American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Content Warning: This section discusses death by suicide.

Oppenheimer had mixed feelings about the atomic bomb for which he became famous. In fact, his thoughts about atomic weapons did not evolve in one simple direction. He considered it necessary that the US develop such a weapon yet felt horrified by its destructive power. One inclination or the other predominated depending on circumstances, but neither sentiment ever left him entirely.

Before and during World War II, a combination of scientific curiosity, patriotism, and fear motivated Oppenheimer. In January 1939, upon learning that two German chemists had achieved fission by splitting the uranium nucleus, Oppenheimer initially reacted with skepticism: “That’s impossible” (166), he said to a fellow scientist who broke the news. Within a week, however, a student of Oppenheimer’s at Berkeley walked into the professor’s office and saw on the chalkboard “a drawing—a very bad, an execrable drawing—of a bomb” (168). World War II had not yet begun, not even in Europe. The rudimentary bomb drawing thus sprang not from wartime necessity but from pure curiosity. After the war began—and shortly after accepting the directorship at Los Alamos—Oppenheimer incited consternation among his colleagues when he initially agreed with Gen.