The film “Oppenheimer,” which opened Friday, is based on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who lead the development of the world’s first atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb,’ spent his life after the bomb was dropped questioning what the invention had unleashed.
Here’s what we know about Oppenheimer, the man, and the bombs he helped make:
Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer?
Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist who was hired to direct the top-secret Manhattan Project that led to the development of an atomic weapon.
The New York Times, in a 1963 profile of Oppenheimer, said he was a scientist from an early age, describing an “infrequent trip to a playground” when he was a young child.
“A child threw a ball out of the playground and the director criticized the throw,” the Times reported. “But young Robert calculated the force with which the ball struck the sidewalk and demonstrated that it could not have hurt anyone.”
When he was 10, he studied physics and chemistry, The Hill reported.
What was the Manhattan Project?
The Manhattan Project, created by the U.S. government, was an effort to develop the greatest weapon ever seen on Earth -- the atomic bomb. In 1943, a research lab was established in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists gathered to work on the bomb.
Oppenheimer was charged with finding a way to bombard neutrons with plutonium and uranium to cause a nuclear fission reaction. He gathered a team of scientists and they went to work.
The first test of the atomic bomb happened on July 16, 1945, in an area near Alamogordo, New Mexico, now known as the White Sands Missile Range. The site is about 200 miles south of the Los Alamos Laboratory where Oppenheimer worked.
That test was known as the Trinity Nuclear Test.
The Trinity Nuclear Test
The Trinity test was successful and Oppenheimer knew his bomb would work in war. The test, in an instance, changed the world we live in.
After the Trinity test, Oppenheimer said of his team, “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.”
When asked how he felt, he went on to say, “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
When were the bombs used in war?
The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, weeks after the test on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945.
The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, three days later on Aug. 9, 1945. It is said the second bomb was dropped to convince Japan that the U.S. had the capability to produce the deadly weapons.
On Aug. 14, an announcement was made that Japan would surrender, and World War II would end.
What happened to Oppenheimer after the bombs were dropped?
Oppenheimer was on the US Atomic Energy Commission during the Cold War.
When that group discussed the prospect of building a hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer opposed it. A hydrogen bomb would be thousands of times more powerful than the bombs Oppenheimer oversaw.
He lobbied for nuclear arms control.
In 1947, he became the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Albert Einstein also worked at the institute.
He was blacklisted during the Red Scare in the early 1950s and had his security clearance revoked in 1954. He was removed from the Atomic Energy Commission.
He went on to teach and do research until he died of throat cancer in 1967. He was 62.