheimer: Brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1941, Frank Oppenheimer was a group leader in uranium isotope separation under Lawrence at the University of California Radiation Laboratory. His brother Robert then asked him to conduct research for MP, going to Oak Ridge to monitor equipment at the Y-12 plant and then moving to Los Alamos, where he worked on planning and conducting the Trinity Test in July 1945. More here . Aaron Novick: A physical chemist, Novick worked at various sites associated with MP, including Met Lab, the plutonium production plant at Hanford, and Los Alamos. He witnessed the Trinity Test. More here .

Arnold Kramish: While still in college, Kramish worked in the special engineering division at ORNL, Los Alamos, and at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. At Philadelphia, he was seriously injured when uranium enrichment equipment exploded. He would not accept last rites from a priest because he was Jewish and credited his mother for saving his life by feeding him chicken soup! During the 1980s, Kramisch served as chair of a study for the Reagan Administration that recommended pursuing the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative. More here . Arthur Levy: At MP, Levy was part of team that developed high explosive casting procedures for the “Fat Man” bomb. After the war, he worked for NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, for the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and for the Battelle Memorial Institute. More here . Paul Olum: Olum worked on the scientific staff at Los Alamos as a theoretical physicist. He was close friends with Feynman, with whom he shared an office. After WWII, he spent a postdoctoral year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He was President of the University of Oregon, 1980-89. More here .

Foreign-Born Jewish Scientists at MP Edward Teller: Teller was an early member of MP at Los Alamos and later became known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” An interview is available here . He co-founded the Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory with MP colleague Ernest Lawrence. John von Neumann: Contributions to MP included the concept and design of explosive lenses used in the implosion bomb as well as carrying out thousands of calculations, a human “computing machine” that astonished colleagues. One key calculation he made at Oppenheimer’s request, determined that implosion was theoretically possible. More here Eugene P. Wigner: Nobel Prize in physics, 1963. Wigner was present when Chicago Pile-1 went critical on December 2, 1942 at Met Lab. He continued working there through 1945. Wigner made a famous comment [5: 92] on the slow going in the early stages of MP: “We often felt as though we were swimming in syrup.” An interview is available here . Leo Szilard: In 1939, Szilard authored the letter to FDR signed by Albert Einstein that launched MP.

He worked with Fermi at the University of Chicago to build a uranium and graphite atomic pile in which the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in 1942. More here . Stanislaw M. Ulam: A mathematician, Ulam was a member of Hans Bethe’s theoretical division at Los Alamos, working on hydrodynamic calculations to predict the behavior of explosive lenses needed in an implosion-type weapon. He later originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons (the hydrogen bomb). More here . Isidor I. Rabi: Nobel Prize in physics, 1944. He was a consultant at Los Alamos and was present at the Trinity Test. Rabi later discovered nuclear magnetic resonance, used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a diagnostic tool in medicine. See also this , and the Rigden biography [10]. Emilio G. Segrè: Nobel Prize in physics, 1959. He came to the US in 1938 because of Mussolini’s Racial Laws. He helped discover the isotope plutonium-239, used to make the “Fat Man” atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. An interview is available here .

James Franck: Nobel Prize in physics, 1925. Franck was forced by Nazi racial laws to leave Germany in 1933, coming to the US. At MP, he served as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Chicago Met Lab. At Göttingen, Frank supervised Robert Oppenheimer’s Ph.D. thesis defense. More here . Felix Bloch: Nobel Prize in physics, 1952. He came to the US in 1933 after the Nazi racial laws were passed, joining Stanford University where he became its first professor of theoretical physics. At MP, he made the first experimental determination of the energy distribution of neutrons from fission. He worked under Hans Bethe at Los Alamos. More here . Rudolf E. Peierls: In March 1940, he co-authored the Frisch–Peierls memorandum showing that an atomic bomb could be made from about one kilogram of fissionable uranium-235, a significantly smaller amount than believed at the time. These findings influenced the development of MP. He worked at MP as part of the British Mission. More here . Otto R.

