Robert Oppenheimer short biography. Robert Oppenheimer quotes

), where he takes British citizenship and changes his name to Ernest. Returning to South Africa, he September 25, 1917, supported by an American bank JP Morgan founds a corporation Anglo American, which remained for a long time the world's largest concern for the extraction of mineral raw materials. In E. Oppenheimer, he also becomes the head of a diamond mining company founded by Cecil Rhodes De Beers which was then experiencing financial difficulties. To date, the presidency DeDe Beers remains in the family ownership of the Oppenheimer family.

However, the most powerful creation in Oppenheimer's empire was Central Selling Organization (CSO), also called the press Syndicate, which eventually achieved control over 90% of the world's diamond sales. During the World Crisis, in 1930, Oppenheimer bought up the diamond markets and founded CSO. Usually De Beers by sea sent diamonds mined all over the world to London; there they were sorted and sent in smaller batches to large merchants and cutters.

Harry Frederick Oppenheimer(Harry Frederick Oppenheimer; born October 28, Kimberley, South Africa - died August 19, Johannesburg, South Africa) - former president of the international diamond processing corporation De Beers, in 2004 was elected to the 60th place in the list of "Great South Africans" .

Biography

Harry Oppenheimer remained president of the Anglo-American Corporation for a quarter of a century. Anglo American) until he left this post in 1982, at the same time he was also the president of the international diamond processing corporation De Beers for 27 years, leaving this position in 1984. His son Nick Oppenheimer became vice president of Anglo-American Corporation in 1983 and president of De Beers from 1988.

For a short time (from 1948 to 1957), he was a speaker from the opposition in such sectors as economics, constitution and finance. His negative attitudes towards apartheid were widely known at the time, as was his activity in the field of philanthropy, as well as his entrepreneurial spirit. He also supported philanthropy in Israel.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he funded the anti-apartheid Federal Progressive Party, which later merged with the Democratic Alliance.

(b. 1908 - d. 2000)

South African mining tycoon and patriarch of the 20th century diamond business. President of the Anglo-American Corporation, specializing in the extraction of precious metals, as well as the diamond cartel De Beers Consolidated Mines. Creator of a single-channel system for marketing rough diamonds, which contributed to the price stabilization of the world market and increased profitability of the entire industry. Nominee head of the University of Cape Town, as well as the Urban Foundation. The owner of a fortune of about 3 billion dollars.

V late XIX In., when the first diamonds were discovered in South Africa, prospectors flooded the country. Precious stones began to be found in one area or another, but the lands of the de Beers settlers turned out to be the richest in crystals. The farm, once bought for 50 pounds, was profitably sold by the brothers Johannes and Diederik to the miners' syndicate for 6,300 pounds. Very soon they regretted that they were so cheap, but since 1888, the largest transnational corporation De Beers Consolidated Mines began to bear their last name. The ambitious Englishman Cecil John Rode became its chairman. The nominal capital of the company, which initially amounted to 100 thousand pounds, in a couple of years reached 14.5 million pounds. On the one hand, the increase in diamond mining was in the hands of the manufacturer, but on the other hand, it brought down prices and harmed market participants.

For success, it was necessary to create a deficit, the volume of which was not difficult to calculate. The main buyers of diamonds at that time were grooms. According to statistics, about 8 million weddings a year took place in Europe and America. Consequently, diamonds had to be sold for about the same amount. After simple calculations, Rohde ordered a 40% cut in sales. Part of the mines had to be closed, and thousands of miners and cutters were left without work. But Cecil didn't care. De Beers kept the market on a starvation ration, which made it possible to raise prices methodically.

The system created by Rhodes collapsed at the beginning of the 20th century, when new deposits were discovered on the African continent, the owners of which were interested in quickly selling their goods. Perhaps Cecil would have found some balance of interests of all parties, but in 1902 he died suddenly without leaving a successor. More than one large company collapsed during this time, but De Beers survived.

Two years after Rhodes' death, the management of the once-powerful company had to cede control of diamond mining to the board of directors of the new Premier mine. 1907 was marked by a crash on the US stock exchanges, and diamond production had to be cut. To the great chagrin of the management of De Beers, in 1912, new rich diamond placers were found in the desert on the territory of the German colony - South-West Africa (now Namibia). Everything said that De Beers was finished. Ernst Oppenheimer, a longtime rival of Rhodes, was destined to act as the savior of the company.

The son of a small-time cigar dealer in the suburbs of Frankfurt am Main, Ernst began his career as an apprentice jeweler, sorting rough diamonds and becoming a good appraiser. At the age of 17, he moved to London, where he worked for 5 years in a trading company that sold precious stones. In 1902 he was sent to the diamond capital of the world - Kimberley. There was already a place to turn around, and Ernst began to trade in pebbles. He managed to become a partner in several artels of miners - primarily in those that operated in German South-West Africa. In the head of a young businessman, an ambitious plan was ripening - to revive the power of De Beers. Naturally, after a controlling stake in the company is in the hands.

With the end of the First World War, Ernst's finest hour came. First, he organized the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, which specialized in the extraction of gold, platinum and other precious metals. The initial share capital was £1 million, half of which was raised in the US and the other half in England and South Africa. In 1919, with the support of financial magnate John Morgan, Ernst founded the Consolidated Die-Monde Mines of South West Africa. This allowed him to buy up most of the diamond concessions previously owned by the German monopolies. In the manner of doing business, Ernst Oppenheimer was no different from Cecil Rhodes.

The new economic crisis played into the hands of an ambitious entrepreneur. The sharp decline in prices in 1921 led to the collapse of the entire diamond industry. New producers of raw materials - Angola, the Belgian Congo, the Gold Coast - simply undermined the market. When the panic-stricken industrialists of these countries began to sell diamonds at bargain prices, cutters and traders rushed to buy them and soon began to go bankrupt, not finding a market for their goods. Customers were extremely suspicious of the record price drop and simply stopped buying jewelry.

While buyers were pondering whether to invest in something that was constantly falling in price, and jewelers were retrained as appraisers of stolen goods, Oppenheimer was slowly buying up De Beers shares, which were now cheaper than the securities of candle factories. In 1929, a controlling stake in the company was in his hands. And Ernst set about restoring the former glory of De Beers, following the postulates of the founding father.

Most of the mines were closed first. Special planes began to fly over the deposits of South-West Africa, which caught lone prospectors. Thanks to these measures, it was possible to stop the uncontrolled supply of diamonds to America and Europe. The London Diamond Syndicate created by Oppenheimer persuaded the major diamond producers to sell the rough through him. Now it was still possible to dictate prices. By the beginning of the 30s. 94% of the diamond market was again in the hands of De Beers.

The crisis of 1934, and then the war, prevented the idea from being brought to its logical end. The closed mines of De Beers and the Syndicate itself began to revive only 10 years later. But even during the war, Oppenheimer did not sit idle: he negotiated and concluded contracts with large diamond producers and small dealers. It was then that the structure of the family company was created, which has remained unchanged to this day. After the death of Ernst Oppenheimer, his son, Harry, took over as president.

The future "father of South African business" Harry Oppenheimer was born on October 28, 1908 in Kimberley, the city of diamonds, which gave its name to the bluish diamond-bearing rock - kimberlite. The house was dominated by an entrepreneurial atmosphere, where the measure of success, progress and behavior was making money. At the end of the privileged private school Charterhouse in England Oppenheimer Jr. studied politics, philosophy and economics at the prestigious Oxford College Christ Church.

In 1931, Harry returned home and began working for the Anglo American Corporation, a business founded by his father in 1917 that had since grown into a highly successful financial venture. It was a good but difficult school. The years of the "Great Depression" became a very difficult time for the company, as the precious metals market was almost paralyzed. Oppenheimer later said that the main sources of corporate income at that time were previously unused financial assets.

However, difficulties can teach you a lot. The crisis has clearly demonstrated the need to ensure the liquidity of the goods and to have available unobligated funds. At the same time, the decisive refusal of the father to admit defeat brought up the same stubbornness and perseverance in his son. In 1939, Harry volunteered for the front, where he distinguished himself during operations in the deserts of Libya: an intelligence officer was in the forefront of the 8th British Army.

At the end of World War II, Oppenheimer Jr. became the managing director of the Anglo-American Corporation. In 1945, he led a team that faced the extremely difficult task of simultaneously opening seven new mines in gold mines in the Orange Republic. In the 1950s, when the mines were already operating at full capacity, Harry was actively involved in expanding the scope of the corporation's activities in copper mining in Northern Rhodesia and in gold mining in the western Rand. He was also one of the founders of the first commercial bank in the country and the first "discount house", which in turn gave impetus to the creation of the money market in southern Africa.

A whole series of successes of the young businessman brought the corporation to a leading position in South Africa and allowed it to become one of the largest mining and processing companies in the world.

All this time, Oppenheimer took an active part in the political life of the country, and in 1948 he won the parliamentary elections as the candidate of the Unionist Party from the Kimberley district. His speeches in the Legislative Assembly were distinguished by the clarity of presentation and the persuasiveness of the arguments. He established himself as a highly respected leader of the opposition, whose opinion on various economic, financial and constitutional issues was highly valued.

After the death of his father in 1957, Harry decided to leave politics in order to devote himself entirely to the family business, but continued public performance on various issues, always clearly, decisively and impartially expressing their point of view and adhering to a principled position. “I do not think that the head of a large company should delve into all the details of the political struggle between different parties,” he said, “but I think that if you head a large company in a relatively small country, you will inevitably face the fact that you will have to work in an environment where politics and business are closely intertwined. This is indeed inevitable, and I believe that it is the duty of a businessman to speak his mind on the most important and politically sensitive issues, such as on the issue of equality in employment rights between the black and white population of the country.

In 1964, saving a country of hundreds of economic devastation, Oppenheimer introduced Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers) into the mining business, until then almost exclusively owned by the British. Harry sold a majority stake in General Mining to African Africans. V; 70s Oppenheimer became figurehead of the University of Cape Town and chairman of the Urban Foundation, an organization fighting to provide education and housing for the country's blacks.

In 1984, he created the Brenthurst Library, where you could get free access to his collection of rare books, manuscripts and paintings, which Oppenheimer himself called "history notes". In February 1998, when the country was swept by a wave of crime and emigration, Harry announced that "if the ship is sinking, then you need to save yourself." However, he himself did not intend to jump overboard before the ship really began to sink, "because he always considered himself a South African." This is the heroic story of the fighter against apartheid, the savior of South Africa and the great public figure unfortunately ends. As for the history of life! cruel and prudent entrepreneur, which Oppenheimer always remained, then it was more eventful.

As people who knew the businessman recalled, Harry at all times was primarily a businessman. Although, according to a number of responses, he struggled to provide his workers with better conditions and high wages, in the first place, in his own words, "the profitability of the business has always been." Black employees in his factories were always paid much less than whites and were forced to live away from their families. In general, the notorious apartheid government, according to Western news agencies, kept afloat until 1994 only thanks to money and Oppenheimer's advice.

In 1939, Oppenheimer went to New York to meet with representatives of the NV Eyes advertising agency. He rode with the firm intention of changing people's perceptions of diamonds: it was necessary to make sure that this stone ceased to be a trinket of the rich, but became an everyday commodity that ordinary people could not do without. The agency released promotional posters showing the spectacular actresses wearing rings and earrings donated by De Beers. The posters said that diamonds give attractiveness and determine the social status of a person. Advertising was designed for the fairer sex. But it turned out to be no less effective for men who felt like conquering kings who give diamonds to their princesses. In continuation of the advertising campaign, Oppenheimer solemnly presented a huge stone to Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI, who visited Africa in late 1940.

Harry himself came up with the advertising slogan “A diamond is forever”, launched the idea of ​​a diamond as an “eternal gift of love” to the masses, and introduced into the subcortex of the population of developed countries the idea that it is customary to give an engagement ring worth no less than the groom’s salary for three months. He developed the principles of trade, according to which the cartel that produced raw materials, that is, diamonds, spent big money to stimulate the sale of finished products - diamonds. Oppenheimer himself believed that a diamond is an absolutely useless thing, and there is only one way to save its price - by making you believe in its originality, uniqueness and mystical property to keep love. In other words, he came up with an illusion that still feeds millions of people around the world.

Oppenheimer also came up with another great idea that underpinned the diamond business: the idea of ​​creating stockpiles—the so-called De Beers stocks—where stones were stored that could drive prices down on the market. Harry was sure that the diamond market should not be spontaneous and that it should be tightly regulated. Moreover, he took this mission upon himself.

Oppenheimer's skillful policy made diamonds relatively inexpensive. In 1960, Harry signed a contract to buy diamonds from the USSR. Russian diamonds are mostly small but of very high quality. Prior to this, De Beers urged people to buy rings with large stones, but after another advertisement, the demand for rings with small diamonds scattered on them skyrocketed. And it is no coincidence: the cartel began to convince that small stones look no less impressive.

Using such methods for many decades, De Beers not only received its own benefit, but also made it possible for intermediaries, small businessmen, and owners of jewelry stores to develop and prosper. She had such a huge assortment of rough diamonds that OPEC could only envy her: after all, creating a "diamond fund" is much cheaper than storing oil reserves.

In the 60-70s. under Oppenheimer's leadership, the diamond industry developed successfully and rapidly, and the Anglo-American Corporation became one of the largest international investment companies. The conglomerate continued to expand its diamond and gold mining, manufacturing and agricultural activities in South Africa. At the same time, the mining, production and financial structure Charter Consolidated, located in London, was created at the international level, as well as the Minerals and Resources Corporation, which was then in Bermuda, and now has its headquarters in Luxembourg. The creation of manufacturing ventures such as Highveld Steel and Vanadium and Mondi Paper showcase both Harry's entrepreneurial ability and his commitment to growing the company organically through the development of large mining projects.

