J Robert Oppenheimer

Chelsie Jelsma

Salt Lake Community College

J Robert Oppenheimer was born to well-educated parents in the beginning of the 20th century. He
was raised in opulence. His parents realized at an early age that he was made for great things, his genius
was very apparent. He had many great opportunities to evolve his intelligence into something spectacular.
With that well-realized genius he made one of the greatest impacts on the face of the planet that's
repercussions will be seen for centuries.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904, less than a year after the Wright Brothers
invented the first airplane. That should have been proof of the even greater inventions to come in the
following 100 years. His family home, a richly decorated apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side,
provided all the tools for a growing genius to use. His talents were nurtured from when he was very
young. From building blocks and books on architecture, to a rock collection started after a trip to
Germany with his grandfather that peaked his interest in minerology. He was even invited in as the
youngest member of the New York Minerological Club.
His love of science continued on with the gift of a professional-quality microscope from his father. This
sparked a newfound interest in chemistry that would expand over his lifetime.
When Robert was eight, his mother gave birth to a second son, Frank. Frank would become an equally
brilliant theoretical physicist alongside Robert, as well as Robert's best friend.
Robert was a serious student, quiet, uninterested in sports. He was often teased for not being like other
boys his age. He was waited on by servents and traveled around by chauffeurs. He abused the school's
elevator so much that he angered the head of the school. He was forced to try school sports, but each new
one he gave up on right away. He didn't stick with anything he couldn't do well with right away. One
activity made it however, and that was sailing. It was something his brother, Frank, and him could do
together.
Robert was accepted into Harvard, but deferred due to illness. He spent a summer in Europe
before he was to start, but contracted dysentery and colitis. Stuck at home, he became difficult, locking

himself in his room, unwilling to speak to anyone. His father asked a teacher at school to take Robert out
west. It turned out to be one of the best times of his life that would even have implications in his work. He
rode horseback through Colorado and New Mexico. Unfortunately, this was also where he picked up
chainsmoking, which is probably what led to his death of throat cancer in 1967.
He finally left for Harvard in the fall of 1922. He had many interests, he could have gone into
architecture, literature, become a poet or a painter, but he chose chemistry. He finished a four-year degree
in three years because of how unsocial he was. Even with as distant as he was, he did however meet Percy
Bridgman towards the end of his time at Harvard, a famous experimental physicist. He introduced him to
physics, and Robert found what he wanted to do. Oppenheimer later said, "It was the study of order, of
regularity, of what makes matter harmonious and what makes it work,"1 to describe the reasons for his
fascination with physics.
After Harvard, Robert sailed to Europe to study physics. He began those studies at the Cavendish
Laboratory at Cambridge University. It made apparent his incredible ego that he went from a degree in
Chemistry to studying at one of the most acclaimed centers for experimental physics in the world. His
shortcomings in math held him back, though, and his initial failures at learning theoretical physics drove
him to despair. He vacationed briefly in Corsica and made a decision to leave Cambridge for Gottingen in
Germany. It turned out to be a good choice. This university was the center of research of structure of
matter and atomic theory in the 1920s. He became quite interested in quantum mechanics, a branch of
theoretical physics. He was especially fascinated by quantum mechanics because its mathematical
equations explained observable phenomena in a "harmonious, consistent and intelligible way."2
While at Gottingen, he wrote his first scientific paper concerning quantum theory and measuring
energy from all radiant sources, whether they be stars or a burning candle. His work turned out to be
advanced for his time, it could only be understood by the top physicists. He was awarded his doctorate
with honors in the spring of 1927.

After returning to the U.S., he took up teaching and research positions at two universities in
California, Caltech in Pasadena, and Berkeley near San Francisco. He became good friends, as well as
colleagues with the famous Ernest Lawrence, an experimental physicist.
In 1939, President Roosevelt received word from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard that the Nazis
were trying to build atomic "bombs of hitherto unenvisaged potency and scope."3 He formed a top secret
committee in Uranium. They were unsure of how much uranium it would take to make a bomb of their
own. In 1941, Oppenheimer joined the committee to calculate how much U-235 it would take. Thanks to
his theories and precise calculations, he quickly became invaluable to the Uranium Committee. He saw it
as his patriotic duty to defend America from the Nazis. He was committed himself to building the atomic
bomb.
Robert went about recruiting the top scientist at universities around the U.S. so they could gather
in one place and share their knowledge with no travel time. He called this group the Manhattan Project,
and setup a top secret base in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was setup almost like a small town, with
housing, a school, library, hospital, and anything else the families of the scientists living there may need.
It was built in a short amount of time, completed in a few months at the beginning of 1943. By the time
the first atomic bomb went off in the middle of 1945, the city had grown to 4,000 civilians and 2,000
military men and women.
In such close proximity, they went about creating the first atomic bomb, which they cutely
nicknamed "the gadget." "The object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form
of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials
known to show nuclear fission,"4 wrote physicist Robert Serber. Ironically, the atomic bomb would never
be used against the Nazis or Hitler after his suicide on April 30, 1945.
They attempted a petition to then President Truman to not use the bomb on Japan, but were
turned down. They carried out testing on July 16, 1945. "It worked," Oppenheimer said to his brother

Frank, another physicist on the Manhattan Project. He would later tell journalists that he was reminded of
the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."5
Oppenheimer's career began to fail after his security clearances were taken away after rumors of
Communist ties. He continued working in science and inspired the many students who studied beneath
him. He toured Europe, lectured, wrote several books. His life was never boring. He was eventaully
vindicated by President Johnson in 1963 who awarded him the Enrico Fermi Award in 1963. Just a
couple years later his health began to decline. His years of smoking likely contributed to the throat cancer
that claimed his life on February 18, 1967.

REFERENCES:
1. Glenn Scherer and Marty Fletcher, J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Brain Behind the Bomb (New
Jersey: Enslow Publishers, Inc, 2008), p.28.
2. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p.64.
3. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p.314.
4. Los Alamos National Laboratory, "50th Anniversary Article: New Weapons Laboratory Gives
Birth to the 'Gadget,'" <http://www.lanl.gov/history/atomicbom/gadget-born.shtml> (April 20,
2006).
5. William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p.378.