Frisch: He collaborated with Peierls on the Frisch–Peierls memorandum and worked at MP as part of the British Mission. His aunt Lise Meitner was on the team that discovered nuclear fission. Only her colleague Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944, an infamous Nobel Prize snub. Meitner refused to work at MP, stating “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" [8: 305]. More on Frisch here . Samuel A. Goudsmit: At MP, he was the scientific head of a team tasked with assessing the progress of the Nazi atomic bomb project. While in Europe, he traveled to his childhood home in The Hague and found out that his parents died during the Holocaust. Goudsmit concluded that the failure of the German atomic bomb project was attributable to factors such as bureaucracy, Allied bombing campaigns, the persecution of Jewish scientists, and Werner Karl Heisenberg's failed leadership. See Goudmit’s book [9]. Victor F. Weisskopf: At Los Alamos, he was associate head of the Theoretical Division under Hans Bethe.

During 1961-1966 was director-general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In 1975, he was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the 70-member Pontifical Academy of Sciences. More here . “Yes, But …” MP secrets were passed to the Soviet Union by Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass (who worked at MP), Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, and Ted Hall (who also worked at MP) -- as well as Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist who worked at MP as part of the British Mission but was not Jewish. What about this? Trying to diminish the contributions of the Jewish scientists who helped America end the war with Japan by insinuating a “link” on religious or racial grounds with criminals like the Rosenbergs is anti-Semitic prejudice. Put it this way: It would be just as absurd and irresponsible to claim that Italians must belong to the Mafia because they are Italian; or that the Mafia was at MP because Enrico Fermi, Emilio Segrè and Bruno Rossi were Italian and worked there.

In a formal memo to the Manhattan District Engineer [2: 63], General Groves ordered that Robert Oppenheimer be granted security clearances “without delay, irrespective of the information which you have concerning Mr. Oppenheimer.” Though Oppenheimer’s past communist associations were well known, Groves wrote [2: 63] “I would be greatly surprised if Oppenheimer had ever consciously committed a disloyal against the United States.” In fact, Oppenheimer had several persons removed from MP because of their Soviet sympathies [see 7]. Jewish conspiracy nuts, ready at the slightest opportunity to paint all Jews with the same anti-Semitic brush, nevertheless insist on political correctness when it comes to linking Islam with terrorism. They might grant that all or most terrorists in recent times have been Muslims, but warn we must be careful not to label all Muslims terrorists or associate Islam itself with terrorism. When it comes to Jews (or Judaism), however, these distinctions do not apply, according to these wackos. Sources [1] Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986). [2] Leslie R.

Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (Da Capo Press, 1983). [3] S. L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland State University, 1995. [4] Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage Books, 2006). [5] Cynthia C. Kelly (ed.), The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2009). [6] Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (Flash Point, 2012). [7] John Earl Haynes, Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2006). [8] Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996). [9] Samuel A.

Goudsmit, Alsos (American Institute of Physics; 1985). [10] John S. Rigden, Rabi: Scientist and Citizen (Harvard University Press, 2000). [11] F. David Peat, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm (Addison-Wesley, 1996). J. Robert Oppenheimer is probably the best-known Jewish scientist born in the US who worked at the Manhattan Project (MP), the program that produced the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Were there other US-born Jewish scientists at MP? If so, who were they and what did they contribute? Edward Teller is probably the best-known Jewish scientist at MP not born in the US, who later also worked on the hydrogen bomb. Were there other foreign-born Jewish scientists at MP? If so, who were they and what did they contribute? The 26 biographical sketches presented below make a (belated) start at answering these questions. I realize the lists are not exhaustive. Comprehensive coverage would require book-length treatment, which I’m hoping someone else will undertake.

US-Born Jewish Scientists at MP J. Robert Oppenheimer: Scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. Without his decisive, inspirational and in many ways fearless leadership, the atomic bomb probably would not have been built in time to be useful. His gravitas comes through in a 1965 interview . For an assessment of Oppenheimer by the MP Director, General Leslie M. Groves, see [2: 63]. See also the Bird and Sherwin biography of Oppenheimer [4]. Richard P. Feynman: Nobel Prize in physics, 1965. At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to the theoretical division of Hans Bethe. He and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Robert Serber. Oppenheimer sent Feynman to Tennessee to identify safety problems at the Oak Ridge uranium separation plant (Y-12) and suggest solutions, which were adopted. “The plant would have blown up if nobody had paid attention,” Feynman commented [6: 124].