Despite its size, the Anglo-American group retained much of the character of a family business, which once again confirmed Oppenheimer's personal qualities as a leader who managed the company well and aroused in employees the devotion and desire to work with him. His humane approach to people served as a guarantee that the company was constantly reviewing and raising wages, improving working conditions. Harry kept repeating the words of his father, who saw the purpose of the corporation as "providing profit for our shareholders and really contributing to the growth of the welfare of the countries in which we operate."

One of the manifestations of his progressive activity as a leader of the South African business community was the creation of the Anglo-American Corporation and De Beers Chairman's Fund. The Foundation has developed and financed various programs, mainly in the field of education, which, according to Oppenheimer, is a driving force, and also makes a huge contribution to the development of the social sphere as a whole. Another example of such an initiative was the formation, after the Soweto riots in 1976, of the Urban Programs Fund, whose activities were aimed at improving the social and working conditions for the black urban population of South Africa.

One of the most prominent businessmen in the world, Oppenheimer was chairman of the Anglo-American group for a quarter of a century and president of De Beers for 27 years. He was a member of the board of directors of the diamond cartel from December 1934 to November 1994, when his resignation was officially announced in Kimberley. In a farewell address to the company's headquarters, Harry said: "We must believe and prove through our work that achieving business success and striving for a free and just society are not mutually exclusive goals, but rather two facets of the same thing, like two sides medals."

Oppenheimer and his wife Bridget lived at his home in Johannesburg, enjoying an excellent collection of rare books and manuscripts, as well as rare book reprints, many of which are published by the Brenthurst Press, which he created specifically for this purpose. He often spent time at a farm near the Kimberley, where he grew orchids and the finest racehorses in the country, and at a holiday home in La Lucia, near Durban.

But all this time, the "Old King of Diamonds", as he was often called in the business world, did not part with his favorite business, turning it into a hobby. He watched from afar for his son Nicky, who headed the corporation, and thought about a new strategy for doing business in today's economic conditions.

Oppenheimer once said of his father, Sir Ernst: “He successfully solved the problems of his time and left behind him in Anglo-American an organization that absorbed his spirit, his strength and flexibility in working, building and realizing his goals, even with circumstances he could not have foreseen. And by this, of course, he deserved that share of immortality, which any mortal on earth can only dream of. The same can be said about Harry himself.

For about 50 years, De Beers has played the role of creator of the diamond market - omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. The corporation stockpiled surplus diamonds, forbade partners to increase production if the market was in danger of glut, and regulated the demand for certain varieties of polished diamonds with the help of finely crafted advertising campaigns. Entire countries were completely dependent on relations with Oppenheimer's empire. The buyers were afraid and angry, but kept quiet.

And in 1998, the cartel began to slowly sell off its stocks. This was the beginning of the implementation of the new De Beers strategies, which Harry officially announced a month before his death. The concept of doing business that he came up with provided for the rejection of the creation of so-called stocks, direct entry into the diamond market (previously, Oppenheimer's position was that, since the interests of the miner and cutter did not coincide, one should not be engaged in the manufacture of jewelry), as well as an increase in market share by introducing into the most significant deposits.

Now it is difficult to say what exactly was the contribution of the "Old King" to the emergence of a new concept, which, in fact, crossed out the previous strategy, which he himself created. Perhaps Harry actually gave his cartel a mission for the next half century and then descended into the realm of the shadows. It happened on August 19, 2000, when, unexpectedly for everyone, Oppenheimer died suddenly in the best private clinic in Johannesburg.

Today, De Beers controls, according to various estimates, from 60 to 75% of the world diamond market. It sells about $4.8 billion worth of rough diamonds a year. Twenty mining enterprises of the corporation are searching for and exploring deposits in 18 countries of the world. Currently, De Beers mines only diamonds for jewelry purposes, since it is cheaper to use artificial diamonds for industrial needs. Nevertheless, world prices for polished diamonds are more stable than for platinum, gold and oil. And at the same time, over the past 15 years, diamonds have risen in price by more than 60%.

In the 21st century The Anglo-American Corporation and De Beers consortium will be ruled by Harry Oppenheimer's grandson Jonathan.

Created Nov 28, 2013

Robert Oppenheimer was born in the United States to Jewish immigrants from Germany. The family of Julius Oppenheimer and Ella Friedman had two children - the elder Robert and the younger Frank, who later became the greatest physicists of their time.

Robert's first place of study was the Alcuin Preparatory School, followed by the Ethical Culture Society School. Oppenheimer demonstrated an interest in a wide variety of sciences, completing the 3rd and 4th grade programs in the same year. In the same way, he passed the exams in the eighth grade, having mastered the entire program in just six months. Going to the last class, Oppenheimer gets acquainted with chemistry - science becomes his passion.

At the age of 18, young Robert went to Harvard College, where he had to learn not only major subjects, but also choose an additional one: history, literature and philosophy or mathematics.

But that didn't bother him. Oppenheimer showed success in everything: he took a record six courses per semester, became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and already in his first year was eligible to attend a master's program in physics on an independent study basis (skipping the study of initial subjects). Passion for experimental physics came to Robert after listening to a course in thermodynamics, which was read by Percy Bridgman. Oppenheimer University graduated with honors in just three years.

But Robert did not finish his studies on this - educational institutions in different cities of Europe were waiting for him ahead. So in 1924 he was admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge. He simply dreamed of working at the Cavendish Laboratory - a laboratory where he could not only observe research, but also conduct them together with teachers. Going to Cambridge with Bridgman's less than rosy recommendation (noting Oppenheimer's lack of aptitude for experimental physics), he was accepted into a course of study by Joseph Thomson.

In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge and went to the University of Göttingen, which at that time was one of the most advanced in the study of physics in all its manifestations. In 1927, at the age of 23, Robert Oppenheimer defended his dissertation and received a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen.

Teaching and scientific activity

Upon returning to his homeland, Oppenheimer received a work permit in one of the most prestigious universities California, while Bridgman wanted the promising physicist to work at Harvard. As a compromise, it was decided that Oppenheimer would teach part school year at Harvard (1927), and the second part at the University of California (1928). In the last institution, Robert met Linus Pauling, with whom they planned to "reverse" ideas about the nature of the chemical bond, but Oppenheimer's excessive interest in Pauling's wife prevented this - Linus completely broke off contacts with Oppenheimer, subsequently refusing even to participate in his famous Manhattan project.

As part of his teaching activities, Robert has also visited a number of educational institutions. In 1928 he went to the University of Leiden (Netherlands), where he greatly surprised the students by giving a lecture to them. mother tongue. Then there was the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich), where he managed to work with his adored Wolfgang Pauli. scientists by day They discussed the problems of quantum mechanics and ways to solve them.

Returning to the US, Robert took up the position of Senior Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. However, very soon he had to leave the walls of the university for a while - Oppenheimer was diagnosed with a mild stage of tuberculosis. Having recovered, he began to work with renewed vigor.

Theoretical astrophysics is the main direction of Oppenheimer's scientific research. The list of his works is in the hundreds and includes articles and studies on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, theoretical spectroscopy and other sciences, one way or another intersecting with his dignitary specialization.

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was something completely new for Oppenheimer. Building a nuclear bomb at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt, surrounded by the best physicists of the time, he greatly expanded the range of skills available. Initially, Oppenheimer led the group at the University of Berkeley. Their task was to calculate fast neutrons. “Fast Break Coordinator,” as Oppenheimer’s position was called, worked hand in hand not only with eminent physicists, but also with talented students, including Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller and others.

Leslie Groves, Jr. was nominated as the project leader from the US Army (after the transfer of responsibility for the project from the scientific to the military side). He put Oppenheimer in charge of the secret weapons laboratory without hesitation. The decision came as a surprise to both scientists and the military. The choice for the role of a manager who does not have a Nobel Prize and, accordingly, authority, Gowars explained by the personal qualities of the candidate. Including vanity, which, in his opinion, should have "spurred" Oppenheimer to achieve results.

The bomb development base, moved at the initiative of Oppenheimer from New Mexico to Los Almoss, was established in as soon as possible- some buildings were rented, some were just erected. The number of physicists involved in the project grew every year - Oppenheimer's initial calculations turned out to be rather short-sighted. If in 1943 a couple of hundred people worked on the project, then already in 1945 this figure increased to several thousand.

At first, the physics of managing and coordinating groups was rather difficult, but very soon Oppenheimer mastered this science as well. Later, the project participants noted his ability to smooth out the contradictions between the military and civilians, which arose for a variety of reasons - from cultural to religious. At the same time, he always took into account all aspects and subtleties of such a specific project.

In 1945, the first test of the created product took place - near Alamogordo, on July 16, an artificial explosion took place, and it was successful.

The fates of the two "Manhattan" bombs, developed under the direction of Oppenheimer, were determined long before their creation - shells with the sarcastic names "Kid" and "Fat Man" were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1956, respectively.

Personal life

Personal and political life Oppenheimer have always been closely intertwined. He was repeatedly suspected of involvement with the communists, and the social reforms he supported were regarded as pro-communist. But he only added fuel to the fire. So, in 1936, Oppenheimer had an affair with a medical school student whose father was also a professor of literature at Berkeley. Jean Tatlock had similar views on life and politics with Oppenheimer, moreover, she even wrote notes for a newspaper published by the Communist Party. However, the couple broke up in 1929.

In the summer of that year, Oppenheimer meets Katherine Puning Harrison, a former member of the Communist Party, behind whom there are three marriages, one of which is still valid. After spending the summer of 1940 at Oppenheimer's ranch, becoming pregnant and having a difficult divorce from her then-current husband, Kitty married Robert. Married to the Oppenheimer couple, two children are born - Boy Peter and girl Catherine, but this does not stop Robert and he continues his relationship with Tetlock.

Katherine was next to Oppenheimer to the last - she went with him to the end of the fight against cancer, which was diagnosed by a scientist in 1965. Operations, radio and chemotherapy did not bring results - on February 18, after a three-day coma, Robert Oppenheimer died.

Bibliography of Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer, who laid his life on the altar of science, wrote about a dozen books on physics, published many scientific articles and publications. Unfortunately, most of the works have not been translated into Russian. Among the books of his authorship are:

• Science and the Common Understanding (Science and General Understanding) (1954)
• The Open Mind (Open Mind) (1955)
• Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community (1989) and many others.

• Oppenheimer - a genius of his time - had serious mental problems (once he soaked an apple in a poisonous liquid and put it on the table of his leader), was a heavy smoker (which caused tuberculosis and throat cancer), and sometimes even forgot to eat - physics fascinated him with his head .
• “I am death, the destroyer of worlds,” is a phrase Oppenheimer owns about himself. It came to his mind during the test explosion of his bomb and was borrowed from the Hindu book of the Bhagavad Gita.

Robert Oppenheimer was only thirty-eight years old when he was asked to direct that "superlaboratory" from which the atomic bomb later came out. By that time, he had already published many works on a variety of issues. modern physics and, perhaps more than anyone else in the United States, has made efforts to train a new generation of scientists. But behind him there was not a single truly outstanding discovery, unlike, for example, Enrico Fermi and many other deservedly famous physicists who were to work directly under Oppenheimer. So when General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, announced his choice, he said he was under attack:

“I was reproachfully told that only a Nobel Prize winner, or at least a fairly old person, could occupy such a position. But I was betting on Oppenheimer, and his success proved that I was right. No one could do what he did."

And, indeed, Oppenheimer was just the right man for such an undertaking. Perhaps some brilliant theoretician or researcher, specialized in one direction, would have achieved extraordinary success in the field of nuclear physics, having at his disposal the huge credit and material resources that the richest state in the world unexpectedly provided to scientists. But the goal was not to promote the development of theoretical research, but to ensure that the knowledge acquired in past years found practical application on a huge scale. And that meant overcoming a thousand technological hurdles and doing some serious coordination work—nothing more. We constantly read that the war stimulated nuclear research in the United States. But that means mixing science with technology. Oppenheimer himself argued many times that the war slowed the development of science too much; the universities stopped teaching physics, and the formation of new researchers was delayed for several years. The youth who could have taken this path went to the front, and the most brilliant professors worked to build the bomb.

As a physicist, Oppenheimer had great merit - he combined deep knowledge with versatility. Without confining himself to any of the special studies, he thoroughly knew the results of each of them. He not only knew everything that was known about the fission of uranium, he foresaw further discoveries and a possible connection between them. Oppenheimer was above all an organizer and leader; and that charm inherent in him, which is evidenced by all who closely encountered him, he put at the service of a specific cause. Yes, even what! After all, it was necessary to create and lead the largest laboratory ever to exist, from where a superhuman weapon capable of crushing the forces of evil would come out!

There has been much debate about what it was that prompted Oppenheimer to accept the army's offer and take on this mission with such enthusiasm, which repeatedly endangered his rather fragile health.

“Academic circles considered his achievements exceptional,” writes Jung. “But he himself, thinking critically, was fully aware that by the age of forty he had not been able to fulfill his the highest peaks., in the field of physics .. At this time, he had the opportunity to do something exceptional, but in a completely different direction: he was invited to lead the design of the most powerful weapon.

Let's be fair. Among the atomic scientists of all countries who gathered at that time in Great Britain, Canada and the USA, there would hardly have been at least one who, having received the same offer and considering himself able to cope with it, would not accept it and would not devote himself to it. with the same conviction as Oppenheimer. Everyone's duty was so simple: Nazism has flooded Europe and threatens to flood the entire civilized world if it gets the bomb; therefore, you need to do it earlier. Einstein himself sent a second letter to the Washington government in March 1940, drawing their attention to the fact that Germany's interest in uranium, which arose at the beginning of the war, was growing.

