OPPENHEIMER
In 1926, 22-year-old J. Robert Oppenheimer studies under Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Blackett is demanding, prompting Oppenheimer to leave him a poisoned apple, which visiting scientist Niels Bohr almost eats accidentally. Oppenheimer completes his PhD in physics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, where he meets Werner Heisenberg. He returns to the United States, hoping to expand quantum physics research there, and begins teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology. He meets his future wife, Katherine Puening, a biologist and ex-Communist. He has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party USA, until her suicide.
U.S. Army General Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb after Oppenheimer assures Groves that he has no communist sympathies. Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particularly driven by the possibility of the Nazis having a nuclear weapons program underway, headed by Heisenberg. Oppenheimer assembles a scientific team that includes Edward Teller, Isidor Isaac Rabi and David L. Hill, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to secretly create the bomb. Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein discuss how an atomic bomb could trigger a chain reaction that could destroy the world.[5] Oppenheimer also learns that a Soviet spy may have leaked the Manhattan Project's intel to Russia.
When Germany surrenders in World War II, some project scientists doubt the bomb's continued importance. The bomb is completed and the Trinity test is successfully conducted just before the Potsdam Conference. President Harry S. Truman orders the atomic bombs be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan's surrender and thrusting Oppenheimer into the public eye as the "father of the atomic bomb". Haunted by the destruction and suffering, Oppenheimer urges Truman against developing even more powerful weapons. Truman perceives Oppenheimer's distress as weakness and insists that, as president, he alone bears responsibility for the bomb's use.
Oppenheimer advocates against further nuclear development, especially the hydrogen bomb, positioning him against Teller. His stance becomes a point of contention amid the tense Cold War with the Soviet Union. Lewis Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, resents Oppenheimer for publicly dismissing his concerns regarding the export of radioisotopes. He also believes Oppenheimer criticized him to Einstein.
At a hearing intended to remove Oppenheimer from political influence, Oppenheimer is betrayed by Teller and other associates. Strauss exploits Oppenheimer's associations with current and former communists such as Tatlock and Oppenheimer's brother, Frank. Despite Rabi and several other allies testifying in Oppenheimer's defense, Oppenheimer's security clearance is prematurely revoked, damaging his public image and neutralizing his policy influence. At Strauss' Senate confirmation hearing as Secretary of Commerce, Hill testifies about Strauss' personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer's downfall. The senate rejects Strauss' nomination.
In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation. Oppenheimer and Einstein's earlier conversation was not about Strauss but the far-reaching implications of nuclear weapons. Their fear of causing a chain reaction that could destroy the world has come true.
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