Robert Oppenheimer :: essays research papers

Robert Oppenheimer      To build a bomb capable of destroying entire cities at once they needed a person with a smart, fast and fictive brain. That person was Robert Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer was the brilliant scientist behind the development of the nuclear bomb. While nuclear bombs kill lots of people, the atomic bomb won the war against the Japanese (World War 2). This helped because we would not have stood a chance attacking the principal(prenominal) island on foot.     While Roberts name has become synonymous with the atomic bomb there is more to the story than that. J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in youthful York City on April 22, 1904. After graduating from Harvard and studying under Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge University, Oppenheimer real his Ph.D. in Germany in 1925. In 1929, he returned to the United States to teach at the University of California Berkeley and at Cal Tech.     Upon hearing of discovery of fission in 1939, Oppenheimer at one time grasped thepossibility of atomic bombs. In 1941, he was brought into the atomic bomb bewilder and was asked to calculate the critical mass of uranium-235, the amount needed to sustain a chain reaction.The next year he assembled a group of about of the best theoretical physicists in the country todiscuss the design of the existent bomb. General Wesley Groves, the army officer in charge of theManhattan Project, named Oppenheimer the scientific coach of the program, and together they decided on Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site for the nuclear weapons laboratory. Groves Mackenzie2said of Oppenheimer, "Hes a genius. A real genius...Why, Oppenheimer knows about everything. He fundament talk to you about anything you bring up. Well not exactly. I label there are a few things he doesnt know about. He doesnt know anything about sports (necularpages).     The staff grew from 30 scientists to 5,000, all trying to d esist work on the bomb before theGermans did. On the day of the test, Oppenheimer amply realized the enormity of what he had just accomplished. As he stood ceremonial occasion the mushroom cloud, he recalled later, a phrase from the Baghavad Gita, the Hindu scripture, floated through his mind, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." This responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders, and when he met with President Harry Truman in 1946, he exclaimed, "Mr. President, I have telephone line on my hands." (necularpages)     He set up a research postal service for the Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.