The implementation of the Manhattan Project influenced the deep nature of Oppenheimer; it can be said that in a sense the monster devoured the one who gave birth to it. But this is a different question, and we will return to it later. And what scientist, who takes on the same task, would not end up in the role of the "devil's disciple"?

It was necessary to choose a place for the future superlaboratory. Oppenheimer proposed to General Groves the Los Alamos Plateau in New Mexico. It was a desert territory, equally remote from the Atlantic coast, where German submarines sometimes landed spies, and from all populated areas, the inhabitants of which could suffer in the event of an accident during the experiments. Oppenheimer knew the area well: the only building that existed here belonged to the closed boarding school in which he studied as a child. The school was confiscated and workers arrived a few days later. General Groves assumed that about a hundred scientists with their families would be settled near the laboratory, not counting the technical staff. But a year later, 3,500 people lived in Los Alamos, and later the population of the "City of the Atomic Bomb" ranged from 6,000 to 9,000 people.

Atomic scientists and military secrecy

Oppenheimer's first task was to recruit a research team. This turned out to be no easy task. Oppenheimer flew by plane and traveled by train for thousands of miles to speak personally with the people he decided to recruit; he used all his charm to convince them to move with their families to the New Mexico wilderness. They had to sign a contract for the duration of the war and live in Los Alamos almost completely cut off from the outside world. But they were given the opportunity to work at a grandiose enterprise among a scientific team that was incomparable in terms of its level. Oppenheimer managed to infect everyone with his passionate enthusiasm. In the spring of 1943, the first atomic scientists appeared in the old town of Santa Fe, the former residence of the Spanish viceroys, from where laboratory workers were taken by bus every morning to the Los Alamos plateau until houses were built for them.

The atmosphere that reigned in this emerging team was imbued with youthful cheerfulness and slightly resembled the atmosphere of student gatherings. Feverish meetings at which ways of organizing joint work were outlined alternated with frequent parties and outings in the country. However, the fetters of the most merciless apparatus of coercion were already tightening around this wonderful freedom: the apparatus of military security. Oppenheimer knew this better than anyone else.

Until the beginning of 1939, scientists from all countries were one big family. Disagreements sometimes arose in it, and even rivalry - as in every family. But the predominant features were fraternal competition and a spirit of mutual assistance in the common struggle for the expansion of human knowledge. From time to time, physicists came to international congresses. The results of experiments or theoretical studies were regularly reported by the scientific community and published in special journals. Every advance made in the laboratories of Rome or Copenhagen was immediately used in Paris or Cambridge. The idea of ​​the secrecy of a scientific discovery was simply unimaginable, alien to the very foundations of science.

The first attack on these sacred principles came in November 1938, when Szilard suggested to Fermi that he refrain from publishing detailed reports on uranium fission so that they would not be used in German laboratories. Precisely because there was something shameful to scientists in such a proposal, most of them reacted to it with hostility. But in February 1939, the American physicist Bridgman declared in the journal Science that henceforth, regrettably, he would close access to his laboratory to scientists of totalitarian states. “The citizen of such a state,” Bridgman explained, “is no longer a free person; he may be compelled to take any action that will serve the purposes of his state. The cessation of all scientific ties with totalitarian countries has a dual purpose: firstly, to prevent these countries from using scientific information to the detriment, and secondly, to enable scientists from other countries to express their disgust at their methods of arbitrariness.

In 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to concentrate in the USA all the work of British and American atomic scientists in the production of nuclear weapons. The leadership was entrusted to a committee, which included two generals, an admiral, and only two scientists. Since August, when the Manhattan Project began to be implemented, control finally passed to the army, and atomic scientists were forced to submit to a regime of military secrecy.

Most scholars recognized the need for this, as some of them themselves called for secrecy. What was less clear was why the military administration erected walls of silence inside the laboratory, among the scientific staff working in the Manhattan Project. Each department of the research team had to work without knowing what others were doing, and a significant part of the engineers employed at Los Alamos did not even know at first that they were involved in the creation of an atomic bomb. Coordination was carried out exclusively from above, according to the tried and tested rules of the military hierarchy. These methods can be justified from the point of view of safety, but they, of course, did not contribute to scientific work, and therefore these rules were often violated, which caused many conflicts between atomic scientists and their guards in uniform.

The security service at the Manhattan Project collected detailed information about all the activities of the laboratory staff in the past and present, about their personal lives and political views. They couldn't walk down the street, go to a store, or visit a friend without being spied on and recording their every move. Their letters were opened and controlled, telephone conversations were eavesdropped. For the most prominent workers, as well as for those who, for one reason or another, were considered unreliable, special surveillance was organized. There were camouflaged microphones in the offices and apartments. In their inquisitorial zeal, the military went further than government instructions required, and often carried out their own policies without reporting to Washington. General Groves further boasted afterwards that he had sabotaged, as far as he could, cooperation with the British.

Oppenheimer's participation in the preparation of nuclear weapons officially began in 1942 at the Metallurgical Laboratory (Chicago); it was at that time the center of research on the fission of uranium. Oppenheimer then had to fill out a questionnaire and indicate in it that in the past he was a member of left-wing political organizations. He knew that the security service considered belonging to such organizations a good motive for exclusion from all responsible government work. Despite the official policy of the White House, many security leaders made no secret of the fact that they viewed the US entry into the war against the Axis powers only as the first tactical stage in a long struggle in which the main enemy will ultimately be Soviet Union. Anyone who dares to sympathize with him or simply disapprove of America's attack on his temporary "ally" on the appointed day must be removed in advance from all leadership positions relevant to the conduct of the war. This precaution was considered necessary in relation to scientists who, by the nature of their work, were privy to important state secrets and might, in the opinion of the security service, be tempted to tell their Soviet colleagues.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer filled out the questionnaire without much apprehension. Three years have passed since he broke with his former political friends, and so did his wife (she, too, had once been associated with these circles).

But in June 1943, Oppenheimer, who was urgently summoned by his ex-fiancee, a communist, went to see her in San Francisco and stayed with her until the next day. This was not their first meeting of this kind since Oppenheimer's marriage. But this time Oppenheimer warned her that he was leaving her for a long time, perhaps for several years; he's got an assignment he's not allowed to talk about, which is why he's leaving Berkeley and can't even tell her his new address.

Oppenheimer had no doubt that security spies were following him, and that a lengthy report had been sent to the War Department in Washington about his trip to San Francisco and his association with a political activist from the far left. In mid-July, General Groves received a ricochet hit: he was handed a memo stating that, for security reasons, J. Robert Oppenheimer could not be approved as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. The General immediately summoned Oppenheimer and, having received from him an oral assurance that he had long since broken with the Communists, he decided to ignore the prohibition of the security service.

The general did not have any sympathy for the communists and rather disapproved of the Soviet-American alliance. But he needed Oppenheimer. The Los Alamos laboratory was going through a difficult period: it was bad with housing for scientists who huddled in barracks. Only Oppenheimer could cheer up his colleagues and maintain in them the enthusiasm with which they worked for the first few weeks. Without Oppenheimer, they would have completely fallen into despondency, and the team assembled with such difficulty would have been in danger of disintegration. And the general, using the emergency powers given to him when creating the Manhattan Project, demanded and ensured that the counterintelligence report was shelved, and Oppenheimer was finally approved as director.

Despite his army uncouthness, the general calculated the psychological consequences of his decision well: Oppenheimer became dependent on him. In addition to gratitude to Groves for intercession, the scientist was imbued with the consciousness that the sword of Damocles hung over his head, which so far only holds the hand of the general: Oppenheimer's political past can be resurrected at any moment and then it. wrest from the hands of the scientist entrusted to him the mission of creating an atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer makes a mistake

Whether because he wanted to prove to himself his complete break with the past, or because he wanted to prove it to the military, Oppenheimer made a strange mistake. At the end of August, he went to one of the security agents who was passing through Berkeley and told him that for some time the Soviets had been trying to get information about the Manhattan Project. To this end, an Englishman named Eltenton, who lived for a long time in the USSR, asked a certain person to be an intermediary in establishing contact with some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer did not wish to name an intermediary who might have acted in good faith.

This fictitious story was based on a meeting that actually took place a few months earlier between Oppenheimer and his friend Haakon Chevalier. Haakon Chevalier, French by father and Scandinavian by mother, taught Romance languages ​​at the University of California. He was friends with Oppenheimer, and Oppenheimer used this fellowship for friendly conversations about the literature and philosophy of old Europe. But during their last meeting, the conversation turned to more pressing issues. Here is a quote from Jung, who collected direct evidence of this meeting: “Oppy began to prepare a cocktail. Chevalier at this time informed him that he had recently spoken to a man named George Eltenton. Eltenton expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that there was no exchange of scientific information between the scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union, although these countries were allies. He went so far as to ask Chevalier to persuade Oppenheimer to transfer some scientific data privately. Oppenheimer reacted to Eltenton's proposal in the way that Chevalier had foreseen. Oppenheimer exclaimed, "That's not the right way!" As Oppenheimer later claimed, his answer was more definite. He believed that he replied: "It is terrible to do so, it would be treason!".

Oppenheimer's reaction is indicative of the path he has traveled in these few years. To understand it, you need to forget about the "cold war" that is being waged now, and remember the situation in the winter of 1942-1943, the time of the battle on the Volga and the landing of allied troops in North Africa. Roosevelt was the ardent inspirer of the struggle of the United Nations against fascism. Hollywood produced pro-Soviet films.

Reporting on Eltenton's attempt as a spy sortie, Oppenheimer hoped to prove his loyalty to the military security agencies. In fact, he only gave them a terrible weapon against him, because they continued to keep him under suspicion and did not forgive the fact that, against their will, he was left as head of the Los Alamos laboratory. Colonel Pash, the same one who had signed the report on the need to dismiss Oppenheimer, immediately summoned him to his office. The report on this interrogation (as well as on all subsequent ones) was published much later. In these dialogues between a cat and a mouse, when an outstanding scientist, a man of great intelligence, fights off the insidious questions of a military counterintelligence agent, trying in vain to elude the trap that he has prepared for himself, there is something that evokes special compassion.

Oppenheimer put himself in such a position that he was forced to support false testimony and refuse truthful ones. The lie, or at least a misrepresentation, was the claim that several members of the Manhattan Project knew about Eltenton's attempt, although only Oppenheimer himself knew about it. His first denial during interrogation was his refusal to give the name of his friend Chevalier. This refusal, unacceptable from the point of view of the security service, confirmed the unfavorable opinion about Oppenheimer.

Here is a characteristic passage from Oppenheimer's first interrogation.

Pash. Yes. This is noteworthy... we of course believe that the people who bring you such information are one hundred percent your people, and therefore there can be no doubt about their intentions. However, if...

Oppenheimer. Okay, I'll tell you one thing... I'm aware of two or three cases... they were people closely associated with me.

Pash. How did they pass the information on to you? Was the contact really for this purpose?

Oppenheimer. Yes, for this one.

Pash. For this purpose!

Oppenheimer. So... I will now explain to you the essence of the matter. You know how difficult relations are between the two Allied camps, because there are many people who don't like Russia very much. So, there are also some of our military secrets, such as radar, which we guard especially strictly and do not reveal to the Russians. And for them it is a matter of life or death, and they would very much like to have an idea of ​​​​what is being done here; in other words, these data should have supplemented the fragmentary information in our official communications. So the case was presented to me.

Pash. Aha! Understand...

After a few more seemingly naive remarks of the same kind, the colonel naturally returns to what he wants to know - to the name of the notorious intermediary.

Pash. Okay, now I'd like to get back to the order... Those people you mentioned, two... Were they making contact at Eltenton's behest?

Oppenheimer. No.

Pash. Through others?

Oppenheimer. Yes.

Pash. Well, could we find out through whom the contact was made?

Oppenheimer. I think it could be a mistake, i.e. I think... I told you where the initiative came from. Everything else was almost pure coincidence, and it might involve people who shouldn't have.

Oppenheimer, as they say, stuck his hand into the car. And counterintelligence has not released it yet. In Washington, where Oppenheimer was called several times, he refused to give the name of Haakon Chevalier, but did not show due resistance to pressure and gave the names of people from his entourage whom he suspected of being communists.

The logic of the "witch hunt" knows no mercy. From the moment Oppenheimer voluntarily made a report to the security officers, he was included in their system and could no longer justify his refusal to extradite people who, in their opinion, should be considered suspicious. As for the mysterious go-between, who, according to Oppenheimer's story, was in contact with "many" people who worked in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer refused to speak, arguing that this person himself had no ill intentions and, therefore, he should not be involved in case. But the loop got tighter and tighter. Oppenheimer's personal file, which was permanently in Colonel Pash's office, contained the following memorandum, sent in September 1943 by one of the counterintelligence officers:

“It can be assumed that Oppenheimer is deeply interested in acquiring world fame as a scientist and in taking his place in history as a result of the project. It also seems likely that the War Department may allow him to do so, but it may also destroy his name, reputation and career if it sees fit. Such a prospect, if he is allowed to realize it clearly enough, will make him take a different look at his attitude towards the military department ”;

It is possible to evaluate the psychological correctness of such a judgment in different ways. One way or another, it shows with what gross cynicism the political-military machine processed one of the largest US scientists that fell into her paws. When finally ordered to name the intermediary, Oppenheimer gave in and betrayed Chevalier. He lost his place at the university and was forced to emigrate. He learned the cause of his misfortune much later, when Oppenheimer, during another interrogation, told the whole truth and admitted that he had "inflated" the Eltenton case.

