Robert Oppenheimer

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Robert Oppenheimer (ca.1944)

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (born April 22, 1904 in New York City , † February 18, 1967 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an American theoretical physicist of German-Jewish descent

Oppenheimer was best known for his role as scientific director of the Manhattan Project during World War II . This project, stationed in the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , aimed to develop the first nuclear weapons . Robert Oppenheimer is known as the "father of the atomic bomb ", but condemned its continued use after seeing the consequences of its use against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

After the war, Robert Oppenheimer worked as an advisor to the newly established US Atomic Energy Agency and used this position to campaign for international control of nuclear energy and against a nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States . After drawing the displeasure of many politicians during the McCarthy era with his political views , his security rating was revoked in 1954. Excluded from direct political influence, he continued his work as a physicist in research and teaching.

A decade later, Robert Oppenheimer was awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1963 by US President Lyndon B. Johnson as a sign of his political rehabilitation .

Life

Youth and Studies

Göttingen memorial plaque for Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer's father Julius S. Oppenheimer, a textile importer who immigrated to the USA in 1888, originally came from Hanau and the ancestors belonged to the Jewish patrician family Oppenheimer . Robert's mother, Ella Friedman, was an arts teacher. She had trained in painting in Paris and had a studio in New York. Oppenheimer had a brother, Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985), who was also a physicist.

Oppenheimer went to the school of the "New York Society for Ethical Culture" in New York. From the third grade onwards, he received lessons from a private chemistry teacher . In 1921 Oppenheimer left the Ethical Cultural School with ten top marks. Oppenheimer later said of his childhood: "My childhood had in no way prepared me for the fact that there are cruel, bitter things in this world". His “sheltered family life” did not give him “the normal, healthy possibility of ever being a rascal”.

In 1922 Oppenheimer began his studies (M. Sc.) At Harvard University , which he graduated in 1925 with " summa cum laude ". His major was chemistry, but he also took subjects such as Greek, architecture, art, and literature. It was not until his third year of studies that Professor Percy Bridgman got him excited about physics. Then he went for further studies to the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University under the direction of Ernest Rutherford , where to zuwies his experimental work, for which he showed little inclination. There was also a personal crisis there that required psychological treatment. After surviving the crisis, he turned to theoretical physics, for which he demonstrated extraordinary talent.

Oppenheimer's research

Robert Oppenheimer as a doctoral student in Göttingen, 1926/27

In 1926 Oppenheimer published several papers on the quantum mechanical treatment of complex questions of atomic structure. It was through this work that Max Born became aware of Oppenheimer and offered him a place as a doctoral student in Göttingen . Here, at the University of Göttingen , the world's leading center of atomic physics at the time, the young Oppenheimer and the great atomic scientists of the time, Werner Heisenberg , Pascual Jordan , Niels Bohr , Wolfgang Pauli , Enrico Fermi , Paul Dirac and others exchanged ideas Edward Teller . He also got to know Fritz Houtermans and Charlotte Riefenstahl , whom he adored and courted.

" Fritz Houtermans and Robert Oppenheimer stood out from other students. [...] Robert Oppenheimer was very bright; so much so that eventually his colleagues were happy to see Oppenheimer leave for the US, after he received his PhD under Max Born in 1927. He was starting to ask questions that James Franck could not answer. I was amazed over his knowledge. "

- Charlotte Houtermans

Oppenheimer quickly became one of the great scientists of quantum mechanics. From 1926 to 1929 he published sixteen important articles on quantum physics. In 1927 Oppenheimer received his doctorate “with distinction” from Max Born on theoretical investigations of spectra. He then took a position as an assistant professor in Berkeley, California. In 1928 he visited Europe again on a research grant. Robert Oppenheimer's father died in 1937, leaving him and his siblings with a considerable fortune. Oppenheimer formed an active school of theoretical physicists in California. The fact that in the atmosphere of the time, which was marked by the Spanish civil war , communist tendencies were common among intellectuals, to whom many friends of Oppenheimer were attached, was later interpreted negatively in McCarthy's time.

In 1939 he also published work on astrophysics, u. a. an early study on neutron stars and an investigation on the gravitational collapse of heavy stars into black holes (the name "black hole" did not come up until the 1960s, however).

