- A new perspective on the father of the atomic bomb, sheds new light on Oppenheimer's personality and psyche *
In the eyes of his contemporaries and later generations, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) is considered the "father" of the atomic bomb. A brilliant theoretical physicist, he was, as a professor, the central figure in the development of theoretical physics in the United States. During World War II, Oppenheimer served as scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed and tested.Oppenheimer's rocket ascent continued after the war, when he became the chief scientific adviser to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, effectively making him the chief scientist of the U.S. government. But he fell just as quickly, becoming the most famous victim of the anti-communist campaign of the early Cold War, stripped of his security clearances and excluded from any role in policymaking.The public's fascination with Oppenheimer, as the indispensable figure in the creation of the atomic age and the liberal martyr of the political excesses of that era, remains very strong, and this is reflected both in the biographies that have emerged about him and in the artworks that have dealt with his life, including the opera and, more recently, the critically acclaimed 2023 biographical film Oppenheimer.In this biography, David Reeve offers a new perspective, focusing on Oppenheimer's personality and psyche, particularly his introverted nature that puzzled and aroused the curiosity of his contemporaries. To achieve this, Reeve pays particular attention to the painful nature of Oppenheimer's childhood, and its highly paradoxical relationship to his Jewish identity, a paradox that partly explains Oppenheimer's attraction to the universal promise of science.
