2023-07-27 11:59:00
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Sensitive, highly intelligent, poetic and with a social character: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” was a contradictory person. He also lived and worked with the greatest physicists in Göttingen. Here is a photo probably from 1944. © US National Archives/dpa
Robert Oppenheimer’s scientific career picked up speed in Göttingen. The life of the “father of the atomic bomb” can be seen as a film in the cinema.
Göttingen – The film “Oppenheimer” has been running in German cinemas for a week. The physicist and head of the “Manhattan Project” for the construction of the atomic bomb received his doctorate in 1926/27 under Max Born in Göttingen.
“Oppenheimer” is the title of the film regarding a man whose life reflects the greatest dilemma a scientist can face. J. Robert Oppenheimer leads the “Manhattan Project” as a scientist, which builds and detonates the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945 – before the Nazis.
Trinity test changed the world
The “Trinity” test is an epoch-making event that changes the world and enables the “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 300,000 people die immediately in 1945, hundreds of thousands as a result. Oppenheimer, however, the “father of the atomic bomb” is actually a very humane person who will never be able to cope with the shock of the bomb’s consequences.
Later Robert Oppenheimer fights once morest the military use of the atomic bomb and the construction of the hydrogen bomb. And is sidelined by the country to which he brings the bomb, also because of his proximity to communism.
The physicists have learned what sin is. And this knowledge will never completely leave her.
As early as 1926, Robert Oppenheimer, who completed his studies at Harvard in just three years, published several treatises on quantum mechanics and atomic structures. These arouse the interest of the German physicist and later Nobel Prize winner Max Born. He calls Oppenheimer to Göttingen, the city that is supposed to represent only a short but highly intensive episode in the life of Robert Oppenheimer. In the late summer of 1926 he took the train from Cambridge to Göttingen – the Mecca of physicists, where mostly young geniuses revolutionized theoretical physics at lightning speed.
Great biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Just at this moment Oppenheimer comes to the city and is absolutely delighted, he writes to his friend Francis Fergusson from Cambridge on November 14, 1926 – as can be read in the great biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin: “You would like Göttingen if you I believe. The natural sciences are much better here than in Cambridge, and probably better overall than anywhere else.” Just to put this in context: Cambridge was considered Europe’s center for experimental physics at the time.
So Göttingen: Oppenheimer is in the best place there at the right time – with the very best teacher: Max Born. The head of the Physics Institute primarily promotes the work of Werner Heisenberg, Eugene Wigner, Wolfgang Pauli and Enrico Fermi – all of them should cause a sensation as scientists. Oppenheimer flourishes, the deeply depressive phases in Cambridge, England, are forgotten.
Oppenheimer bumps into famous scientists
In Göttingen, with the university on the Leine Canal, he met other famous scientists: the experimental physicist James Franck, already a Nobel Prize winner. Ernst Pascual Jordan, who works with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg on the formulation of the matrix mechanical version of quantum theory. Paul Dirac develops a field theory of quantum physics.
In a 2016 statement on a dispute over an Oppenheimer memorial plaque, the Göttingen historian Prof. Peter Aufgebauer summed up the following: “Since the Göttingen period, Oppenheimer has belonged to the closest circle of leading atomic and quantum physicists,” says Aufgebauer. “Oppenheimer is thus an important protagonist of the “Göttingen Physics” of the 1920s and its global importance in basic research in the field of atomic and quantum physics.”
Groundbreaking and revolutionary discoveries
In short: what happened in these few years in Göttingen in terms of groundbreaking, revolutionary discoveries in physics alone is still hard to believe today.
Oppenheimer lives in the house of the Göttingen doctor family Cario, who need the money from the rental. Robert feels: Life is rich at the university, also materially, the mood is good. Outside, the recession and rising poverty are weighing on the mind. At the time, many Germans were “bitter and grumpy, angry and full of what would later produce even greater disasters,” says Oppenheimer, who was wealthy by birth. He doesn’t know financial difficulties. But he doesn’t care much for money. He is seen as generous and likes to give away loved ones.
Encounter with one of the most beautiful students
The biography also says: “Göttingen was not only physics and poetry. There was also Charlotte Riefenstahl, one of the most beautiful students in Göttingen. Oppenheimer, still an inexperienced lover, catches fire, kindled by the physicist, who also knew Andre Gide, an author that Oppenheimer read, which dealt with the moral responsibility of the individual for world affairs – as did Oppenheimer, who later became the “father of the atomic bomb”. “.