In 1940 Oppenheimer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1941 he was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1945 to the American Philosophical Society .

Manhattan project

Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer

During the Second World War, the American government became concerned that National Socialist Germany might be the first nation to build an atom bomb ( uranium project ). To prevent this from happening, the Manhattan Project pushed the development of an American atomic bomb.

After he had married Kitty Harrison in 1941, Oppenheimer took over the offered scientific direction of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Among other things, it was his job to attract the best scientists in the country to the secret project. Oppenheimer moved the project to the New Mexico desert, where the Los Alamos National Laboratory was built at an altitude of over 2000 meters . This research facility eventually housed around 3000 people.

The Los Alamos research has been completed. The first atomic bomb in the world was called The Gadget (German: "the device, technical gimmick") and on the test site White Sands Missile Range with the code name Trinity in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 clock ignited. A bunker was built nine kilometers away.

Regarding this event, Oppenheimer quoted the line in a 1965 interview:

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

"Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds."

- from the " Bhagavad Gita ", a central sacred scripture of Hinduism .

The quote used by Oppenheimer in memory of the first atomic bomb test can be found in the Current Biography Yearbook, 1964 , published a year earlier :

"If the radiance of a thousand suns / were to burst at once into the sky / that would be like / the splendor of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."

"If the light of a thousand suns / suddenly broke out in the sky / that would be like the splendor of this glorious, and I have become death, the shatterer of the worlds."

- Current Biography Yearbook, 1964 , German translation based on “Bhagavad Gita”, full text in transcribed Sanskrit and German

It should be noted, however, that the quotation is not found in a single coherent passage of text; it is rather parts from verses 12 and 32 of the 11th song, a longer self-description of the god Krishna , whereby Oppenheimer, who was powerful as a follower of the Bhagavadgita of Sanskrit , especially the second verse, which he wrote in 1965 in the NBC mentioned above - Repeated the interview, translated quite freely without authorization; the corresponding text passage "kâlo 'smi lokakshayakrt pravrddho / lokân samâhartum iha pravrttah" is mostly translated in German as "Time am I, the destroyer of the worlds" or "I am the time that destroys all the world".

On August 6, 1945, 21 days after The Gadget, Little Boy (German: "little boy") was dropped over Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped Fat Man (German: "fat man") on Nagasaki. The two atomic bombs killed a total of 126,000 people in the first minutes and hours as a result of the pressure wave, the burning of the upper layer of the skin and the fires that broke out in both cities. According to official information, 90,000 people died of the consequences, especially the radiation they had suffered .

post war period

Oppenheimer received the Medal for Merit in 1946 , at that time the highest civilian award in the USA. In 1948 he was president of the American Physical Society . He came increasingly into conflict with his role as "father of the atomic bomb". In 1947 he took over the chairmanship of an advisory committee of the American Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). There he advised against the hydrogen bomb . This led to a conflict with the chairman of the AEC, Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (and also with Edward Teller , the driving force behind the development of the hydrogen bomb, whose work Oppenheimer hindered). The disputes between Oppenheimer and Strauss came to a head to such an extent that Oppenheimer was finally denounced - in the McCarthy era - by Strauss as a possible spy of the Soviet Union. Strauss received material for his allegations from the FBI , which investigated Oppenheimer's past and at times monitored him around the clock.

In 1954, Oppenheimer was therefore invited to a safety hearing. He was accused of "dealing with well-known communists", by which his brother Frank Oppenheimer , his ex-wife, students and acquaintances from his time in California in the 1930s such as David Bohm were meant. He was also accused of being against the hydrogen bomb, which meant he was not doing his job. But the investigative commission soon had to admit that Oppenheimer was free to express his opinion and was not guilty of treason. However, she also stated that he (in the matter of the H-bomb) "for whatever motive had harmed the interests of the United States".

As a result, Oppenheimer was denied the so-called "security guarantee". This meant his exclusion from secret government projects and thus a massive reduction in his political influence. For the most part, this decision received a positive response in the press. In physicists' circles, however, there was some indignation. Edward Teller in particular felt the consequences of his quite neutrally formulated, but ultimately fatal statement to the committee for Oppenheimer and was sometimes treated like a pariah by his former colleagues . H. Outcast, treated.