Atomic scientists against the atomic bomb

The paw of the police immediately unclenched and released the physicist. Hard work continued at Los Alamos. At first, it was thought that it would take only a year to make a bomb. But they soon discovered that it was impossible to meet this deadline. However, the war continued. In November 1944, the Americans seized documents in Strasbourg relating to the work of the Germans on the fission of uranium. Based on these materials, it was possible to establish that, despite the general fears that justified and stimulated the efforts of emigrant physicists who worked in the USA, the Germans were still very far from creating an atomic bomb. They had neither a uranium-235 separation plant nor a plutonium production reactor. The fear that the Nazis would take possession of nuclear weapons immediately dissipated, and when the Allied forces invaded Germany, no one doubted that the end of the war was near. At that time, the opinion spread among atomic scientists that the need for a bomb had disappeared and that humanity could be saved from the apocalyptic horrors that they were preparing for it.

However, there were few supporters of the immediate cessation of work on the creation of atomic weapons. It was hard to refuse this for the people who for so many months in a row gave all their strength to the implementation of the project, and even at a moment when the goal was already close. They could not but take into account the main argument of the military, namely, that Japan had not yet been defeated and that the possession of an atomic bomb would allow the United States to save the lives of a huge number of Americans, as it would hasten the outcome of the struggle on the Pacific front. They sincerely believed that it was enough to demonstrate to the world the power of a new weapon - and they would no longer be needed, and an agreement between the great victorious powers would forever eliminate the threat of war and allow the use of uranium fission only for peaceful purposes.

Scientists did not know that Japan had already lost the war, at least potentially. And most importantly, they did not know that the fight against fascism was not the main goal of Washington's policy, that the bomb, even if it was dropped over Japan, would be an instrument of deterrence, which should strengthen the hegemony of America after the victory, and was actually directed against the Soviet Union. The apprentices of the sorcerer - atomic scientists - were wasting their strength, trying first to weaken the destructive effect of the evil spirit, caused by them, and then hoping in vain that they could drive it back into the bottle. But the military knew what they wanted, just like the “chief magician” Oppenheimer, who was not afraid of his demon; on the contrary, he longed to see him rise in all his might and terrifying majesty.

In August 1944, Niels Bohr submitted a memorandum to President Roosevelt warning against "the dreadful prospect of rivalry among states for the possession of such formidable weapons." He argued that the country, which at the moment is the sole owner of these weapons, should immediately advocate for an international agreement in order to avoid a nuclear arms race among the future winners. Bohr believed that "personal contacts between scientists from different countries could serve as a means for establishing preliminary, informal contacts."

In December 1944, Alexander Sachs, the personal adviser to the president who five years earlier had helped Szilard and Einstein inform Roosevelt of the possibility of building an atomic bomb, drew Roosevelt's attention to a project presented to him, which suggested that, after the first successful test of an atomic weapon, the following should be done:

• demonstrate the bomb in front of scientists from allied and neutral countries with international recognition, as well as in front of representatives of all widespread religions (including Muslims and Buddhists);
• prepare a report, edited by scientists and other eminent persons, on the nature and significance of atomic weapons;
• publish an appeal by the United States and its allies involved in the atomic project to their main opponents, Germany and Japan, warning that a certain “zone” will be chosen for the atomic bombing, from which people and animals must be evacuated in advance;
• after a direct demonstration of the atomic bomb, publish an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the enemy.

In the spring of 1945, in a strange twist of fate, the very two men who most contributed to US involvement in the production of the atomic bomb, Szilard and Einstein, turned again to Roosevelt, but now they sought to stop the course of events. “The whole of 1943 and partly of 1944,” Szilard later wrote, “we were haunted by the fear that the Germans would be able to make an atomic bomb before we landed in Europe ... But when we were relieved of this fear in 1945, we began to think with horror what other dangerous plans the American government is making, plans directed against other countries.

Einstein insisted on the need to prevent a nuclear arms race; Szilard argued that the use of the atomic bomb in the current situation in the world would do America more harm than good. Roosevelt died without reading these two documents, although if he had read them it would probably have made little difference.

Because it was at this very time that a research group, which included Oppenheimer, had already gathered in Los Alamos to determine the targets of the bombing. This group decided that objects should meet the following conditions:

1. they should consist of a significant number of wooden buildings and other structures that are easily destroyed by the impact of a shock wave and subsequent fire;
2. since the radius of the destruction zone was estimated at about one and a half kilometers, a built-up area of ​​the same area should have been chosen;
3. the selected objects must be of great military and strategic importance;
4. the first object had to have no traces of previous conventional bombings so that the effect of the impact of the atomic bomb alone could be determined.

All this meant that a large city should become the object of bombardment, because no purely military object can have an area occupied by buildings of 7-10 square kilometers. After drawing up this conclusion, the American pilots during their raids on Japan stopped bombing four cities, including Hiroshima.

Roosevelt died without any direction regarding the use of the first atomic bombs and the prospects for international control of nuclear energy. On May 31, 1945, shortly after the surrender of Nazi Germany, a commission called the Provisional Committee met to advise President Truman. It included five politicians and three scientists who were in charge of scientific research for military purposes. Then the commission was replenished with four atomic scientists; these were Y. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Arthur X. Compton, and Ernest O. Lawrence. General Groves also attended the meetings. The question before the four atomic scientists was not whether to use the atomic bomb, but only how to use it. And the commission replied that the bomb should be dropped over Japan as soon as possible, and that it should be aimed at a military objective located in the middle of or near residential buildings and other easily destructible buildings. They decided to drop the bomb without warning the enemy about the nature of this weapon.

The opposition of atomic scientists to the use of the atomic bomb began to turn into an open offensive. It began at the University of Chicago, where the scientists who worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory, throughout the war, sought to make the goal of their research not so much the military as the industrial use of atomic energy. The university created a commission of seven scientists, whose chairman was the Nobel Prize winner James Frank, a former professor at the University of Göttingen. The commission included Szilard and the biochemist Rabinovich. In their report, solemnly presented to the Secretary of War, the seven scientists spoke not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of all employees of the Manhattan Project. At the beginning of their petition, they wrote that once upon a time, scientists could not be held responsible for how humanity uses their discoveries. “But in our time we must take a more active position, since the successes that we have achieved in the study of atomic energy are fraught with dangers incomparably greater than all past inventions. Each of us, and we are well aware of the state of atomic science at the present time, constantly imagines in his mind a picture of a sudden destruction that threatens our country with a disaster similar to Pearl Harbor, but a thousand times more terrible, which can break out over any of our large cities. ...

The authors of the report warned the US government against the illusion that the US could maintain a monopoly on atomic weapons for a long time. They reminded us of the importance of the work carried out by French, German and Soviet physicists. They wrote that even with the complete secrecy of the production methods developed in the Manhattan Project, it would take the Soviet Union only a few years to close the gap. In addition, when using atomic weapons, the United States will be more vulnerable due to the large crowding of their cities and industry. It is in the interests of the United States either to achieve an international agreement banning the use of the atomic bomb, or at least not to do anything that might induce other states to produce the atomic bomb.

The “Frank Report”, as this message later came to be called, ended with the following conclusions:

“We believe that ... we are obliged to advise against the premature use of the atomic bomb for a surprise attack on Japan. If the United States is the first to unleash this blind weapon of destruction on humanity, they will lose the support of the world's public, accelerate the arms race and thwart the opportunity to agree on the preparation of an international agreement providing for the control of such weapons. A much more favorable atmosphere for such an agreement would be created if we made known to the world the existence of such a bomb, having previously demonstrated it in a duly chosen uninhabited area.

If, however, we believe that there are extremely few chances to agree on effective control now, then not only the use of these weapons against Japan, but also their simple demonstration ahead of time, is contrary to the interests of our country. Postponing such a demonstration in this case has the advantage of delaying the unleashing of the arms race for as long as possible.

If the government decides to demonstrate atomic weapons in the near future, then it should listen to the voice of our public and the public of other countries before deciding to use these weapons against Japan. In this case, other nations would share with us the responsibility for such a fatal decision.

The scientists who signed this document enjoyed such authority that the War Department could not simply shelve their petition. The Ministry handed it over to four atomic scientists who were members of the Provisional Committee. Their meeting had the character of a closed discussion, but it became known that only Lawrence and partly Fermi hesitated under the influence of the clear and pathetic appeal of the Chicago Seven. As for Oppenheimer, here is how he recalls it:

“We were invited to answer the question of whether the atomic bomb should be used. I believe that this question was put to us in connection with the fact that a group of famous and respected scientists presented a petition demanding that the use of the atomic bomb be abandoned. Of course, this would be desirable from all points of view. But we knew almost nothing about the military situation in Japan. We did not know whether it was possible to force her to surrender by other means, and whether our invasion of Japan was really imminent. Moreover, the idea has taken root in our subconscious that the invasion of Japan is inevitable, because we were inspired to do so ...

We emphasized that, in our opinion, the title of scientist does not yet make us competent enough to be competent to judge whether bombs should be used or abandoned; that our opinions are divided, as they would be divided among other mere mortals, if they knew the essence of the problem. We also pointed out two of the most important, in our opinion, issues: firstly, the need to save human lives during hostilities, and secondly, the reaction to our actions and the consequences that will affect our own situation and the stability of international situation after the war. In addition, we added that, in our opinion, the effect of the explosion of one such projectile over the desert will not be able to make a strong enough impression.

First atomic explosion

Thus, the representatives of the army were practically given freedom of action. In Los Alamos, in a hot and dry summer, hard work was carried out. General Groves scheduled the first bomb test for mid-July. On July 12 and 13, the components of the projectile were secretly delivered to the Alamogordo area and raised to a metal tower built in the middle of the desert.

For Oppenheimer, as for General Groves, these were the most exciting days of his life. Will the bomb go off? According to calculations, it was supposed to explode, but there could be an error in the calculations. During the last preparations there were several technical problems; True, they were quickly eliminated, but they were, which means that it is impossible to foresee everything in advance.

At two o'clock in the morning on July 16, all the participants in the experiment were at their posts, fifteen kilometers from "Point Zero". Loudspeakers played dance music. The explosion was scheduled for four o'clock, but due to bad weather it was postponed to five thirty in the morning. At five-fifteen everyone put on dark glasses and lay face down on the ground, turning their faces away from Point Zero. At five-thirty a blinding white light, brighter than the rays of the midday sun, flooded the clouds and mountains. "At this point," Jung writes, "everyone forgot what they intended to do," frozen as if in tetanus, struck by the force of the explosion. Oppenheimer, who was clutching one of the posts of the control post with all his strength, suddenly remembered a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Indian epic:

Power immeasurable and formidable
The sky above the world would shine,
If a thousand suns
Flashed on him at once.

Then, as a gigantic ominous cloud rose high above the site of the explosion, he remembered another line: "I become death, the destroyer of worlds".

So spoke the divine Krishna, who rules the fate of mortals. But Robert Oppenheimer was only a man who had an enormous amount of power.

Spreading rapidly in scientific circles despite all efforts to keep it secret, the news of the explosion greatly increased the opposition of scientists who opposed the use of the atomic bomb, at least without warning the civilian population. The explosion of the experimental bomb at Alamogordo revealed that the physicists' calculations were wrong, but the error was the opposite of what Oppenheimer had feared. The power of the projectile far exceeded all expectations. The least remote from the "zero point" measuring instruments were simply destroyed. It became clear that the atomic weapon would be the weapon of general extermination.

Szilard sent a petition signed by sixty-seven scientists to President Truman, but it, like the previous one, had no effect, as it fell into the hands of Oppenheimer and three other atomic scientists from the Provisional Committee.

It is impossible not to be surprised at the desperate tenacity with which so many participants in the Manhattan Project fought against bringing their own case to its logical end. The authors of the Frank Report explained it this way: “... scientists considered themselves obliged to complete their research in record time, because they were afraid that the Germans would be technically prepared to produce similar weapons and that the German government, deprived of any restraining moral incentives, let him go."

In July 1945, Hitler was already dead and Germany was occupied. Japan remained. Atomic scientists might have feared that she would still fight back if a bomb was not dropped on her. But the rulers of Washington no longer had any doubts about this. Beginning in April, representatives of the Japanese armed forces, who were in Switzerland, repeatedly tried to find out on what terms the Americans would accept Japan's surrender. In July, the Mikado itself tried to start negotiations through its ambassador in Moscow (the USSR had not yet declared war on Japan), Prince Konoe was authorized to conduct these negotiations.

No one doubted that Japan would be defeated in the summer of 1945. According to the agreements concluded between the USA and the USSR, the Soviet Union was to declare war on Japan, and the United Nations was to demand unconditional surrender from Tokyo. That is why the attempts of the representatives of Japan met with no response. But on August 6, the “sun of death” rose over Hiroshima. And on August 9, it was Nagasaki's turn. According to some historians who have studied the documents of the period, by detonating the atomic bomb, the United States not only demonstrated its strength on the threshold of a new era of international politics; they also wanted, having won a lightning victory, to prevent the entry of the USSR into the war and thereby eliminate it from final calculations on Far East. This is what the work of Oppenheimer and the entire scientific team working in the Manhattan Project ultimately served.

_________________________________________________________

- The most suitable person

After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He also became a chief adviser to the newly formed US Atomic Energy Commission and used his position to advocate for international control of nuclear energy to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons and the nuclear race. This anti-war stance angered a number of politicians during the second wave of the Red Scare. Eventually, after a widely publicized politicized hearing in 1954, he was stripped of his security clearance. Having no direct political influence since then, he continued to lecture, write papers and work in the field of physics. Ten years later, President John F. Kennedy awarded the scientist the Enrico Fermi Prize as a sign of political rehabilitation; the award was presented after Kennedy's death by Lyndon Johnson.