Trailer for the movie “Oppenheimer”
Robert likes to eat Wiener Schnitzel in the Junkernhaus, later the Junkernschänke, sitting under an engraving by Otto von Bismarck (also studied in Göttingen). To drink beer, he goes with friends to the “Schwarzen Bären”, a tavern from the 15th century that has been waiting for a buyer and renovation for many years.
The film: “Oppenheimer”, portrayed by Cillian Murphy in the desert of Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested. © Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/dpa
Robert Oppenheimer learned a great deal in Göttingen, discovered for himself openness, speaking with people, too often took part in Born’s lectures in a know-it-all way, which made him unpopular with his fellow students. And he learns to learn from others instead of being isolated and lost in books alone, as in the USA and Cambridge.
Idol for Oppenheimer: Max Born. © Archive/dpa
On May 11, 1927, Oppenheimer took his doctoral examination. James Franck was one of the examiners and says to a colleague: “I got out on time. He (Oppenheimer) just started asking me questions.”
Brilliant short essays
In Göttingen, Oppenheimer achieved in just nine months what he had already doubted in his deep depression: academic success with two brilliant short essays – one of them on the “quantum theory of molecules”. Above all, his self-esteem and self-confidence will grow back.
Oppenheimer becomes a brilliant physicist, later the leader of the “Manhattan Project”. He brings the fire of the atomic bomb to mankind, but is consumed by doubts and self-doubts, is worn down by the communist hunters and security officials, rated as a security risk.
Oppenheimer died of throat cancer in 1967
After almost seven decades, the US government returned J. Robert Oppenheimer posthumously in late 2022 – he died of throat cancer on February 18, 1967 – the clearance. When it decided to withdraw Oppenheimer’s safety clearance in 1954, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) violated its own guidelines, said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. (Thomas Copytz)
Buch: “J. Robert Oppenheimer”, Kai Bird/Martin J. Sherwin, List, 672 pages, 14 euros.
Film: “Oppenheimer”, in German cinemas since July 20, director: Christopher Nolan. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Jack Quaid, Matt Damon, Kennath Brannagh, among others
The fast-paced life of the brilliant scientist Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 in New York to wealthy Jewish immigrants. His father Julius S. Oppenheimer came from Hanau in Hesse and made a fortune in the USA as a textile importer. Robert’s mother Ella Friedmann owned a studio in New York and worked as an art teacher. Like his younger brother Frank, who later became a physicist, Robert grew up in a sheltered family environment.
After school, he studied chemistry at Harvard University from 1922, majoring in chemistry, but also attended lectures on art and literature, architecture and ancient Greek. Only following several semesters did Robert turn to physics, as his interest in it was aroused by a professor. He graduated with honors from Harvard following only three years, went to Cambridge to do research in the team of Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, then went to Göttingen.
After his time there, including his doctorate, with the great Max Born (see main text), Oppenheimer became an assistant professor at the University of California in Berkeley at the age of 25. From 1929 he worked in Pasadena at the California Institute of Technology. From then on, publications on cosmic rays, neutron stars and positrons gave him a top reputation.
In 1942, Oppenheimer was offered the position that would later earn him the unloved nickname “Father of the Atomic Bomb”: head of the “Manhattan Project” with the aim of building the first American atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer rallied some of the leading scientists and moved the facility to New Mexico, where the “bomb” was designed and built in the desert at Los Alamos National Laboratory. For this, Oppenheimer, the father of two, received the “Medal of Merit”, one of the highest awards in the USA. However, as chairman of the US Atomic Energy Agency’s Advisory Committee, Oppenheimer later clashed with Republican politician Lewis Strauss over the development of the hydrogen bomb, enough to put him under FBI surveillance. Oppenheimer wanted to prevent the construction of the hydrogen bomb and hindered scientific work. The authorities accuse him of being a Russian spy. In the McCarthy era, contacts with left-wing intellectuals are proven. In 1954 he was removed from office at the behest of Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy rehabilitates him, he receives the Enrico Fermi Prize. That great physicist, Fermi, had advised Oppenheimer on building the bomb. (tko)
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