Oppenheimer returned to the Institute for Advanced Study . He received widespread support in academic circles and was re-elected director of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1954. It wasn't until nine years after the hearing that Oppenheimer's work was officially recognized during the Manhattan Project. In November 1963, President John F. Kennedy proposed that he be awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize, which took place that same year under his successor Johnson. He did not get his "political harmlessness" back.

On February 18, 1967, Robert Oppenheimer died of throat cancer .

The Oppenheimer moon crater is named after him. In addition, the uranium mineral Oppenheimerite was named after him in 2016. The Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Florida awarded him the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in his honor .

literature

  • Hans Bethe : J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904-1967 , Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society, Volume 14, pp. 391-416, online
  • Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin : American Prometheus - The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Reprint, B&T 2006, ISBN 0-375-72626-8 , German translation: J. Robert Oppenheimer , Propylaen Verlag 2009.
  • Peter Goodchild: J. Robert Oppenheimer. Book club Ex Libris, Zurich, 1982 (first in English BBC, London 1980).
  • Gregg Herken : Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller , Henry Holt and Co. 2002
  • Paul Strathern: Oppenheimer & the bomb. Fischer Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-596-14119-2 .
  • Klaus Hoffmann: J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the first atomic bomb. Springer-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-540-59330-6 .
  • Abraham Pais : J. Robert Oppenheimer. A life. Oxford University Press 2006, ISBN 0-19-516673-6 .
  • Priscilla J. McMillan: The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer - and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race. Viking Press, 2005, ISBN 0-670-03422-3 .
  • Robert Jungk : Brighter than a thousand suns. The fate of atomic researchers. Heyne-Sachbuch, 1956, ISBN 3-453-04019-8 .
  • Roland Hiemann, Robert Lorenz: J. Robert Oppenheimer. The charismatic of the atomic age. In: Stine Marg , Franz Walter (Hrsg.): Göttingen heads and their work in the world. Göttingen 2012, pp. 94-101, ISBN 978-3-525-30036-7 .

Fiction and theater

filming

Web links

Commons : J. Robert Oppenheimer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 34f.
  2. ↑ Kai Bird / Martin J. Sherwin: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer , Vintage Books, 2006, ISBN 978-0375726262 , pp. 63, 69.
  3. ↑ u. a. the “ Born-Oppenheimer approximation ” in the work with Born “The Quantum Theory of Molecules”, Annalen der Physik Vol. 84, 1927, p. 459
  4. ↑ with George Michael Volkoff "On massive neutron cores", Physical Review, Vol. 55, 1939, 375; Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff border
  5. ↑ with Snyder On continued gravitational contraction. Physical Review 56, 1939, 455
  6. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015
  7. ^ Member Directory: J. Robert Oppenheimer. National Academy of Sciences, accessed November 29, 2015 (Biographical Memoir by Hans A. Bethe ).
  8. ^ Member History: J. Robert Oppenheimer. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  9. ^ J. Robert Oppenheimer in a 1965 NBC interview. Atomicarchive.com, accessed January 11, 2007 .
  10. ^ Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations , 1989
  11. ↑ Bhagavad Gita , full text in transcribed Sanskrit and German
  12. ↑ Bhagavad - Gita As She Is , by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, original edition from 1974, Rettershof Castle
  13. ↑ Bhagavad Gita , full text in transcribed Sanskrit and German
  14. ↑ Goodchild Oppenheimer , p. 237, or z. B. the review by Polenberg (editor) In the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer 2002. This was particularly the case during the trial against Oppenheimer. It was also bugged - the FBI files at that time also record Oppenheimer's table conversations.
  15. ↑ Goodchild, loc. Cit. P. 269
  16. ↑ Goodchild, loc. Cit. P. 274
  17. ↑ When Prosecutor Roger Robb asked whether he would consider Oppenheimer, whom he previously described as “loyal” to the United States, to be a security risk, he replied: “In a great many cases I have asked Dr. Seeing Oppenheimer acting in a way ... which was very difficult for me to understand ... In this respect, I would prefer if the vital interests of the nation were in hands that I understand better and that I trust more. ”Goodchild, loc.cit. P. 262
  18. ↑ Goodchild p. 294
personal data
SURNAME Oppenheimer, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oppenheimer, Julius Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York , United States
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1967
Place of death Princeton , New Jersey , United States