Oppenheimer's most significant achievements in physics include: the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer-Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. Together with his students, he made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the solution of certain problems in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and cosmic ray physics. Oppenheimer was a teacher and propagandist of science, the founding father of the American school of theoretical physics, which gained world fame in the 30s of the XX century.

Early life

Childhood and education

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904 to a Jewish family. His father, Julius Seligmann Oppenheimer (1865-1948), a wealthy textile importer, immigrated to the United States from Hanau, Germany in 1888. The mother's family, the Paris-educated artist Ella Friedman (d. 1948), also immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1840s. Robert had a younger brother, Frank (), who also became a physicist.

In 1912, the Oppenheimers moved to Manhattan, to an apartment on the eleventh floor of 155 Riverside Drive, off West 88th Street. This area is known for its luxurious mansions and townhouses. The family's collection of paintings included originals by Pablo Picasso and Jean Vuillard and at least three originals by Vincent van Gogh.

Oppenheimer studied for some time at the Preparatory School. Alcuin (Alcuin Preparatory School), then, in 1911, he entered the School of the Society for Ethical Culture (). It was founded by Felix Adler () to promote education promoted by the Ethical Culture Movement (), whose slogan was "Deed before Creed". Robert's father was a member of this society for many years, serving on its board of trustees from 1907 to 1915. Oppenheimer was a versatile student, interested in English and French literature and especially mineralogy. He completed the program of the third and fourth grades in one year and in half a year he completed the eighth grade and moved to the ninth, in the last grade he became interested in chemistry. Robert entered Harvard College () a year later when he was already 18 years old, having survived an attack of ulcerative colitis while prospecting for minerals in Jáchymov during a family holiday in Europe. For treatment, he went to New Mexico, where he was fascinated by horseback riding and the nature of the southwestern United States.

In addition to majors (specializations, English), students were required to study history, literature, and philosophy or mathematics. Oppenheimer made up for his "late start" by taking six courses a semester and was accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa Student Honor Society (). In his freshman year, Oppenheimer was allowed to take a master's program in physics based on independent study; this meant that he was exempt from the initial subjects and could be taken immediately to advanced courses. After listening to a thermodynamics course taught by Percy Bridgman, Robert became seriously interested in experimental physics. He graduated from the university with honors (lat. summa cum laude) in just three years.

Study in Europe

In 1924, Oppenheimer learned that he had been accepted into Christ's College () in Cambridge. He wrote a letter to Ernest Rutherford asking for permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory. Bridgman gave his student a recommendation, noting his learning ability and analytical mind, but concluded that Oppenheimer was not inclined towards experimental physics. Rutherford was unimpressed, yet Oppenheimer went to Cambridge hoping to get another offer. As a result, J.J. Thomson took him in on the condition that the young man complete the basic laboratory course. With group leader Patrick Blackett, who was only a few years older than him, Oppenheimer developed a hostile relationship. One day he soaked an apple in a poisonous liquid and placed Blackett on the table; Blackett did not eat the apple, but Oppenheimer was placed on probation and told to travel to London for a series of psychiatric appointments.

Many friends noted that Oppenheimer, a tall and thin man, a heavy smoker who often even forgot to eat during periods of intense reflection and full concentration, had a tendency to self-destructive behavior. Many times in his life there were periods during which his melancholy and insecurity caused anxiety among colleagues and acquaintances of the scientist. The disturbing incident occurred during his vacation, which he took to meet his friend Francis Ferguson in Paris. Telling Ferguson about his dissatisfaction with experimental physics, Oppenheimer suddenly jumped up from his chair and began to choke him. Although Ferguson easily parried the attack, this incident convinced him that his friend had serious psychological problems. He experienced periods of depression throughout his life. “Physics I need more than friends,” he once told his brother.

Oppenheimer left Cambridge in 1926 to study at the University of Göttingen under Max Born. At that time Göttingen was one of the leading centers of theoretical physics in the world. Oppenheimer made friends there who later achieved great success: Werner Heisenberg, Pascual Jordan, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and others. Oppenheimer was also known for his habit of "getting carried away" during discussions; sometimes he interrupted every speaker at the seminar. This annoyed the rest of Born's students so much that one day Maria Goeppert submitted to the supervisor a petition, signed by herself and almost all the other participants in the seminar, threatening to boycott classes if Born did not force Oppenheimer to calm down. Bourne placed it on his desk so that Oppenheimer could read it - and it brought the expected result without any words.

Robert Oppenheimer completed his Ph.D. thesis in March 1927, at the age of 23, under Born's scientific supervision. At the end of the oral examination, held on May 11, James Frank, the presiding professor, is reported to have said: “I'm glad it's over. He almost started asking me questions himself.”

Start of professional activity

teaching

In September 1927, Oppenheimer applied for and received a scholarship from the National Research Council () to conduct work at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech"). However, Bridgman also wanted Oppenheimer to work at Harvard, and as a compromise, Oppenheimer split his 1927-28 academic year so that he worked at Harvard in 1927 and Caltech in 1928. At Caltech, Oppenheimer became close friends with Linus Pauling; they planned to organize a joint "offensive" on the nature of the chemical bond, an area in which Pauling had been a pioneer; obviously Oppenheimer would do the math and Pauling would interpret the results. However, this venture (and along with their friendship) was nipped in the bud when Pauling began to suspect that Oppenheimer's relationship with his wife, Ava Helen (), was becoming too close. One day, when Pauling was at work, Oppenheimer came to their house and suddenly invited Ava Helen to meet him in Mexico. She categorically refused and told her husband about the incident. This incident, and the apparent indifference with which his wife related it, alarmed Pauling, and he immediately broke off his relationship with the physicist. Oppenheimer subsequently asked Pauling to become head of the Chemistry Division of the Manhattan Project, but Pauling declined, claiming he was a pacifist.

In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited the Paul Ehrenfest Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he impressed those present by lecturing in Dutch, although he had little experience in that language. There he was given the nickname "Opie" (Dutch. Opje), which later his students remade in the English manner in "Oppie" (Eng. Oppie). After Leiden, he went to ETH Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on problems in quantum mechanics and, in particular, on the description of the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer deeply respected and loved Pauli, who may have had a strong influence on the scientist's own style and critical approach to problems.

Upon his return to the United States, Oppenheimer accepted an invitation to become an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was invited by Raymond Thayer Birge, who wanted Oppenheimer to work for him so much that he allowed him to work in parallel at Caltech. But before Oppenheimer took office, he was diagnosed with a mild form of tuberculosis; because of this, he and his brother Frank spent several weeks on a ranch in New Mexico, which he rented and later bought. When he found out that this place was available for rent, he exclaimed: "Hot dog!" (English "Wow!", Literally "Hot Dog") - and later the name of the ranch became "Perro Caliente", which is a literal translation of "hot dog" in Spanish. Oppenheimer later liked to say that "physics and desert country" were his "two great passions." He was cured of tuberculosis and returned to Berkeley, where he succeeded as the scientific adviser to a generation of young physicists who admired him for his intellectual sophistication and broad interests. Students and colleagues recalled that he was mesmerizing, even hypnotic in private conversation, but often indifferent in public. Those who communicated with him were divided into two camps: some considered him an aloof and expressive genius and aesthete, others saw him as a pretentious and disturbing poseur. His students almost always fell into the first category and adopted "Oppie's" habits, from his walk to his way of speaking. Hans Bethe later said of him:

Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel laureate experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence and his fellow cyclotron developers, helping them interpret data from Lawrence Radiation Laboratory instruments. In 1936, the University of Berkeley gave the scientist the position of professor () with a salary of $ 3,300 per year. In return, he was asked to stop teaching at Caltech. As a result, the parties agreed that Oppenheimer was off work for 6 weeks every year - this was enough to conduct classes for one trimester at Caltech.

Scientific work

Oppenheimer's scientific research relates to theoretical astrophysics, closely related to general relativity and the theory atomic nucleus, nuclear physics, theoretical spectroscopy, quantum field theory, including quantum electrodynamics. He was attracted by the formal rigor of relativistic quantum mechanics, although he doubted its correctness. Some later discoveries were predicted in his work, including the discovery of the neutron, meson, and neutron stars.

During his stay in Göttingen, Oppenheimer published more than a dozen scientific papers, including many important papers on newly developed quantum mechanics. In collaboration with Born, the famous article "On the Quantum Motion of Molecules" was published, containing the so-called Born-Oppenheimer approximation, which allows one to separate nuclear and electronic motion within the framework of a quantum mechanical description of a molecule. This makes it possible to neglect the motion of nuclei when searching for electronic energy levels and, thus, greatly simplify the calculations. This work remains Oppenheimer's most cited paper.

In the late 1920s, Oppenheimer's main interest was in the theory of the continuous spectrum, in which he developed a method for calculating the probabilities of quantum transitions. In his dissertation in Göttingen, he calculated the parameters of the photoelectric effect for hydrogen under the action of X-rays, obtaining the attenuation coefficient at the absorption boundary for K-shell electrons ("K-boundary", Eng.). His calculations turned out to be correct for the measured X-ray absorption spectra, but did not agree with the opacity of hydrogen in the Sun. Years later, it was discovered that the Sun was mostly hydrogen (and not heavy elements, as was then thought) and that the young scientist's calculations were in fact correct. In 1928, Oppenheimer completed work that explained the phenomenon of autoionization using the new quantum tunneling effect, and also wrote several papers on the theory of atomic collisions. In 1931, together with Paul Ehrenfest, he proved a theorem according to which nuclei consisting of an odd number of fermion particles must obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics, and from an even number, the Bose-Einstein statistics. This statement, known as the Ehrenfest-Oppenheimer theorem, made it possible to show the insufficiency of the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of the atomic nucleus.

Oppenheimer made a significant contribution to the theory of showers of cosmic rays and other high-energy phenomena, using to describe them the then existing formalism of quantum electrodynamics, which was developed in the pioneering work of Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. He showed that in the framework of this theory already in the second order of the perturbation theory quadratic divergences of the integrals corresponding to the self-energy of the electron are observed. This difficulty was overcome only at the end of the 1940s, when the renormalization procedure was developed. In 1931, Oppenheimer and his student Harvey Hall coauthored a paper entitled "The Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect" in which, based on empirical evidence, they (correctly) questioned the corollary of Dirac's equation that two energy levels of the hydrogen atom, differing only in the value of the orbital quantum number, have the same energy. Later, one of Oppenheimer's graduate students, Willis Lamb, proved that this difference in energy levels, called the Lamb shift, really takes place, for which he received Nobel Prize in physics in 1955.

In 1930, Oppenheimer wrote a paper that essentially predicted the existence of the positron. This idea was based on the work of Paul Dirac in 1928, which suggested that electrons could have a positive charge, but still have a negative energy. To explain the Zeeman effect in this article, the so-called Dirac equation was obtained, which combined quantum mechanics, special relativity and the then new concept of the electron spin. Oppenheimer, using solid experimental evidence, rejected Dirac's original suggestion that positively charged electrons could be protons. For reasons of symmetry, he argued that these particles should have the same mass as electrons, while protons are much heavier. In addition, according to his calculations, if the positively charged electrons were protons, the observed matter would have to annihilate within a very short period of time (less than a nanosecond). The arguments of Oppenheimer, as well as Hermann Weyl and Igor Tamm, forced Dirac to abandon the identification of positive electrons and protons and explicitly postulate the existence of a new particle, which he called the antielectron. In 1932, this particle, commonly called the positron, was discovered in cosmic rays by Karl Anderson, who was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

After the discovery of the positron, Oppenheimer, together with his students Milton Plesset () and Leo Nedelsky, calculated the cross sections for the production of new particles during the scattering of energetic gamma rays in the field of an atomic nucleus. Later, he applied his results concerning the production of electron-positron pairs to the theory of cosmic ray showers, to which he paid much attention in subsequent years (in 1937, together with Franklin Carlson, he developed the cascade theory of showers). In 1934, Oppenheimer, together with Wendell Ferry (), generalized the Dirac theory of the electron, including positrons in it and obtaining the effect of vacuum polarization as one of the consequences (other scientists expressed similar ideas at the same time). However, this theory was also not free from divergences, which gave rise to Oppenheimer's skeptical attitude towards the future of quantum electrodynamics. In 1937, after the discovery of mesons, Oppenheimer assumed that the new particle was identical to that proposed a few years earlier by Hideki Yukawa, and together with his students calculated some of its properties.

With his first graduate student - or rather, graduate student, Melba Phillips () - Oppenheimer worked on calculating the artificial radioactivity of elements bombarded by deuterons. Ernest Lawrence and Edwin Macmillan had previously found that the results were well described by George Gamow's calculations when irradiating atomic nuclei with deuterons, but when more massive nuclei and particles with higher energies were involved in the experiment, the result began to diverge from theory. Oppenheimer and Phillips developed new theory to explain these results in 1935. It became known as the Oppenheimer-Phillips process and is still in use today. The essence of this process is that the deuteron, upon collision with a heavy nucleus, decays into a proton and a neutron, and one of these particles is captured by the nucleus, while the other leaves it. Other results of Oppenheimer in the field of nuclear physics include calculations of the density of energy levels of nuclei, the nuclear photoelectric effect, the properties of nuclear resonances, the explanation of the creation of electron pairs when fluorine is irradiated with protons, the development of the meson theory of nuclear forces, and some others.