Robert Serber: A former student of Oppenheimer, Serber was one of the first scientists to arrive at Los Alamos. He produced the “Los Alamos Primer," which explained the physics and goals of MP to all incoming scientific staff. According to Hans Bethe [1: 417] “The theory of the fission bomb was well taken care of by Serber and two of his young people.” Serber gave “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” their names. He was present at the Trinity Test in July 1945 and was part of the American team that entered Hiroshima to measure radiation levels and assess damage. More on Serber here . Stanley P. Frankel: Frankel determined that a uranium fission chain reaction would release considerable energy in a very large explosion and made the first calculations to determine the amount of uranium needed for a fission bomb. Frankel also performed other calculations on ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computer, which laid the computational groundwork for developing thermonuclear weapons. More on Frankel here . Isadore Perlman: Perlman joined Glenn Seaborg's group at MP, which was developing chemical methods for separating plutonium from uranium and fission products.

During 1942-1945, Perlman was deputy director of the Plutonium Chemistry Section at Met Lab, then director of the Plutonium Chemistry Section at Oak Ridge, and served in a key role in the production plant at Hanford, Washington. An article on Perlman by Glenn Seaborg is available here . Alvin M. Weinberg: At Met Lab, Weinberg worked closely with Enrico Fermi and others to develop the world's first nuclear reactor. While there, he worked with Eugene Wigner on neutron multiplication. He also worked at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory (ORNL). According to Wigner [see 3], Weinberg “designed almost alone the Oak Ridge pilot reactor.” Weinberg served as director of ORNL between 1955 and 1973. More here . David Bohm: A student of Oppenheimer at Berkeley, Bohm performed calculations for the calutrons at the Y-12 Oak Ridge plant used to electromagnetically enrich uranium. Bohm later authored several physics books and also one on how the human brain works, Thought as a System. See the Peat biography on Bohm [11] and [4].

Phillip Morrison: At Met Lab, Morrison worked with Eugene Wigner on the design of nuclear reactors. In 1944, moved to Los Alamos where he worked on the development of explosive lenses required to detonate the implosion-type nuclear weapon. He transported the core of the Trinity test device to the test site and was present at the test. He traveled to Tinian to assemble the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and accompanied Serber to Hiroshima to assess damage. More in [4] and here . Frank Oppenheimer: Brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1941, Frank Oppenheimer was a group leader in uranium isotope separation under Lawrence at the University of California Radiation Laboratory. His brother Robert then asked him to conduct research for MP, going to Oak Ridge to monitor equipment at the Y-12 plant and then moving to Los Alamos, where he worked on planning and conducting the Trinity Test in July 1945. More here . Aaron Novick: A physical chemist, Novick worked at various sites associated with MP, including Met Lab, the plutonium production plant at Hanford, and Los Alamos. He witnessed the Trinity Test. More here .

Arnold Kramish: While still in college, Kramish worked in the special engineering division at ORNL, Los Alamos, and at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. At Philadelphia, he was seriously injured when uranium enrichment equipment exploded. He would not accept last rites from a priest because he was Jewish and credited his mother for saving his life by feeding him chicken soup! During the 1980s, Kramisch served as chair of a study for the Reagan Administration that recommended pursuing the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative. More here . Arthur Levy: At MP, Levy was part of team that developed high explosive casting procedures for the “Fat Man” bomb. After the war, he worked for NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, for the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and for the Battelle Memorial Institute. More here . Paul Olum: Olum worked on the scientific staff at Los Alamos as a theoretical physicist. He was close friends with Feynman, with whom he shared an office. After WWII, he spent a postdoctoral year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He was President of the University of Oregon, 1980-89. More here .

Foreign-Born Jewish Scientists at MP Edward Teller: Teller was an early member of MP at Los Alamos and later became known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” An interview is available here . He co-founded the Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory with MP colleague Ernest Lawrence. John von Neumann: Contributions to MP included the concept and design of explosive lenses used in the implosion bomb as well as carrying out thousands of calculations, a human “computing machine” that astonished colleagues. One key calculation he made at Oppenheimer’s request, determined that implosion was theoretically possible. More here Eugene P. Wigner: Nobel Prize in physics, 1963. Wigner was present when Chicago Pile-1 went critical on December 2, 1942 at Met Lab. He continued working there through 1945. Wigner made a famous comment [5: 92] on the slow going in the early stages of MP: “We often felt as though we were swimming in syrup.” An interview is available here . Leo Szilard: In 1939, Szilard authored the letter to FDR signed by Albert Einstein that launched MP.

