Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67) was an American theoretical physicist and research-institution administrator. He was the director of the American atomic bomb project and was subsequently believed to be a security risk because of his early left-wing sympathies and his suspected communist connections.
Born to a wealthy family of German-Jewish immigrants in New York City, Oppenheimer was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Göttingen, where he gained his PhD in 1927. During the 1930s, Oppenheimer became a highflying theoretical physicist. He made several significant contributions to quantum theory—he worked on electron-positron pairs, cosmic-ray theory, and deuteron reactions.
Oppenheimer is renowned as the director of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory 1943–45 during the development of the atomic bomb. He proved to be a highly effective administrator—he had not only the intellectual authority to command several hundred scientists, but also the diplomatic skill to handle politicians and military leaders. Later, in 1949, Oppenheimer opposed the construction of the hydrogen bomb.
In 1942, Oppenheimer was contacted by a Soviet agent. Although he did not tender any secrets, he did not report the incident to the security forces. In 1953, at the height of the anti-communism witch-hunting campaign led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, allegations of treachery led to a government hearing. Oppenheimer lost his security clearance and his position as adviser to the highest echelons of the U.S. government.
Although Oppenheimer was subsequently rehabilitated in 1963, the case became a cause célèbre in the world of science because of its consequences about political and moral issues relating to the responsibility of scientists in government.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by J. Robert Oppenheimer
The optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Optimism
We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Power
A man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Mistakes
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Questions, Men
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Science, Physics
In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Opportunity
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Questions, Men
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Technology, Science
There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Perception, Inner-child
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist knows it.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
Topics: Optimism
No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
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