In the late 1930s, Oppenheimer, probably influenced by his friend Richard Tolman, became interested in astrophysics, which resulted in a series of articles. In the first of them, co-authored with Robert Serber in 1938 and entitled "On the stability of the neutron cores of stars", Oppenheimer investigated the properties of white dwarfs, obtaining an estimate of the minimum mass of the neutron core of such a star, taking into account the exchange interactions between neutrons. It was followed by another article, "On massive neutron cores", co-authored with his student George Volkov. In this work, the authors, starting from the equation of state for a degenerate gas of fermions under the conditions of gravitational interaction described by the general theory of relativity, showed that there is a limit to the masses of stars, now called the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov limit, above which they lose the stability inherent in neutron stars, and experience gravitational collapse. Finally, in 1939, Oppenheimer and another student of his, Heartland Snyder (), wrote the work "On Unlimited Gravitational Contraction", which predicted the existence of objects that are now called black holes. The authors developed a model for the evolution of a massive star (with a mass exceeding the limit) and found that for an observer moving along with stellar matter, the collapse time will be finite, while for an outside observer, the size of the star will asymptotically approach the gravitational radius. Aside from the article on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, astrophysics remains Oppenheimer's most cited publication; they played a key role in the resumption of astrophysical research in the United States in the 1950s, largely due to the work of John Wheeler.

Even given the enormous complexity of the areas of science in which Oppenheimer was an expert, his work is considered difficult to understand. Oppenheimer liked to use elegant, if extremely complex, mathematical techniques to demonstrate physical principles, and as a result he was often criticized for mathematical errors that he made, presumably due to haste. "His physics was good," said his student Snyder, "but his arithmetic was terrible."

Many believe that, despite his talents, the level of Oppenheimer's discoveries and research does not allow him to be ranked among those theorists who expanded the boundaries of fundamental knowledge. The variety of his interests sometimes did not allow him to fully concentrate on a single task. One of Oppenheimer's habits that surprised his colleagues and friends was his tendency to read the original foreign literature especially poetry. In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur Ryder () at Berkeley. Oppenheimer read the original Bhagavad-gita; later he spoke of it as one of the books that had a strong influence on him and shaped his philosophy of life. His close friend and colleague, Nobel laureate Isidore Rabi later gave his own explanation:

Despite all this, experts such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez have speculated that if Oppenheimer had lived long enough to see his predictions confirmed by experiments, he might have received a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse. with the theory of neutron stars and black holes. Retrospectively, some physicists and historians regard it as his most significant achievement, although not taken up by his contemporaries. When the physicist and historian of science Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer what he considered his most important contribution to science, Oppenheimer named a work on electrons and positrons, but did not say a word about work on gravitational contraction. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times - in 1945, 1951 and 1967 - but was never awarded it.

Personal and political life

Throughout the 1920s, Oppenheimer was not interested in public affairs. He claimed that he did not read newspapers, did not listen to the radio, and learned about the fall in the stock price on the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 only some time later. He once mentioned that he never voted before the 1936 presidential election. However, starting in 1934, he became increasingly interested in politics and international relations. In 1934, Oppenheimer agreed to donate 3 percent of his salary, which was about $3,000 a year, to support German physicists leaving Nazi Germany. During the 1934 West Coast fishermen's strike, Oppenheimer and several of his students, including Melba Phillips and Robert Serber, joined the protesters. Oppenheimer periodically tried to get Serber a position at Berkeley, but was stopped by Birge, who believed that "one Jew on the faculty is enough."

Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, and he became close to his father, who, while living in New York, became a frequent visitor to California. When his father died in 1937, bequeathing $392,602 to Robert and Frank, Oppenheimer immediately wrote a will that would transfer his estate to the University of California for graduate scholarships. Like many young intellectuals, in the 1930s Oppenheimer supported social reforms that were later recognized as pro-communist. He donated to many progressive causes that were later labeled "leftist" during the McCarthy era. Most of his supposedly radical pursuits consisted of hosting fundraisers in support of the Republican movement in the Spanish Civil War or other anti-fascist activities. He never openly joined the US Communist Party, although he gave money to liberal movements through acquaintances who were assumed to be members of that party. In 1936, Oppenheimer became infatuated with Jean Tatlock (), a student at the Stanford University School of Medicine (), daughter of a professor of literature at Berkeley. They were united by similar political views; Jean wrote articles for the Western Worker, a newspaper published by the Communist Party.

Oppenheimer parted ways with Tetlock in 1939. In August of that year, he met Katherine "Kitty" Puening Harrison, a radical UC Berkeley student and former member of the Communist Party. Prior to this, Harrison had been married three times. Her first marriage lasted only a few months. Her second husband, Joe Dallet, an active member of the Communist Party, was killed during the Spanish Civil War. Kitty returned to the United States, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in botany from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1938, she married Richard Harrison, an internist and medical researcher. In June 1939, Kitty and her husband moved to Pasadena, California, where he became head of the local hospital's radiology department, and she went on to graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles. Oppenheimer and Kitty made a row by spending the night alone with each other after one of Tolman's parties. She spent the summer of 1940 with Oppenheimer at his ranch in New Mexico. Finally, when she discovered she was pregnant, she asked Harrison for a divorce. When he refused, she obtained permission for an immediate divorce in Reno, Nevada, and on November 1, 1940, she and Oppenheimer were married.

Their first child, Peter (Peter), was born in May 1941, and the second, Katherine "Toni" (Katherine "Toni") - December 7, 1944 in Los Alamos (New Mexico). Even after the wedding, Oppenheimer continued his relationship with Jean Tetlock. Later, their uninterrupted connection was the subject of a hearing for admission to secret work - due to Tatlock's cooperation with the communists. Many of Oppenheimer's close friends were Communist Party activists in the 30s or 40s, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Jean Tatlock, his landlady Mary Ellen Washburn, and some of his graduate students at Berkeley. His wife, Kitty, was also related to the Party, moreover, P. A. Sudoplatov in his memoirs calls her an "illegal special agent" of Soviet intelligence, allocated to communicate with Oppenheimer.

When Oppenheimer joined the Manhattan Project in 1942, he wrote on his personal security clearance form that he was "a member of almost every front Communist organization on the West Coast." On December 23, 1953, when the US Atomic Energy Commission was considering revoking his security clearance, Oppenheimer stated that he did not remember saying anything like that, that it was not true, and that if he said something like that, then it was a "semi-joking exaggeration". He was a subscriber to People's World, the press organ of the Communist Party, and testified in 1954: "I was associated with the communist movement." From 1937 until 1942, at the height of the Great Terror and after the conclusion of the Molotov Pact - Ribbentrop, Oppenheimer was a member of what he called the "interest group" at Berkeley, which was later labeled by permanent members Haakon Chevalier () and Gordon Griffiths as a "closed" (secret) division of the Communist Party USA in the Berkeley faculty.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determined that J. Robert Oppenheimer attended a meeting at the home of Haakon Chevalier (an openly communist), which was held in the fall of 1940, during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, by the chairman of the California Communist Party, William Schneiderman, and an intermediary between The Communist Party of the USA and the NKVD on the West Coast Isaac Falkoff (). Shortly thereafter, the FBI placed Oppenheimer on the CDI () list - persons to be arrested in the event of a national threat - with the note: "Nationalist inclination: communist." The debate about Oppenheimer's membership in the Party, or lack thereof, is buried in small details; almost all historians agree that he strongly sympathized with the socialists during this period, and also interacted with members of the Party; but it is currently impossible to unequivocally answer the question of whether Oppenheimer himself was an official member of the Party. Some sources claim that until 1942 he was in its secret staff and even paid membership dues. At a security clearance hearing in 1954, he denied being a member of the Party, but called himself a "fellow traveller," a word he defined for someone who agrees with many of the goals of communism, but who is not obliged to blindly follow the orders of the apparatus of any communist party.

Throughout the development of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was under close surveillance by both the FBI and the Manhattan Project's internal security forces due to his past connections to the left wing. He was accompanied by US Army security agents when, in June 1943, he traveled to California to visit an acquaintance, Jean Tatlock, who was suffering from depression. Oppenheimer spent the night in her apartment. On January 4, 1944, Jean committed suicide; this upset Oppenheimer deeply. In August 1943, Oppenheimer told Manhattan Project security that someone he didn't know, George Eltenton, was trying to get secret information about nuclear development for the benefit of the Soviet Union from three people at Los Alamos. In subsequent interrogations, Oppenheimer confessed under pressure that the only person who approached him about this was his friend Haakon Chevalier, professor of French literature at Berkeley, who mentioned it privately over dinner at Oppenheimer's house. Project manager General Leslie Groves felt that Oppenheimer was too important to the project to be sidelined over this suspicious incident. On July 20, 1943, he wrote to the Manhattan Engineering District:

Manhattan Project

Los Alamos

October 9, 1941, shortly before the entry of the United States into the Second world war, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the accelerated program to build the atomic bomb. In May 1942, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee () James B. Conant (), one of Oppenheimer's Harvard teachers, invited him to head a group at Berkeley that would do calculations in the problem of fast neutrons. Robert, worried about the difficult situation in Europe, took up the job with enthusiasm. The title of his position - "Coordinator of Rapid Rupture" ("Coordinator of the Rapid Rupture") - clearly alluded to the use of a fast neutron chain reaction in the atomic bomb. One of Oppenheimer's first acts in his new position was to organize a summer school on bomb theory at his Berkeley campus. His group, which included both European physicists and his own students, including Robert Serber, Emil Konopinsky (), Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe and Edward Teller, studied what and in what order should be done to get bomb.

To manage its part of the atomic project, the US Army in June 1942 founded the "Manhattan Engineer District" (Manhattan Engineer District), later known as the Manhattan Project, thereby initiating the transfer of responsibility from the Office of Scientific Research and Development () to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. was named project leader. Groves, in turn, appointed Oppenheimer as head of the secret weapons laboratory. Oppenheimer was neither a conservative military nor a skilled leader of big projects, so Groves' choice initially surprised both the bomb scientists and the members of the Military Policy Committee that oversees the Manhattan Project. The fact that Oppenheimer did not have the Nobel Prize and perhaps the appropriate authority to lead scientists like him, of course, worried Groves. However, Groves was impressed by Oppenheimer's theoretical knowledge of the creation of the atomic bomb, although he doubted his ability to apply this knowledge in practice. Groves also found one feature in Oppenheimer that other people had overlooked - "excessive vanity"; this property, according to the general, was supposed to feed the impulse necessary to move the project to successful completion. Isidore Rabi saw in this appointment "a real manifestation of genius on the part of General Groves, who was usually not considered a genius ...".

Oppenheimer and Groves decided that for the sake of security and cohesion, they needed a centralized secret research laboratory in a remote area. A search for a convenient location in late 1942 brought Oppenheimer to New Mexico, near his ranch. On November 16, 1942, Oppenheimer, Groves and the others inspected the proposed site. Oppenheimer was afraid that the high cliffs surrounding the place would make his men feel like they were in a confined space, while the engineers saw the possibility of flooding. Then Oppenheimer suggested a place that he knew well - a flat mesa (mesa) near Santa Fe, where there was a private educational institution for boys - Los Alamos Farm School (). The engineers were concerned about the lack of a good access road and water supply, but otherwise found the site to be ideal. "Los Alamos National Laboratory" was hastily built on the site of the school; the builders occupied several buildings of the latter for it and erected many others in the shortest possible time. There, Oppenheimer gathered a group of outstanding physicists of the time, which he called the "luminaries" (English luminaries).

It was originally planned to make Los Alamos a military laboratory, and Oppenheimer and other researchers to be accepted into the US Army as officers. Oppenheimer even managed to order a lieutenant colonel's uniform and undergo a medical examination, as a result of which he was declared unfit for service. Military doctors diagnosed him as underweight (with his weight of 128 pounds, or 58 kg), recognized tuberculosis in his constant cough, and were also dissatisfied with his chronic pain in the lumbosacral joint. And Robert Bacher () and Isidor Rabi completely opposed the idea of ​​entering the military service. Conant, Groves and Oppenheimer developed a compromise plan, according to which the laboratory was taken by the University of California on lease from the War Department (). It soon turned out that Oppenheimer's initial estimates of the labor input required were extremely optimistic. Los Alamos increased its workforce from a few hundred in 1943 to over 6,000 in 1945.

At first, Oppenheimer had difficulty in organizing the work of large groups, but, having received a permanent residence on the mountain, he very soon learned the art of large-scale management. The rest of the staff noted his masterful understanding of all scientific aspects of the project and his efforts to iron out the inevitable cultural tensions between scientists and the military. For fellow scientists, he was a cult figure, being both a supervisor and a symbol of what they all aspired to. Victor Weiskopf put it this way:

In 1943, development efforts were focused on a gun-type plutonium nuclear bomb called the Thin Man. The first studies of the properties of plutonium were carried out using cyclotron-produced plutonium-239, which was extremely pure but could only be produced in small quantities. When Los Alamos received the first sample of plutonium from the X-10 graphite reactor in April 1944, new problem: Reactor-grade plutonium had a higher concentration of the 240Pu isotope, making it unsuitable for gun-type bombs. In July 1944, Oppenheimer left the development of cannon bombs, focusing his efforts on the creation of implosion-type weapons (English implosion-type). With the help of a chemical explosive lens, a subcritical sphere of fissile material could be compressed to a smaller size and thus to a higher density. The substance in this case would have to travel a very small distance, so the critical mass would be reached in a much shorter time. In August 1944, Oppenheimer completely reorganized the Los Alamos Laboratory, focusing his efforts on the study of implosion (an explosion directed inwards). A separate group was given the task of developing a bomb of simple design, which was supposed to work only on uranium-235; the project of this bomb was ready in February 1945 - she was given the name "Kid" (Little Boy). After a herculean effort, the design of a more complex implosion charge, nicknamed "Christy's Thing" ("Christy gadget", in honor of Robert Christie,), was completed on February 28, 1945 at a meeting in Oppenheimer's office.