He worked with Fermi at the University of Chicago to build a uranium and graphite atomic pile in which the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in 1942. More here . Stanislaw M. Ulam: A mathematician, Ulam was a member of Hans Bethe’s theoretical division at Los Alamos, working on hydrodynamic calculations to predict the behavior of explosive lenses needed in an implosion-type weapon. He later originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons (the hydrogen bomb). More here . Isidor I. Rabi: Nobel Prize in physics, 1944. He was a consultant at Los Alamos and was present at the Trinity Test. Rabi later discovered nuclear magnetic resonance, used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a diagnostic tool in medicine. See also this , and the Rigden biography [10]. Emilio G. Segrè: Nobel Prize in physics, 1959. He came to the US in 1938 because of Mussolini’s Racial Laws. He helped discover the isotope plutonium-239, used to make the “Fat Man” atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. An interview is available here .

James Franck: Nobel Prize in physics, 1925. Franck was forced by Nazi racial laws to leave Germany in 1933, coming to the US. At MP, he served as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Chicago Met Lab. At Göttingen, Frank supervised Robert Oppenheimer’s Ph.D. thesis defense. More here . Felix Bloch: Nobel Prize in physics, 1952. He came to the US in 1933 after the Nazi racial laws were passed, joining Stanford University where he became its first professor of theoretical physics. At MP, he made the first experimental determination of the energy distribution of neutrons from fission. He worked under Hans Bethe at Los Alamos. More here . Rudolf E. Peierls: In March 1940, he co-authored the Frisch–Peierls memorandum showing that an atomic bomb could be made from about one kilogram of fissionable uranium-235, a significantly smaller amount than believed at the time. These findings influenced the development of MP. He worked at MP as part of the British Mission. More here . Otto R.

Frisch: He collaborated with Peierls on the Frisch–Peierls memorandum and worked at MP as part of the British Mission. His aunt Lise Meitner was on the team that discovered nuclear fission. Only her colleague Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944, an infamous Nobel Prize snub. Meitner refused to work at MP, stating “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" [8: 305]. More on Frisch here . Samuel A. Goudsmit: At MP, he was the scientific head of a team tasked with assessing the progress of the Nazi atomic bomb project. While in Europe, he traveled to his childhood home in The Hague and found out that his parents died during the Holocaust. Goudsmit concluded that the failure of the German atomic bomb project was attributable to factors such as bureaucracy, Allied bombing campaigns, the persecution of Jewish scientists, and Werner Karl Heisenberg's failed leadership. See Goudmit’s book [9]. Victor F. Weisskopf: At Los Alamos, he was associate head of the Theoretical Division under Hans Bethe.

During 1961-1966 was director-general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In 1975, he was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the 70-member Pontifical Academy of Sciences. More here . “Yes, But …” MP secrets were passed to the Soviet Union by Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass (who worked at MP), Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, and Ted Hall (who also worked at MP) -- as well as Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist who worked at MP as part of the British Mission but was not Jewish. What about this? Trying to diminish the contributions of the Jewish scientists who helped America end the war with Japan by insinuating a “link” on religious or racial grounds with criminals like the Rosenbergs is anti-Semitic prejudice. Put it this way: It would be just as absurd and irresponsible to claim that Italians must belong to the Mafia because they are Italian; or that the Mafia was at MP because Enrico Fermi, Emilio Segrè and Bruno Rossi were Italian and worked there.

In a formal memo to the Manhattan District Engineer [2: 63], General Groves ordered that Robert Oppenheimer be granted security clearances “without delay, irrespective of the information which you have concerning Mr. Oppenheimer.” Though Oppenheimer’s past communist associations were well known, Groves wrote [2: 63] “I would be greatly surprised if Oppenheimer had ever consciously committed a disloyal against the United States.” In fact, Oppenheimer had several persons removed from MP because of their Soviet sympathies [see 7]. Jewish conspiracy nuts, ready at the slightest opportunity to paint all Jews with the same anti-Semitic brush, nevertheless insist on political correctness when it comes to linking Islam with terrorism. They might grant that all or most terrorists in recent times have been Muslims, but warn we must be careful not to label all Muslims terrorists or associate Islam itself with terrorism. When it comes to Jews (or Judaism), however, these distinctions do not apply, according to these wackos. Sources [1] Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986). [2] Leslie R.

Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project (Da Capo Press, 1983). [3] S. L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland State University, 1995. [4] Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage Books, 2006). [5] Cynthia C. Kelly (ed.), The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2009). [6] Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (Flash Point, 2012). [7] John Earl Haynes, Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2006). [8] Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996). [9] Samuel A.

