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Work before the Manhattan Project
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Oppenheimer.shtml Before the Manhattan Project brought him even greater fame, Oppenheimer was already known as a respected physics professor in UC Berkeley. He conducted lots of research and contributed to areas including astrophysics, nuclear physics, spectroscopy, quantum field theory, and quantum electrodynamics. With his work, discoveries were made of the neutron, neutron star, quantum tunneling, and so on. -
Beginning of Manhattan Project
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/robertoppenheimer/p/oppenheimer.htm With President Roosevelt's approval, the Manhattan Project was created. Oppenheimer was chosen to head the project. He went around the country and gathered a group of scientists that would work on producing a working atomic bomb. The design and amount of material needed had to be carefully analyized. -
Location of the Manhattan Project
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Med/Med.html The Manhattan Project was decided to be stationed in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Here, the labs would be next to a desert where the scientists could work in privacy and be able to test without danger to anything else. With this, Oppenheimer and his group of scientists quickly worked to finally come to their first nuclear bomb test, codenamed Trinity. -
Trinity Test
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/biographies/bio_oppenheimer-julius.htm This was the world's first nuclear bomb explosion. It was measured to have the power of about 20,000 tons of TNT. Seeing the mushroom cloud, all of the scientists were excited by their success of turning a dream into reality, and concerned about the destructive force of the bomb. Here, Oppenheimer says, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -
Debate over Use of the Atomic Bomb
http://www.nndb.com/people/808/000047667/ Ever since the Trinity test proved the atomic bomb to be reality, the debate over its use exploded. There were ethical issues vs. political/military issues. People were skeptical whether it was right or not to use such a destructive weapon without forewarnings. However, production of the Little Boy and Fat Man were underway, and dropped in just a few short months. -
Little Boy
http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/hiroshima.htm Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. Hiroshima was mainly a civilian city, but it contained military assests. It was an uranium bomb in a gyn-type assembly. Tens of thousands of people died instantly, and horrible rumors began to spread through the country. The government, however, remained silent. -
Fat Man
http://www.barryrudolph.com/pages/atomic.html Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. It was a plutonium bomb with the same design as the Trinity bomb. By now it was apparent that U.S. now had full use of the dreaded atomic bomb. The Japanese government surrendered on September 2nd, 1945. -
Atomic Energy Commission
http://www.authentichistory.com/1946-1960/1-cworigins/ The AEC was created to control the development of atomic science and technology. Oppenheimer was appointed to be the head of the AEC, which he used to push for a stop to the building of hydrogen bombs. He understood what hydrogen bombs were to be used for and wanted to prevent a working hydrogen bomb design from being created to tempt others from using it. -
Fight against the Hydrogen Bomb
http://ohst.berkeley.edu/publications/oppenheimer/exhibit/chapter4.html Oppenheimer felt that the purpose of hydrogen bombs were only to be used against civilian targets. He wanted to stop the rapidly increasinly dangerous arms race between rival countries. However, this was a big downfall for Oppenheimer as the age of the Red Scare was setting into the country, sowing seeds of suspicion and distrust. -
Left-wings and Communists
http://www.nndb.com/people/808/000047667/ Oppenheimer was questioned many times because he had worked with known left-wings and had Communist students. Having such a high ranking, suspicions quickly increased in fear of Oppenheimer secretly helping Soviet Russia. He willingly went to court hearings to try to prove himself to authority, but to no avail. -
House Un-American Activities Committee
http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/jrobertoppenheimer.html Former colleagues testified against Oppenheimer, talking about his temper and how he didn't seem to be able to make good decisions. Many people from the science community still supported Oppenheimer though, believing that he would never do such a thing as to turn on them. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance. -
Honorary Awards
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/oppenheimer_robert.htm Among many other awards, Oppenheimer was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award by President Kennedy in an attempt to reestablish his name on a clean slate. President Johnson presented him the award. When asked again about the atomic bombings, Oppenheimer still believed in the atomic bomb, but not in how it was used by the government.