In May 1945, the so-called "Provisional Committee" () was created, whose tasks were to advise and provide reports in wartime and post-war times regarding the use of nuclear energy. The Interim Committee, in turn, organized an expert group including Arthur Compton, Fermi, Lawrence, and Oppenheimer to advise on scientific matters. In its report to the Committee, this group expressed its conclusions not only on the alleged physical consequences of the use of the atomic bomb, but also on its possible military and political significance. Among other things, the report expressed an opinion on such delicate issues as, for example, whether it is necessary to inform the Soviet Union about the created weapon before using it against Japan, or not.

Trinity

The result of the coordinated work of scientists at Los Alamos was the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, in a place that Oppenheimer in mid-1944 called "Trinity" (Trinity). He later said that the title was taken from John Donne's Sacred Sonnets. According to historian Gregg Herken, the title may be a reference to Jean Tatlock (who had committed suicide a few months earlier) who introduced Donn's work to Oppenheimer in the 1930s. Oppenheimer later said that while watching the explosion, he remembered a verse from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita:

Years later, he explained that at that moment another phrase came to his mind, namely, the famous verse: k? lo "smi lokak? ayak? tprav? ddho lok? nsam? hartumiha prav? tta? as: "I am Death, the great destroyer of worlds."

In 1965, Oppenheimer was asked during a television broadcast to recall that moment again:

According to his brother, at that moment Oppenheimer simply said, "It worked." A contemporary assessment given by Brigadier General Thomas Farrell (), who was on the range in the control bunker with Oppenheimer, summarizes his reaction as follows:

For his work as the head of Los Alamos in 1946, Oppenheimer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit ().

Post-war activities

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public, and Oppenheimer became a national representative of science, symbolic of a new type of technocratic power. His face appeared on the covers of Life and Time magazines. Nuclear physics has become a powerful force as governments around the world begin to understand the strategic and political power that comes with nuclear weapons and their dire consequences. Like many scientists of his time, Oppenheimer understood that only an international organization, such as the newly formed United Nations, could provide security for nuclear weapons, which could introduce a program to curb the arms race.

Institute for Advanced Study

In November 1945, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos to return to Caltech, but soon found that teaching did not appeal to him as much as before. In 1947, he accepted an offer from Lewis Strauss () to head the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. This meant moving back east and parting ways with Ruth Tolman, the wife of his friend Richard Tolman, with whom he began a relationship after returning from Los Alamos. The salary at the new location was $20,000 a year, to which was added free accommodation in a personal ("director's") house and a 17th-century manor with a cook and caretaker, surrounded by 265 acres (107 ha) of woodland.

To solve the most significant problems of the time, Oppenheimer brought together intellectuals in the prime of their lives from various branches of science. He supported and directed the research of many well-known scientists, including Freeman Dyson and the duo of Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the law of parity nonconservation. He also arranged temporary membership in the Institute for humanities scholars such as Thomas Eliot and George Kennan. Some of these initiatives resented individual members of the mathematics department, who wanted the institute to remain a bastion of "pure scientific research". Abraham Pais said that Oppenheimer himself considered one of his failures at the institute to be unable to reconcile scientists from natural sciences and humanitarian areas.

A series of conferences in New York in 1947-49 demonstrated that physicists were returning from military work back to theoretical research. Under the leadership of Oppenheimer, physicists enthusiastically tackled the greatest unsolved problem of the pre-war years - the problem of mathematically incorrect (infinite, divergent, or meaningless) expressions in quantum electrodynamics. Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman, and Shinichiro Tomonaga explored regularization schemes and developed what became known as renormalization. Freeman Dyson proved that their methods give similar results. The problem of meson capture and the theory of Hideki Yukawa, which considers mesons as carriers of the strong nuclear force, also came under scrutiny. Oppenheimer's deep questions helped Robert Marshak () formulate a new hypothesis about two types of mesons: pions and muons. The result was a new breakthrough - the discovery of the peony by Cecil Frank Powell in 1947, for which he subsequently received the Nobel Prize.

Atomic Energy Commission

As a member of the Board of Advisors to the commission approved by President Harry Truman, Oppenheimer had a strong influence on the Acheson-Lilienthal report (). In this report, the committee recommended the creation of an international "Nuclear Industry Development Agency" (), which would own all nuclear materials and their production facilities, including mines and laboratories, as well as nuclear power plants in which nuclear materials would be used to produce energy in peaceful purposes. Bernard Baruch was put in charge of translating this report into the form of a proposal to the UN Council and completed it in 1946. The Baruch plan () introduced a number of additional provisions regarding law enforcement, in particular the need to inspect the uranium resources of the Soviet Union. The Baruch Plan was seen as an attempt by the US to gain a monopoly on nuclear technology and was rejected by the Soviets. After that, it became clear to Oppenheimer that because of the mutual suspicions of the United States and the Soviet Union, an arms race was inevitable. Even Oppenheimer ceased to trust the latter.

After the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1947 as a civilian agency for nuclear research and nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer was appointed chairman of its General Advisory Committee (GAC). In this position, he has advised on a range of nuclear technology issues, including project funding, laboratory establishment, and even international politics, although GAC advice has not always been heeded. As chairman of this committee, Oppenheimer was a vehement advocate for international arms control and funding. fundamental science, and also attempted to divert the political course from the hot issue of the arms race. When the government approached him about whether to initiate a program to accelerate the development of an atomic weapon based on a thermonuclear reaction - a hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer initially advised against it, although he supported the creation of such weapons when he participated in the Manhattan Project. He was motivated in part by ethical considerations, feeling that such weapons could only be used strategically - against civilian targets - and result in millions of deaths. However, he also took into account practical considerations, since at that time there was no working draft of the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer believed that available resources could be better spent on expanding the stockpile of nuclear weapons. He and others were particularly concerned that the nuclear reactors were set to produce tritium instead of plutonium. Truman rejected his recommendation, launching an accelerated program after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949. Oppenheimer and other opponents of the project in the GAC, especially James Conant, felt shunned and were already considering resigning. In the end they stayed, although their views on the hydrogen bomb were known.

In 1951, however, Edward Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam developed what became known as the Teller-Ulam circuit for the hydrogen bomb. The new project looked technically feasible, and Oppenheimer changed his mind about the development of this weapon. Subsequently, he recalled:

Secret work clearance hearing

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (then under John Edgar Hoover) followed Oppenheimer even before the war, when he, as a professor at Berkeley, showed sympathy for the Communists, and was also intimately acquainted with members of the Communist Party, among whom were his wife and brother. He has been under close surveillance since the early 1940s: bugs were placed in his house, telephone conversations were recorded, and mail was looked through. Oppenheimer's political enemies, among them Lewis Straus, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, who had long felt resentment towards Oppenheimer, both because of Robert's speech against the hydrogen bomb, which Straus advocated, and for humiliating Lewis before Congress a few years earlier; in reference to Strauss' opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes, Oppenheimer memorably classified them as "less important than electronic devices, but more important than, say, vitamins."

On June 7, 1949, Oppenheimer testified before the Un-American Activities Commission, where he admitted to having ties to the Communist Party in the 1930s. He testified that some of his students, including David Bohm, Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz (), Philip Morrison, Bernard Peters (Bernard Peters) and Joseph Weinberg (Joseph Weinberg), were communists during the period when they worked with him at Berkeley . Frank Oppenheimer and his wife Jackie also testified before the Commission that they were members of the Communist Party. Frank was subsequently fired from his position at the University of Michigan. A physicist by training, he did not find work in his specialty for many years and became a farmer on a cattle ranch in Colorado. He later began teaching high school physics and founded the Exploratorium () in San Francisco.

Between 1949 and 1953, Oppenheimer found himself at the center of a conflict or power struggle more than once. Edward Teller, who was so uninterested in the atomic bomb work at Los Alamos during the war that Oppenheimer gave him time to work on his own project, the hydrogen bomb, eventually left Los Alamos and helped found a second laboratory in 1951, which became known as Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence. There he could be free from Los Alamos control over the development of the hydrogen bomb. Thermonuclear "strategic" weapons, which can only be delivered by a long-range jet bomber, were to be under the control of the US Air Force. Oppenheimer was forced for several years to develop relatively small "tactical" nuclear charges that were more useful in limited areas of combat operations against enemy infantry and which were supposed to belong to the US Army. Two public services, often standing on the side of different political parties, fought for the possession of nuclear weapons. The US Air Force, promoted by Teller, gained the confidence of the Republican administration that had taken shape after Dwight Eisenhower's victory in the 1952 presidential election.

In 1950, Paul Crouch, a Communist Party recruiter in Alameda County from April 1941 until early 1942, became the first person to accuse Oppenheimer of having links with that party. He testified before a committee at the Congress () that Oppenheimer had arranged a meeting of the members of the Party in his home in Berkeley. At that time, the case received wide publicity. However, Oppenheimer was able to prove that he was in New Mexico when the meeting took place, and Crouch was eventually found to be an unreliable informant. In November 1953, J. Edgar Hoover received a letter regarding Oppenheimer written by William Liscum Borden, former executive director of the Congress' Joint Atomic Energy Committee. In the letter, Borden expressed his opinion, " based on several years of research, according to the available secret information, that J. Robert Oppenheimer - with a certain degree of probability - is an agent of the Soviet Union.

Straus, along with Senator Brian McMahon (), author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (), forced Eisenhower to reopen the hearings in the Oppenheimer case. On December 21, 1953, Lewis Strauss informed Oppenheimer that the admission hearing was suspended pending a decision on a number of charges listed in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols (), General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, and suggested that the scientist resign. Oppenheimer did not do this and insisted on holding a hearing. At a hearing held in April - May 1954, which was initially closed and did not receive publicity, Special attention was given to Oppenheimer's former Communist connections and his collaboration during the Manhattan Project with unreliable or Communist Party-affiliated scientists. One of the highlights of this hearing was Oppenheimer's early testimony about George Eltenton's conversations with several scientists at Los Alamos, a story that Oppenheimer himself admitted to have fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier. Oppenheimer was unaware that both versions had been recorded during his interrogations ten years earlier, and he was surprised when a witness provided these notes, which Oppenheimer was not allowed to see first. In fact, Oppenheimer never told Chevalier that he had given his name, and this testimony cost Chevalier his job. Both Chevalier and Eltenton confirmed that they talked about the possibility of passing information to the Soviets: Eltenton admitted that he told Chevalier about it, and Chevalier that he mentioned it to Oppenheimer; but both did not see anything seditious in idle talk, completely rejecting the possibility that the transfer of such information as intelligence could be carried out or even planned for the future. None of them were charged with any crime.

Edward Teller testified in the Oppenheimer trial on April 28, 1954. Teller stated that he does not question Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States, but "knows him as a man of extremely active and sophisticated thinking." Asked if Oppenheimer posed a threat to national security, Teller responded:

This position outraged the American scientific community, and Teller, in fact, was subjected to a lifelong boycott. Groves also testified against Oppenheimer, but his testimony is rife with speculation and contradiction. Historian Greg Herken suggested that Groves, frightened by the FBI at the possibility of being prosecuted for possible involvement in covering up the Chevalier connection in 1943, fell into a trap, and Strauss and Hoover took advantage of this to obtain the necessary testimony. Many prominent scientists, as well as political and military figures, testified in Oppenheimer's defense. Oppenheimer's inconsistency and bizarre behavior before the panel (on one occasion stating that he was "talking complete rubbish" because he "was an idiot") convinced some participants that he was unstable, unreliable, and could pose a security risk. As a result, Oppenheimer's clearance was canceled only a day before the expiration date. Isidor Rabi said on this occasion that at that time Oppenheimer was only a state adviser, and if the government at the present time "does not want to receive advice from him, then so be it."

During the proceedings, Oppenheimer willingly testified about the "leftist" behavior of many of his fellow scientists. According to Richard Polenberg, if Oppenheimer's clearance had not been revoked, he might have gone down in history as one of those who "named names" to save his reputation. But since it did, he was seen by most of the scientific community as a "martyr" of "McCarthyism," an eclectic liberal who was unfairly attacked by his militarist enemies, a symbol of scientific creativity moving from the universities to the military. Wernher von Braun expressed his opinion on the scientist's trial in a sarcastic remark to a congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."

P. A. Sudoplatov in his book notes that Oppenheimer, like other scientists, was not recruited, but was "a source associated with trusted agents, proxies and operatives." At a seminar at the Institute Woodrow Wilson Institute (Woodrow Wilson Institute) May 20, 2009 John Earl Hines (), Harvey Clare () and Alexander Vasiliev, based on a comprehensive analysis of the latter's notes, based on materials from the KGB archive, confirmed that Oppenheimer never engaged in espionage in favor of the Soviet Union. The secret services of the USSR periodically tried to recruit him, but were not successful - Oppenheimer did not betray the United States. Moreover, he fired several people who sympathized with the Soviet Union from the Manhattan Project.

Last years

Beginning in 1954, Oppenheimer spent several months of the year on Saint John, one of the Virgin Islands. In 1957, he bought a 2-acre (0.81 ha) plot of land on Gibney Beach (), where he built a Spartan house on the waterfront. Oppenheimer spent much of his time sailing with his daughter Tony and wife Kitty.

Increasingly concerned about the potential danger of scientific discoveries to humanity, Oppenheimer joined with Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Joseph Rotblat and other eminent scientists and teachers to found the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960 (). After his public humiliation, Oppenheimer did not sign major open protests against nuclear weapons in the 1950s, including the 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto. He did not come to the first Pugwash Conference for Peace and Scientific Cooperation in 1957, although he was invited.