Goudsmit, Alsos (American Institute of Physics; 1985). [10] John S. Rigden, Rabi: Scientist and Citizen (Harvard University Press, 2000). [11] F. David Peat, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm (Addison-Wesley, 1996). Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Quotes, Biography & the Atomic Bomb | Study.com Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Quotes, Biography & the Atomic Bomb Watch short & fun videos Start Your Free Trial Today Instructor: Matthew Hill Add to Add to Add to Want to watch this again later? Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. Custom Courses are courses that you create from Study.com lessons. Use them just like other courses to track progress, access quizzes and exams, and share content. Teachers Organize and share selected lessons with your class. Make planning easier by creating your own custom course. Students Create a new course from any lesson page or your dashboard. From any lesson page: Click "Add to" located below the video player and follow the prompts to name your course and save your lesson.

From your dashboard: Click on the "Custom Courses" tab, then click "Create course". Next, go to any lesson page and begin adding lessons. Edit your Custom Course directly from your dashboard. Personalize: Name your Custom Course and add an optional description or learning objective. Organize: Create chapters to group lesson within your course. Remove and reorder chapters and lessons at any time. Share your Custom Course or assign lessons and chapters. Teacher Edition: Share or assign lessons and chapters by clicking the "Teacher" tab on the lesson or chapter page you want to assign. Students' quiz scores and video views will be trackable in your "Teacher" tab. Premium Edition: You can share your Custom Course by copying and pasting the course URL. Only Study.com members will be able to access the entire course. Although J. Robert Oppenheimer was known as the 'father of the atomic bomb', he became a pacifist in later life. Find out more about this renowned physicist and his work with the Manhattan Project and beyond. Roots of a Nuclear Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City in April 1904 to Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father worked in textiles and his mother was an artist.

The bright young Oppenheimer was drawn to science and attended the private Ethical Society Cultural School, after which he studied physics at Harvard. After Harvard, he spent a year at the distinguished Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University and then earned his PhD at the University of Gottingen in Germany under the renowned German physicist Max Born. The two collaborated on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, which dealt with separating nuclear motion and electronic motion in molecules. Robert Oppenheimer After completing his PhD, Oppenheimer briefly studied as a National Research Council Fellow. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a dual appointment as a research professor at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley, which created the first program in America dedicated to theoretical physics. At Berkeley, his research extended to multiple fields in physics and astrophysics, and in the 1930s he was one of the first to argue for the existence of black holes. In 1940, he married Berkeley student and activist Katherine Harrison with whom he had two sons.

L-R: Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer The Manhattan Project At the start of the Second World War, Germany's nuclear program was advanced, but Adolf Hitler's pogrom against the Jews drove many of his leading scientists to the United States. A group of physicists that included Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to fund an atomic research program. Preliminary research had already been conducted at several American universities, but FDR decided to centralize the research in a single location under a single director. The project, which started in 1942, was codenamed the Manhattan Project; it became what Oppenheimer was best known for. General Leslie Groves, the program director, appointed Oppenheimer as the scientific director at the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico. Oppenheimer pulled together a first-class team of scientists to test the possibilities of building a nuclear bomb. Across the country more than 120,000 people worked on the project, though Oppenheimer worked directly over 3,000. In all, nearly $2 billion was spent on the project.

Photo of the Trinity Explosion in Alamagordo, New Mexico The Atomic Bomb is Born On July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first ever atomic test was successfully detonated underground. Oppenheimer called the bomb 'Trinity.' A noted Sanskrit scholar, Oppenheimer quoted the following line from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: 'I have become death, the destroyer of worlds', to capture the mood of the moment. The bomb was originally designed to be used on Nazi Germany, but Germany surrendered before the bombs were ready. On August 6, 1945, the first bomb, named 'Little Boy' was dropped on Hiroshima, and on August 9 the 'Fat Man' was dropped on Nagasaki. Collectively, the two bombs killed over 200,000 people in seconds. Although it paled in number to the total number killed in conventional bombing campaigns, the speed and intensity in which it did frightened its own creators. Oppenheimer was shaken and later stated that, 'The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unthinkable.

It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.' In fact, his growing doubts soon got him into trouble. L-R: Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves Late Career Troubles In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed head of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw atomic research. In this role, Oppenheimer increasingly voiced his opposition to developing the newer hydrogen bomb. Over time he grew more reflective on the nature of his work. He once mused, 'When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.' His point was the scientists were so eager to see if the bomb was scientifically possible that they never bothered to ask whether it should be created in the first place. L-R: Photo of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ×

Question: Which nuclear physicist is known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’?
Answer: Julius Robert Oppenheimer