Nevertheless, in his speeches and public writings, Oppenheimer constantly drew attention to the difficulty of managing the power of knowledge in a world where the freedom to exchange ideas inherent in science is increasingly fettered by political relations. In 1953, on BBC radio, he gave a series of Reet lectures (), which were later published under the title Science and the Common Understanding. In 1955, Oppenheimer published The Open Mind, a collection of eight lectures on nuclear weapons and popular culture, which he has read since 1946. Oppenheimer rejected the idea of ​​"nuclear gunboat diplomacy". “The goals of this country in the field foreign policy- he wrote - cannot be achieved in a genuine or lasting form by violence. In 1957, the faculties of psychology and philosophy at Harvard University invited him to give a course of James lectures (), although this decision was opposed by an influential group of Harvard graduates, headed by Edwin Jinn (), which included Archibald Roosevelt (), the son of the former US president. Approximately 1,200 people gathered to listen to Oppenheimer's six lectures entitled "The Hope of Order" at the Sanders Amphitheater (), Harvard's main lecture hall. In 1962, Oppenheimer also gave the Widden Lectures () at McMaster University, which were published as The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physicists in 1964.

Deprived of political influence, Oppenheimer continued to lecture, write, and work in the field of physics. He visited Europe and Japan, giving lectures on the history of science, the role of science in society, and the nature of the universe. In September 1957, France made him an officer of the Legion of Honor, and on May 3, 1962, he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London (Foreign Member of the Royal Society). In 1963, at the urging of Oppenheimer's many friends among politicians who had achieved high positions, US President John F. Kennedy awarded the scientist the Enrico Fermi Prize as a sign of political rehabilitation. Oppenheimer was also recommended by Edward Teller, who had received the prize a year earlier, in the hope that it would help bridge the rift between scientists. However, according to Teller himself, this did not soften the situation at all. Less than a week after Kennedy's assassination, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, presented the award to Oppenheimer "for his contribution to theoretical physics as a teacher and author of ideas, and for his leadership of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the atomic energy program during the years of crisis." Oppenheimer told Johnson, "I believe, Mr. President, that it may have taken a good deal of mercy and courage on your part to present this award today." The rehabilitation implied by this award was partly symbolic, since Oppenheimer was still not cleared for classified work and could not influence official policy; but a tax-free allowance of $50,000 was due with the award, and the very fact of its award caused discontent among many prominent Republicans in Congress. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline, who was still living in the White House at the time, felt it her duty to meet with Oppenheimer and tell him how much her husband wanted the scientist to receive the prize. In 1959, Kennedy's vote, then only a senator, became a turning point in the vote that rejected Oppenheimer's opponent, Lewis Strauss, who wanted to become US Secretary of Commerce; in fact it completed it political career. This was due in part to the intercession of the scientific community for Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer has been a heavy smoker since his youth; at the end of 1965 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx and, after an unsuccessful operation, at the end of 1966 he underwent radio and chemotherapy. The treatment had no effect; On February 15, 1967, Oppenheimer fell into a coma and died on February 18 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62. A memorial service was held at Alexander Hall at Princeton University a week later, attended by 600 of his closest colleagues and friends—scientists, politicians, and the military—including Bethe, Groves, Kennan, Lilienthal, Rabi, Smith, and Wigner. Also present were Frank and the rest of his relatives, historian Arthur Meyer Schlesinger, Jr., novelist John O'Hara () and head of the New York City Ballet () George Balanchine. Bethe, Kennan and Smith made short speeches in which they paid tribute to the achievements of the deceased. Oppenheimer was cremated, his ashes placed in an urn, and Kitty took her to St. John's Island and threw her off the side of a boat into the sea, within sight of their cabin.

After the death of Kitty Oppenheimer, who died in October 1972 from an intestinal infection complicated by a pulmonary embolism, their son Peter inherited Oppenheimer's ranch in New Mexico, and their daughter Tony inherited the property on St. John's Island. Tony was denied security clearance, which was required for her chosen profession as a UN translator, after the FBI raised old charges against her father. In January 1977, three months after the annulment of her second marriage, she committed suicide by hanging herself in a house on the coast; she bequeathed her property "to the people of Saint John as a public park and recreation area." The house, originally built too close to the sea, was destroyed by the hurricane; the government of the Virgin Islands currently maintains a Community Center on the site.

Heritage

When Oppenheimer was removed from his post in 1954 and lost political influence, for the intelligentsia, he symbolized the naivete of scientists' belief that they could control the application of their inventions. It has also been seen as a symbol of dilemmas concerning the moral responsibility of the scientist in nuclear world. According to researchers, the security clearance hearings were initiated both for political (due to Oppenheimer's closeness to the Communists and the previous administration) and for personal reasons stemming from his feud with Lewis Strauss. The formal reason for the hearings, and the reason why Oppenheimer was ranked among the liberal intelligentsia, was his opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb; however, it was explained equally by both technical and ethical considerations. Once the technical problems were resolved, Oppenheimer supported Teller's project to build a new bomb, as he believed that the Soviet Union would inevitably build one. Instead of consistently resisting the "Red Hunt" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Oppenheimer testified against some of his former colleagues and students both before and during security clearance hearings. One day, his testimonies incriminating former student Bernard Peters were partially leaked to the press. This has been seen by historians as an attempt by Oppenheimer to please his colleagues in government, and perhaps to divert attention from his own "leftist" connections and those of his brother. In the end, this backfired on the scientist himself: if Oppenheimer actually questioned the loyalty of his student, then his own recommendation to Peters for work in the Manhattan Project would look reckless or at least inconsistent.

In the popular notion of Oppenheimer, his struggle during the hearings is seen as a clash between the "right" militarists (represented by Teller) and the "left" intellectuals (represented by Oppenheimer) over the ethical issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction. The problem of the responsibility of scientists to humanity inspired Bertolt Brecht to create the drama "The Life of Galileo" (Galileo, 1955), left its mark on the play "Physicists" (, 1962) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, based on which the film of the same name was shot in the USSR in 1988, and became the basis for the opera Doctor Atomic (, 2005) by John Adams, in which Oppenheimer, as conceived by the author of the idea, Pamela Rosenberg, is presented as "American Faust". The play "The Oppenheimer Case" (In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1964) by Heinar Kipphardt, after being shown on East German television, was staged in theaters in Berlin and Munich in October 1964. Oppenheimer's objections to this play resulted in a correspondence with Kiephardt, in which the playwright suggested some corrections, although he defended his work. It premiered in New York in June 1968 and was played by Joseph Wiseman as Oppenheimer. The New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes () called it a "violent and biased play" that defends Oppenheimer's position but presents the scientist as a "tragic fool and genius." Oppenheimer strongly disagreed with his portrayal. After reading a transcript of Kiephardt's play shortly after it began showing, Oppenheimer threatened to sue the author, criticizing "improvisations that were contrary to the history and character of real people." Oppenheimer later said in an interview:

A BBC television series called Oppenheimer () starring Sam Waterston () released in 1980 won three BAFTA Television awards. The documentary The Day After Trinity () of the same year about Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb was nominated for an Oscar and won a Peabody Award. In 1989, the feature film "Fat Man and Baby" was released, which tells about the creation of the first atomic bomb, in which Dwight Schultz played the role of Oppenheimer. In addition to being of interest to writers of fiction, Oppenheimer's life has been featured in numerous biographies, including The American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (, 2005) by Kai Beard () and Martin J. Sherwin (), which won the Pulitzer Prize in the category "Biography or Autobiography". In 2004, Berkeley hosted a conference and exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the scientist's birth, the proceedings of the conference were published in 2005 in the collection Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary. reflections). The scientist's papers are kept in the Library of Congress.

Oppenheimer the scientist was remembered by his students and colleagues as a brilliant researcher and capable teacher, the founder of modern theoretical physics in the United States. Due to the fact that his scientific interests often changed rapidly, he never worked long enough on one topic to deserve the Nobel Prize, although, according to other scientists, as mentioned above, his research on black holes could have received it, may he live longer to see the fruits of his theories, nurtured by subsequent astrophysicists. The asteroid (67085) Oppenheimer and a crater on the Moon were named in his honor.

As an adviser on public and military policy, Oppenheimer was a technocratic leader who helped change the relationship between science and the military and the emergence of " big science" (English). The participation of scientists in military research during World War II was unprecedented. Because of the threat that fascism posed to Western civilization, they massively offered their technological and organizational assistance to the Allied war effort, resulting in such powerful tools as radar, proximity fuse, and operations research. From being a cultured and intelligent theoretical physicist to becoming a disciplined military organizer, Oppenheimer embodied the rejection of the image of "cloud-headed" scientists and the idea that knowledge in such exotic areas as the structure of the atomic nucleus would not find application in the real world.

Two days before the Trinity test, Oppenheimer expressed his hopes and fears in a verse he translated from Sanskrit and quoted to Vanyvar Bush:

Bibliography

Articles in domestic journals:

• Oppenheimer R. On the need for experiments with high-energy particles // Technology for Youth. - 1965. - No. 4. - S. 10-12.

• Oppenheimer J. Robert Science and the Common Understanding. - New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954.
• Oppenheimer J. Robert The Open Mind. - New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.
• Oppenheimer J. Robert The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physicists. - London: Oxford University Press, 1964. Russian translation: Oppenheimer R. Flying Trapeze: Three Crises in Physics / Per. V. V. Krivoshchekov, ed. and with an afterword by V. A. Leshkovtsev. - M.: Atomizdat, 1967. - 79 p. - 100,000 copies.
• Oppenheimer J. Robert, Rabi I. I. Oppenheimer. - New York: Scribner, 1969.
• Oppenheimer J. Robert, Smith Alice Kimball, Weiner Charles Robert Oppenheimer, Letters and Recollections. - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. - ISBN 0-674-77605-4
• Oppenheimer J. Robert Uncommon Sense. - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Birkhauser Boston, 1984. - ISBN 0-8176-3165-8
• Oppenheimer J. Robert Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community. - Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. - ISBN 0-691-08547-1

Main scientific articles:

• Russian translation: Oppenheimer Yu., Volkov G. On massive neutron cores // Albert Einstein and the theory of gravity: Sat. articles. - M.: Mir, 1979. - S. 337-352.
• Russian translation: Oppenheimer Yu., Snyder G. On infinite gravitational contraction // Albert Einstein and the theory of gravity: Sat. articles. - M.: Mir, 1979. - S. 353-361.

(No, Linkin Park did introduce motherfucker fans to the name of this great physicist.)

Stunning, deadly monotonous, "hypnotic" the composition "Radiance", with which, in fact, my acquaintance with Oppenheimer Analysis began.

The text of the song consists entirely of the famous quote from the "father of the atomic bomb" Robert Oppenheimer, the words from the Bhagavad Gita, which he allegedly uttered following the results of "Trinity", the first ever test of a nuclear device (it was called Gadget, "Device"), held July 16, 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico. ( What is characteristic, the Oppenheimer Analysis album is titled "New Mexico".)

If the radiance of a thousand[s] suns
Were to burst into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.
I am become death
Destroyer of Worlds.

If a thousand suns
[At the same time] lit up in the sky,
It would be comparable to the radiance of a Mighty [Being].
I am Death
Destroyer of Worlds.

(Popular quote: In 2006, Iron Maiden recorded "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns," and Linkin Park, in their perennial attempt to sound intellectual, called their last year's album "A Thousand Suns.")
William Lawrence, a science journalist, interviewed Oppenheimer just hours after the explosion, in which he is believed to have said these words. For the first time they, in this form, appeared in Time magazine on November 8, 1948; only instead of "destroyer" it was: "shatterer".

In his 1965 interview, Oppenheimer recalls the Trinity test and repeats the last words of his quote. (The audio recording of this Linkin Park interview was overdubbed with sampled flatus sounds, see the second track from their latest album.)
If this can be called a "scene", then it is a very strong, emotional scene (I would like to say: "in the spirit of noir", but I will not say):

After the explosion, he did not utter the lines from the Bhagavad Gita, but only remembered them. "I guess we all remembered them one way or another.".
Robert Oppenheimer's younger brother Frank was also present at the testing of the Device; afterwards he said: "I wish I could remember what my brother said, but I can't. But I think we just said, 'It worked.' I think that's what we both said.".
And what part of the Bhagavad-gita did Oppenheimer quote?
These are two different verses (12 and 32) from the eleventh chapter ("conversations").

From the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into Russian, 1788:

The splendor and amazing radiance of this mighty being can be likened to being the sun, suddenly ascending into heaven with a radiance a thousand times greater than ordinary (pp. 136-137).
<...>
I am time, the destroyer of the human race, which has arrived and has come here to steal away all of a sudden all those standing before us (p. 141).

From "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" (translation into Russian English translation from Sanskrit):

If hundreds of thousands of suns were to rise in the sky at once, their luminosity would be comparable to the effulgence of the Supreme Lord in His universal form. (11:12)
<...>
The Supreme Lord said: I am time, the great destroyer of the worlds. (11:32)

From an 1890 English translation:

The glory and amazing splendor of this mighty Being may be likened to the radiance shed by a thousand suns rising together into the heavens.
<...>
I am Time matured, come hither for the destruction of these creatures.

From the 1942 English translation:

If the splendour of a thousand suns were to blaze out at once (simultaneously) in the sky, that would be the splendour of that mighty Being (great soul). (11:12)
<...>
I am the mighty world-destroying Time, now engaged in destroying the worlds. Even without thee, none of the warriors arrayed in the hostile armies shall live. (11:32)

It is known that Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit under Arthur Ryder, and in 1933 he read the Bhagavad Gita and, in his own words, it "radically influenced" his worldview.
Ryder published a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1929, and Vishnu calls himself not "time", as the vast majority of translators do, but death.

In Sanskrit the word kala means "time", "age", "darkness", in the feminine - "death".
For those interested, there is a wonderful extensive article about Oppenheimer's famous quote and the history of his study of Sanskrit and the Bhagavad Gita:
. James A. Hijia. The Gita of Robert J. Oppenheimer // Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. 144, no. June 2, 2000